Nearly Dead - Live and Let Die Review

Nearly Dead - Live and Let Die (shortened to Nearly Dead for this review) is a 2D top-down multi-co-op action game developed by Mono Software, Inc. Released on the 21st of November 2023, this game tasks you and your friends with gathering resources by day and surviving the night against hordes of zombies. For a cheap little experience, does Nearly Dead have what it takes to overcome the mindless hordes or am I just gonna be a zombie myself playing this game?

You'd think you'd make your last stand at a base or something...

Well, let’s start off with what happens when you create a new save. Upon selecting your difficulty and game mode, choosing between Normal, Hard, and Insane difficulties, you get to select your survivor. Character customisation is pretty good. The characters you can play have set bonuses and customisable traits that you can choose to help you survive. Not only that, you can modify their clothing however you see fit, from changing their colours and putting on new cosmetic items to outright stripping them down to nothing. Don’t worry, there’s nothing to see underneath. Although, it seems really weird that most characters don’t come with underwear…

Anyways, enough about that, let’s kill some zombies. Fighting is fairly simple, you can dash and attack with your currently equipped weapon. You’ll start off with either a melee weapon or an infinite ammo gun, depending on your base character. However, as you scavenge and loot, you’ll obtain and craft more powerful weapons like miniguns, tesla rifles, laser pistols, and flaming swords. Not only that, you’ll be able to use equipment that helps you get out of bad situations, such as a quad-barrel to make your guns shoot more bullets per bullet or a flashbang to make a quick escape. There are also traits you can obtain when levelling up, but those are randomised. You can reroll for better traits, but you can only do that so many times per playthrough. The feel of shooting, stabbing, and weaving is fine and feels great, but most of the time you’ll be kiting around zombies. They’re easy on their own; they are pretty dumb, but their advantage lies in their numbers. Get yourself cornered or stuck during a night raid, and you’re practically dead before you know it.

Be prepared for a lot of zombies.

After you’ve survived the night, you're probably going to need more supplies to survive the next one, so the game will force you to head somewhere else to loot, such as gun stores, supermarkets, and cabins. These maps barely change, though. There aren’t multiple versions of a location type. It just randomises where the loot is and how many zombies there are. This can get a little tiring to see over and over again.

There is a crafting system. Actually, scratch that, it’s just a store that uses resources as a currency. Finding blueprints from looting or killing powerful zombies unlocks more stuff to “craft”, which can break the game a little if you’re lucky enough with the drops. Constant access to auto shotguns and assault rifles for cheap can make the harder waves of zombies much easier to deal with.

I hope you like this particular junkyard because there's no other variation.

Nearly Dead does have a roguelite element in the form of the upgrade tree. After dying, you'll earn gold based on your milestones, how many regions you’ve cleared, how many trait rerolls you have left, etc. Now, you can spend gold on cosmetic items (no microtransactions, by the way), but you can also use it to improve the weapons you find and craft throughout your run.

Now, everything I’ve talked about above is… fine. The game, I consider, is fine overall. However, the Steam page of Nearly Dead outright tells you that the game is better with multiplayer. However, unfortunately, I couldn't find any games in the “Multiplay” menu (yes, it is spelt that way, and it is weird), so this was a solo adventure for me. Also, I think the hitboxes are a little off.

I think the progression could use a little work...

I have to say that Nearly Dead - Live and Let Die is okay for what it is. I don’t really have many strong feelings for it. It feels more like a background game to play while you and your buddies talk about something else rather than really focusing on the game itself. It’s not bad by any means and it can hook you in, but the gameplay loop is pretty repetitive, and once you have a good set-up going, there isn’t much left to do other than get to the end.