Lifeless gamescom Preview

Rigid-Soft clearly looked at the gaming market and thought "you know what, there aren't enough Zombie survival games out there". Let's be honest, they have a point. I distinctly remember there was a day in June when a new post apocalyptic zombie survival adventure didn't pop up on my Steam storefront. Lifeless is set to take advantage of that gap in the market.

Set in the danger filled days after a pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, turning many into zombies, your task is to survive however you can. The version I saw had just been expanded with an economy added to the game, with players fighting for scraps in world devoid of life.

There are two zombies in the game so far. The regular zombie and the screamer. Regular zombie is pretty self explanatory, and come to think of it, so is the screamer. They're essentially akin to the Witch in Left 4 Dead.

The game certainly looks pretty. The zombies are as grotesque and putrefied as you might expect, the environment is rich and detailed and there's a day and night cycle that looks really lovely. If you can find a spot where you won't get eaten, there's a decent chance of watching some nice sunsets.

There's a crafting system, and you can make anything from grenades to flares to bear traps, these will really help you to make the undead even more dead than they already are.

I'm told the world is designed to be a lot more closely packed than the likes of Day Z etc, and to me it did look a bit more full of zombies. Perhaps not to the level of Left 4 Dead, but certainly it doesn't feel like a walking simulator as some zombie games do.

What I saw was a nice looking game that's got promise, but it's hard to look past the fact that it didn't feel that different to any other zombie games, despite the PR guy's exclamations of it bringing something new and fresh to the genre. Hopefully though, we'll see the game start to distinguish itself as it progresses through early access.