I've been putting off writing this review because I know this game has a dedicated fan base and I will be down voted into oblivion but I want to get my opinion out there as someone who actually played the game and got past the fake spam friends button that other reviews complain about that actualy doesn't do that and is a joke. I can't say I dislike this game I mean at the time of reviewing this I have 316 hours in it. But that doesn't amount to anything in this game and it doesn't sound like a lot for an 'idle game" but let me be clear even though this is called an idle game it isn't to get any progress at all you have to active play, active farm, and attend to the game about every 5 minutes sometimes more depending on what you are trying to do. The game is very grind heavy. If you intend to play it in an idle fashion at all don't you will never get anywhere. The game tries to take a new approach to the way crafting is done and items are handled compared to other similar games and does a pretty good job to the point where crafting is one of the games main mechanics. However to even unlock this mechanic you need about 40 hours of extremely active play as it unlocks in the second world. 40 hours to get to the second world sounds like a lot, and you would be right but look at it this way 316 hours got me to the 4th world, some people may play more efficiently than myself but that's my progress and all but about 24 of those hours were extremely active with the other 24 hours being the 3 nights I left the game open for 8 hours to farm event drops. Lets take a look at Pros and Cons or "Features"

Pros:
-Free to play
-Dedicated mostly friendly community
-Above and beyond friendly active developers who will answer any question you might have or help you however they can in discord or one of their daily streams.
-Free premium currency almost hourly by scrolls, every 4 hours of active play, and premium codes from the developers about 5 times a week if you join their streams or check the wiki.
-Regular events
-Bi-Weekly updates
-New takes on old mechanics

Cons:
-Serious Grind, on a level that grind doesn't even begin to explain it, you would get more progression farming bitcoin.
-Premium Currency, While you don't actually need to buy premium currency and they give away tons of it in game and through streams you will always need far more than you ever get should you chose to buy it it has an absurd price, you would have to spend 50$ or more to get enough to get one item from a previous event or to upgrade some mid level buildings which in reality gives you almost no boost to progression speed. This is because the developers don't actually want you to buy it and would rather you just play the game and earn it, but the option should be better since it's there.
-Sound effects, some of the sound effects are ear gratingly terrible in this game and you will turn them off once you unlock the monster I'm referring to.
-Walled features, This may fall under grind but if one of the main features of your game that makes it unique or helps you progress is walled off behind 40 hours (for the first one) or about 100 hours (for the second one) most players will never even get to it.

Overall not a lot in the con department, Like I said I did enjoy my time with this game, and the developers are amazing people However I can not recommend this game at this time and think people should wait another year and see where it is at and if the speed of the game has changed. I came to this conclusion after playing on a beta version that was later wiped. I started to see actual progress at a reasonable rate, which apparently can't be allowed in this game and as a result all progress was wiped for everyone testing it. Which wouldn't be so bad until you realize that to get that progress back at pre-patch rates would take 3 - 5 months of 16+ hour a day active gameplay rather than 3 days. With so many games out there and so many idle games I can't see myself dedicating that much time to just one.

So if you are like me and want a game (even an idle one) with a beginning, well balanced, and an end that you can play for awhile and move on from. This is not the game for you. If you want a game you will have to play for years and years (especially with the amount they plan to add) and probably never finish then go for it.

Note: I shared my personal opinion on this game, and my experience with what was essentially a beta patch I tried by my choice but I was already losing interest in this game before that and wouldn't have recommended it prior to that either and had already told friends who asked me about it not to bother. I shared it to be open and honest despite the fact that it will increase the odds of dedicated fans down voting my post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zombidle/comments/iizm7d/zombidle_is_officially_dead/

The game will continue to function as intended until the server is shut down at which point all server dependent features of the game will cease to function. The server will be kept up until the costs exceed the income.

The devs have stated they have no intentions of porting the game to a different platform (there will be no Zombidle unity edition) or for making a sequel (there will be no Zombidle 2). The game is now truely dead.

Interestingly I finally decided to stop playing on the same day before I even knew about the confirmation of death. My final stats (which are now irrelevant) are attached.

Goodbye Bob, we had some good times.

So, lets start from the basics: those overwhelming positive reviews are coming from game old fans which are sticking with it for years. That also means all negative ones will get a lot of thumbs down, yet, i believe, only a negative review will actually help you to decide if you want to install this game or not.

Is Zombidle a good game?
Short answer: yes. Its a nice looking clicker-idler with lots of content and polish. The best part of Steam-release is that you can now mush keyboard instead of mouse... You dont need any auto-click programs, since 6 fingers are much faster anyway. If you are into deep ingame development and progression, you may like it, BUT! But, but, but!

