Undead Inc. Review

Have you ever wanted to be the head of a global company that specialises in certain areas that seem more at home in a sci-fi movie? If you have played throughResident Evil and felt a connection with the Umbrella Company, Undead Inc. from developer Rightsized Games might be the game for you. The question is if you can bring the company to success or if we need to call Leon Kennedy.

Undead Inc. is a resource-business management sim where you must build up and run a local subsidiary of the Endswell Medical Corporation. While the company appears to be a simple pharmaceutical company, the reality is a lot seedier: they may make drugs, but they also develop weapons (both biological and otherwise) and more. Your job is to make sure that the company is protected, and that you are earning enough to pay your franchise fee.

Aside from the tutorial, there isn’t really a plot in Undead Inc, instead, it's all about the story you create yourself. However, there are some set scenarios you can play through, but they don’t offer a story to follow; they just have some set conditions to complete. While making your own stories can be fun, it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, and there’s no real character to them, so if you want the game’s characters to maniacally laugh, you’re out of luck, as you’ll have to do it on your own terms.

The actual gameplay is based around building rooms, with each doing something different and making everything work in conjunction to produce what you need. For instance, you make a Doctor’s Office to find out what is wrong with people, then you need a research lab to develop the cures alongside manufacturing and storage departments. However, the real money is in the more… seedy areas. You can build structures focused on selling and developing things like weapons and biological components, but there is a risk in doing so; in truth, there’s a risk to all of this.

Undead Inc. monitors several factors as you play, including the infection levels in an area and how much attention you are getting from the police. The game will inform you which of the rooms you can build are illegal, and it allows you to construct them in the sewers to avoid scrutiny. However, the construction noises might attract some attention and draw in the police.

Your staff can also negatively view your activities or your treatment of them, thankfully each staff member has a set of graded stats, including how well they fit into your company culture. As such when hiring people it is up to you to make the best choices that won't affect you down the line, and it's relatively easy to track how your employees will act. However, the adverse effects that can come from your drugs are harder to avoid, especially in regard to the outside world.

Each reproducible drug comes with a list of side effects, the more powerful and expensive drugs you make, the higher the risk of an outbreak and eventually, a zombie attack. However, you aren’t helpless: you can build up super soldiers to protect you (you can sell these, too) and make it so that your staff can easily handle any enemy that gets too close. Unfortunately, you will inevitably fall at some point, either from a dedicated police force or a horde of undead. When this happens, it isn’t the end; instead, it's time to bug out with as much cash and staff as you can handle. This is a mechanic in the game, and it's pretty entertaining to know that you can leave when it gets bad, probably cackling while you do so. 

Undead Inc. does have some issues, namely with the UI. The main problem is that nothing is very well explained, and the tutorials don’t cover everything as well as they should. For instance, you build a drone room but never know if you need more drone rooms to resupply or if your engineer will do it themselves.

That is the other issue in the game: the AI of your staff is a bit strange. Essentially, they should automatically look after themselves, at least in theory, but it isn’t perfect. I had staff members walk into the sleeping quarters and just stand there, at least until I told them to actually sleep. Add to this the occasions where you need to select an individual to move them into a room so that it is counted as seen, which frustratingly is the only time you can build in it. Undead Inc. is crying out for some obvious quick-select option, and if there’s one there, I couldn’t find it. 

Finally, it just takes too long for anything interesting to happen. I spent hours slowly building up my business while waiting for zombies or the police to attack, but when that eventually happened, I found myself having more fun than the rest of the game. I wanted things to go wrong, but I felt no real joy when it was all going right.

Visually Undead Inc. is fine, if a little generic initially, especially with the areas and character models. The game has you zoom out to see an environment, which is another issue. The zoom level is either too close or too far away, which makes seeing everything a bit of a pain, especially when the warnings start flashing and the rooms start exploding. However, once the monsters start turning up, it becomes a bit more interesting.

Undead Inc. wants to fulfil a certain kind of dream and let us play as a very different kind of villain, one we haven’t had a chance to experience before. However, in that experience, we soon learn that being in evil big business is mostly…pretty dull. The game is more fun when things start going wrong, and sometimes it just takes way too long to get there.