Undead Inc.
Review
An intriguing idea brought low by poor execution...
by Dan Lenois
reviewed on PC
Automated Labor
With games like this, it's always interesting to see which way the gameplay pendulum will swing; whether the game will favour player-driven micromanagement, overseeing every single aspect, great and small, or alternatively, whether almost everything is automated by the AI, with the player being reduced to merely being a final arbiter, a means of occasional tweaking and course correction. Undead Inc attempts to find a middle ground between the two. The problem is that it doesn't do so very well.
Trouble on the Premises
One of the more notably unfortunate things in Undead Inc is that while, in theory, micromanagement can be fun in terms of its gameplay mechanics, the fun quickly dissipates if all the player feels like they're doing is pointless busywork. Undead Inc falls directly into that category. Room durability is a constant hassle, with rooms exploding left, right, and center seemingly every other minute if you're not blowing out your budget on maintenance staff.
Given that one of the main goals in the game is to meet continually rising profit expectations, there's already quite a bit of pressure placed on the player. This is reasonable and obviously intentional on the developers' part. The issue at stake here is that there's also a lot of additional outside pressure due to the game simply failing in very obvious ways to do what it is supposed to do without excessive strain on the player's part.
Staff members have incredibly low stamina. Simply walking up or down the stairs from one room to another can almost completely exhaust your staff. Not a day can go by without seemingly at least half your staff being all on break due to their inability to work more than a few mere hours per day.
Controlling Chaos:
Simply selecting a staff member makes one want to throw one's wireless mouse out the window. It often takes several clicks to get the game to actively recognize that you are trying to select something. Even once the game wakes up a bit and grants you that much, you have to navigate a complex interface in order to get the character to do what you want.
Oftentimes, when commanding a character to run from one point to another, the game will simply cancel or ignore the command for no explicable reason, requiring you to repeat said command several more times. Sadly there also does not appear to be any ability to drag and drop characters for more efficient management.
Final Verdict:
I went into this game looking forward to medically treating the undead. Playing this game makes me want to join the undead.
If you're looking for a good management game, there are plenty of better options out there. I'm not sure if there are many worse ones, however...
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3.0
fun score
Pros
Interesting premise, distinct visual style, no glaring performance issues
Cons
Literally everything else.