Iz Zobidle a fun to play game?
Short answer: no. The problem is, first 20 hours you have to click pretty much non-stop, "which will make you die or go insane" (c) Insult Simulator. I dont like the idea of wasting so much time on basics. And there is nothing you can do besides clicking, you see. Idle money collection is useles until you get many artifacts and upgrades and even then manual clicks are better choise. It will also take days until you construct first building, so getting into a mid-game will take about 15-30 DAYS. I cannot call this game a 'fun-based' since it takes too much time just to get started.

Is Zombidle a good Steam-game?
Absolutly! Right now all the free idlers and clickers on Steam are silly and booring. I mean, they dont have any polish or depth at all. Moreover, most cheap and free games on steam literally sucks for the last couple of years. Zombidle can give you some good times on Steam if you are up to burn some free time.

Is Zombidle a Unique game in its genre?
Not at all. If you want some unique games you might wanna check those: Crafting Idle, Heart of Galaxy, Factory Idle, Pasteraki, Anti-Idle The Game, Guild Quest (all those available on Kongregate, last one is in Steam for free). Unfortunately, Zombidle is just a clone of Clicker Heroes, which is already quite an old story. Yep, the interface is different, the grapchics are not the same, but the core mechanics are the same on 100%.

Any other useful info?
1) According to Dev's twitter, this game's 70% revenue comes from ingame shop and only 30% from ads (which are not present on steam version). In other words, if you want this game to be alive, you will need to pay $ from time to time;
2) This game requires you to go on wikia and read for 2 hours or so, to get some clues about different stuff;
3) It has much less events compared to some other games (like Crusaders of the Lost Idols), so its more about repeating the same thingies over and over rather then flowing through loads of often-changing content;
4) How much it aprox cost? Well, $2-10 will give you a huge head start.

...

Edit. 18 hours in, stil not reached even area 200 to get rare chests. Right now game consists of repeating resets over and over to get another wooden chest and like 10-15% additional damage per run. This takes like 15-20 minutes for me. Quite depresing, to be honest. I thought there will be some sort of early-game content, but right now clicking is already useless and idling is the same every time i restart, which just makes no sence. I dont see a point to continue.

...

Edit 2. I am 74 hours in, still sane, but now i am gonna delete game. First of all, mid-game is as much booring as early part. You just get to combine items into stronger items, but you still do annoying chest speed runs, cus there is simply nothing else to do, like, at all. You progress really slowly at this point, like, there is a point to come back only once per day when you research some high-end stuff to get mega boost to dmg/farm speed. Achievements are only few and uninspired. Also a Realm Grinder got released and now i understand, that starting the same run over and over is just not for me, i like when things are different and Zombidle is not about being unique or different. I am tired leveling same upgrades every time without any sence of real progression, there is just nothing big to aim for. Well, i cant sayt it was bad all the road long, game is just 'ok' and i am too much into 'no-no, i want only best'. My bad...

It's not a bad game, it just feels way too repetitive, especially for a clicker game. The progression doesn't feel as smooth as others, too.

I really like Berzerk Studio, especially since they're from Québec (just like me!) but this game... I don't really like it. I've spent 6 hours, and I feel like I'm making the exact same thing, again and again, in the same order, with absolutely no variation, no instant gratification that incremential games are known for.

It has heart, it has charm, but I just can't recommend it to someone. I quite feel bad because I really want to like it, but I do not. Especially since I usually enjoy clicker games.

The game was made for platforms that allow users to watch ads for perks. Steam does not allow for this and the devs didnt sufficiently alter their game to reflect this. So there is this annoying, harras you for real money every 5 minutes, aspect of the game that just gets annoying.

Aside from that, the game is not bad for an idler, but suffers from poor pacing. It takes way to long to get to the point where the game starts unfolding its many layers. Until that point its a very mindless: grind to area x and reset mechanic that gets a little too repetative before anything interesting unlocks.

Until a few months ago, this would have been a positive review. However, the developers of Zombidle have announced that it is effectively a dead product, never to be updated or advanced.

Okay, MOST games used to be one-and-done, and honestly the quality of the content is pretty good overall. However, the fact that it needs to connect back to a server means that at some point, this IS going to be turned off. Not a negative in itself, per se, but another contributing factor.

A couple years back a new mechanic was added to help ensure regular play, a weekly rotating prize that could be earned through accomplishing "challenges" in the game. A good mechanic, it ensures SOME level of engagement with the game. However, there is a flaw. If you weren't playing at the beginning of the mechanic, you can NEVER catch up. It's a single player game, so it doesn't matter TOO much, but given the end of life that WILL be coming eventually, and the face that it takes hundreds or thousands of hours just to see "end game" territory, much less GET there, you may not be able to even see the heights, and you definitely cannot keep up with the leaderboard because you just can't.

Overall, if it wasn't about to be axed, I would absolutely recommend for fans of the clicker game.

Free-to-play, and they actually mean it. You CAN pay for premium currency, but you NEVER need to do so in order to be able to have full access to everything. The premium currency drops regularly in game, just by playing the game, and so it's really, truly, honestly free-to-play, unlike a lot of freemium or pay-to-win games out there.

