Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days Review (macOS & PC)

Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days isn’t PikPok’s first rodeo. The studio developed the endless zombie survival runner series Into the Dead (2012) and Into the Dead 2 (2017) for mobile platforms where you dodge and kill zombies to survive and save your family. Now, they return with Our Darkest Days, which shifts gears into the 2.5D sidescrolling shelter survival genre, as well as launching on PC and consoles. 

Not every developer hits a homerun when transitioning from developing games for mobile to PC and consoles. Meanwhile, the zombie survival genre has been on the treadmill for a while now. It brings lots of suspicion over how PikPok intends to stand out. Even booting up the game, my eyebrows raised over whether it would truly intrigue me. But alas, upon credits roll, Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days more than intrigued. 

It left me with a strong kind of tension, and I couldn’t help but forge back in again to find out just how far the game could exploit my senses. In truth, it’s not a zombie survival game for the weak, reminding me of grim, post-apocalyptic survival management games like State of Decay and This War of Mine. Indeed, some of the gameplay elements will be familiar from these games. Yet, PikPok has managed to create a unique experience you’ll long remember after the credits roll. 

If you’re considering surviving a zombie outbreak with few resources within a society on the brink of collapsing, here’s a deep-dive Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days review to get you up to speed on what to expect.

Walking Zombie

Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days is set in fictional Walton, Texas, where a zombie outbreak destroys any semblance of normal life. Few survivors barricade themselves in abandoned shops and junkyards. With the city in ruin, your only hope is to survive long enough to escape. You do have a pair of starting characters you can choose from with unique backstories each. You have the overprotective father, the dedicated therapist, and more. The father comes with his daughter, each with strengths and weaknesses that will affect how you explore and survive Walton. The therapist comes with their patient, and so on.

As such, you want to carefully maul over each character’s perks and weaknesses and marry them with your play style for a fighting chance. You’ll notice certain perks like the ability to carry more resources or take less damage, which will be extremely vital for different scenarios in exploration and management. After choosing your starting pair of characters, you go to the base, where you’ll be crafting valuable tools, cooking, sleeping, etc. Your base will need maintenance and upgrades, too, all of which are under an effective management simulator. 

Highway to Hell

Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days has a day and night cycle. You can pair each character with only one activity for each cycle. It may sound restrictive, and it can sometimes feel like so. However, the management part of gameplay can potentially be overbearing, especially for newcomers. That’s because each character has four bars to keep track of: health, mental health, hunger, and sleep. Managing health is simple. All you have to do is ensure your character takes less damage and, when they do, that they have a medkit on standby to restore their health. 

Mental health drains when subjected to trauma and despair, like when a survivor dies while exploring Walton. Survivors can be depressed, too, if you don’t meet their food and sleep needs and, in turn, are unable to contribute to the survival of the whole. The last important “bar” to keep track of is the strength of the barricade surrounding the base where your survivors shelter. Over time, zombies will draw nearer to your position, chipping away at the barrier when night falls. So, defending your barrier is also of high importance. But also, defense can only last so long when surviving on scarce resources, which adds the pressure to find a new shelter –fast.

Tripping for You

It’s all easier said than done because of the limited resources in the world. Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days scarcely has the food, medkits, or ammo you need to sustain the survivors. Zombies overrun the places that have decent stashes of resources, which you can study by the risk ratio of the zombie threat versus the resources you stand to gain. You might have few bullets left, yet have no choice but to press on so the survivors back at base get the food they need. You might reach the point of no return and have to face multiple zombies, who can easily overwhelm you. Or save face and run for the hills.

It’s a constant bargain when forging farther into the zombie-ridden world of Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days. Yet you’re given tools to help you navigate treacherous ground. You can use stealth, for instance, thanks to the zombies’ density. It’s easy to sneak past them, provided you don’t make a sound. This means firing your gun is often better as a last resort. You can peek through the doorknob to see how many zombies are in the next room and decide if the danger is worth facing. Alternatively, you can take zombies on using your blade, blunt weapons you find around the rooms like guitars and baseball bats, but you might want to only attack when a zombie is secluded from the rest. 

Creepin’ it Real

It’s this delicate dance between danger and survival that makes Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days such a sweet ride. Well, it’s sweet in the sense that it constantly makes your skin crawl with the shrieks and zombie noises permeating through the air. The audio is so good you can sometimes tell when the zombies are approaching. And the art style is just as great, with its eerie, atmospheric vibe. Your flashlight cuts through the darkness to significant effect, leaving just enough uncertainty in the restricted viewpoint to remain on high alert. And when a zombie or three sneaks past your line of sight, you can always quickly hide in the dark spaces or behind drawers. 

But stealth won’t always work, and you’ll at times be forced to fight tooth and nail to escape the grip of relentless zombies. They can either kill you permanently or vice versa, making it an absolute fight for life/death. You might get lucky and run circles around the zombies, slipping by the whiskers back to base. However, more often than not, more than two zombies easily overwhelm you, especially when your weapons break too often and your ammo runs out quickly. Then, you’ll revert to the remaining survivors, some of whom you’ll have rescued, to continue the journey to find a safe haven. Every character you’ve assigned to go out scavenging will be controllable while the others remain back at base to recuperate or sleep.

Rough Edges

Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days isn’t perfect. Its runs are often the same. When your survivors die, you lose your base and all progress thereof. So, you’re essentially starting a new game to attempt to escape Walton. And at a certain point, it can grow repetitive. Also, the graphics may look choppy at times. And the combat can use more polish. Weapons breaking makes sense in a survival game. But some are too brittle to do anything impactful with. 

All of this stands to be addressed in the detailed content update roadmap PikPok plans to follow over the coming weeks and months. Survivors will be able to return as zombies when infected, for instance, which could make for some interesting story paths. At present, the narrative is wanting, without voice acting or character development. Your connection to characters is through the gameplay, and I admit, losing them does affect you as much as it does the remaining survivors. Still, it’d be nice to have a compelling narrative that motivates you to relentlessly pursue your search for an escape from Walton.

Verdict

Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days has surprisingly been a success. Even with its retro 2.5D sidescrolling theme, it manages to carve out its place among some of the best zombie survival games out there. To be compared to games like This War of Mine and State of Decay is an achievement on its own. And the best news is that this isn’t the final product.

PikPok will be releasing content updates over the coming weeks and months. These will doubtlessly take the already satisfying gameplay to the next level. If, at present, your heart races and your blood pumps vigorously every time a possible zombie encounter is imminent, one can only imagine what the final product holds. 

There are definitely areas that PikPok could polish some more. Its playthrough can potentially grow repetitive. Meanwhile, the combat can feel shallow for gamers looking to challenge themselves. Hopefully, PikPok irons these out, alongside the ongoing content updates, for a truly remarkable experience.