TONS of content that has been created, amusing puns, not exactly much of a storyline, but you don't NEED a storyline either for this.

But one last complaint, and this is what has led me to uninstall: The game is SUPPOSED to be a "connect when you want, it'll recalculate where you're supposed to be based on time and level of the mobs" game, but the last couple months, ever since the announcement it was no longer getting any updates or new content, the automatic advancement system hasn't been running if you're offline. Close the program, and it'll "grind" but only at the level you were at, not up to the max level you COULD be based on your DPS and world.

TL;DR: Good game with a few flaws, getting the plug pulled sometime in the nearish future and I can't recommend something that is going to die soonish.

TLDR: If you are casual, try it, it's relaxing having it in a second monitor while you are doing something else. If you are hardcore, save your time, there is almost no depth and too much grinding even for idle genre standards.

Rating: Meh. Way too linear and repetitive.

There are no strategic choices, just repeating the same stuff over and over again, increasing the white orbs and advancing a bit more every run. Also depends heavily on RNG in the way of chests and blood deals. Most of chest contents are useless, as when you reach a certain level, the only minion worth investing is the Tomb King. All the other weapons just take space in your inventory and are for trying to forge into something else or break them. The problem with forge is not that it takes hours and days to produce interesting items (something typical from the idle genre), but it relies on external wikis to figure out combinations, and some of the items are really tedious to make (specially the ectoplasm stuff). When you have conquered several worlds, you have to enter them again in the following runs to take all their orbs and chests. Even when the party switch towns when completed, they cannot switch worlds, so you have to move them manually every half an hour or so to farm the stuff. Again: tedious.

Some ideas are good, like some mechanics from Hell like Maurice or the challenges. Also, the setting of being the monster and raiding villages is fun and well executed. But in the long run it would appeal just to very casual audience.

Zombidile isn't a bad game, but it isn't a good idle one...

Support for the game died back in 2019, but as an idle game, it has a lot of things to do, before you reach the end of it. There are items you can get, you can upgrade these items, you can go to "Hell" and upgrade your power from there, you can get a surgery lab of sorts, for more passive buffs, there are a lot of stuff you can buy. But, as I mentioned, the game is not a good at being an idle game...
Idle games are clickers as well, but most of them ditch clicking at some point, or don't use it as much. Zombidle uses clicking, regardless of how much money you get or damage you deal, because in this game, clicking on villagers can drop you diamonds, and diamonds are sort of a premium currency. I say "sort of" because they drop often enough, that they don't feel very premium, but they don't drop in high quantities, so you won't have billions of them (or you can, if you're a willing to put your credit card info and buy diamonds). Apart from the aformetioned way, you can also complete 20-30 missions a week and after that, missions drop diamonds. All the upgrades in hell are important, some more than others, but they are purchasable with diamonds only...
My 1st issue:
I have to click "Play" several times a day, to complete missions, click on villagers in order to progress the game, and that isn't much to my liking... I play 2 other idle clickers and I never felt the need to play them several times a day, this one I have to, in order to progress. Villagers also have a limit on diamonds, like 12 for several hours and when they spawn, they are chaotic in their movement. An auto clicker can still do the job, but the game needs to be kept active at all times to squeeze every bit of diamond out of them, and that would be doable, but my machine isn't exactly "peak 2023", it's an old laptop... So I can't boot up another game, while having this one on my 2nd monitor, mostly because I don't have a 2nd monitor but...
On to my 2nd issue - Performance.
For some very unknown reasons, this game is insanely unomptimized... Freezes stutters, slow motion, slow loading... It's a clicker/idler for god sake... For reference, GTA V runs on medium-high settings with above 40 FPS... It isn't perfect, but I shouldn't have such issues.
And finally, when you exit the game, the game won't save properly and when you return say after 5 hours, you might be in the same spot, instead of reaching the limit with your current upgrades, which is quite fraustaring.

All in all, the theme of the game is nice, gameplay loop is okay and a lot of variety to help you prgoress, but idling is poorly implemented, performance issues occur very often and saving is buggy.
I can not recommend!
I can only recommend this, if you are in a clicker/idler drought and you want something new.

Dont give the devs anymore money. This game is dead. Barely functional at best for some people but holidays no longer work and its no longer supported. No more troubleshooting, no more bugfixes. It doesnt even work on mobile platforms anymore.
If you have never played this game before- DONT. Its not worth investing time into a dead game

I used to have alot of fun with this game but when I found out that eventually they will kill the server when its no longer profitable- I stopped wasting my time on it

Zombidle is kinda fun, and a decent passtime. However, it is so annoyingly "always online" that even the slightest network interrupt or one failed ping will cause the game to error out. I already don't like "always online", but this game takes it to the extreme. I'll still sometimes play, but I have to make this review negative because of this horrible functionality.