Recent reviews by Kodijack!

Great labour-of-love-game!
If you fancy (simple/casual) automation games á la Forager et al, you'll enjoy this one too.
The dev is really caring and pushes (free) updates like EA and blizzard push DLCs. Even though it's already released and working fine.
Oh, and he also offers a Demo. You remember? Pepperidge farm does. Me too. I was a wee lil lad when try-before-buy was a common standard.

I would buy the game again (and I did) just for that reason alone. Devs like this are a dying breed in this cesspool of greed
we call gaming-industry.

Totally worth it at the current discount (85%). Could've been a great game, but for me it was ruined by the overuse of just a handful of assets. The first few houses were interesting to rummage through for loot. But after a while you'll loose track of where you've already been because there are just a handful of house-models and they're all the same. Guess the devs just lost interest mid-way and just copy-pasted the next village.
Setting, story and location (thank god, not another US-centric game!) were refreshing. If can oversee the asset-abuse, you might have a ton of fun.

Putting the main ingredient (weapons...) of a game behind a paywall is a disgusting trend I will never support.
Unless the game itself is F2P, this is just a prime example of greed. Meh.

If you somehow liked Forager, you'll most likely like this one. Outpath really fills the void that Forager left open.
In many aspects it's even surpassing (progression, balance, clear layout (3D > 2D in this regard) and only lacking in some (enemies, dungeons, puzzles).

But it's like a prescription drug for AD(H)D :-)

Is it flawless? Nope. It's got its edges and corners, especially some minor QoL-things, but at least I've not encountered major bugs yet, and I'm also sure the developer will deliver a polished version soon. He's very active and even replies to nearly every thread on the Forum. Unlike Forager which was sadly abandoned with many promises left open.

Only thing really missing are mods now. Pretty please?

Fantastic game. Simple as that. Maybe even the best RTS ever since C&C/SC/etc.

Been watching this title since it went Early Access in what felt like 150 years ago. Still not done, yet playable without bugs and with a good "Story"-line. Also pretty unique theme-wise.
There's definitely a reason, that 20% was the maximum (steam-)discount since release in 2017. This is a one-of-a-kind labour-of-love and this oozes out of every corner.
If you're somehow into RTS at all, why are you reading this and haven't bought it already?

There's basically no doubt the dev will finish this one far day in the future (maybe your kids will see?). It's even up to the point of it seemingly being 7day2die-ing. But even if, there's MORE than enough working content already to justify the damn fair asking-price (although my cheap-ass waited >5 years for a 20% discount...).
Oh, and you've also got unexpected first-class-voice-acting. That sociopathic (yes, I know that definition is as outdated as people-being-nice-to-each-other) asswipe of a dude is really something :-)

Visually more than adequately pleasing, thought-out non-cluttering and non-obtrusive minimalistic UI, greatly paced missions, a constant carrot-on-a-stick for progress-motivation (over-arching single missions), probably the most spoken latin in any game ever (is that even a valid review-relevant data-point?), a good choice of difficulty that felt right and fitting all the time, wonderful performance, good SFX but sadly very, subjectively, annoying music that got repetitive after like 3 minutes.

I already respected the crap out of ants before the game, but to see them bustling about their daily business and their constant struggles to survive, really rose that level even higher. Adorable lil creatures. I want a formicarium.

Why the heck is it nearly always the same with the big devs?!

"remaster" = "we changed one texture, but there is an fps-drop of about 20. A hotfix is coming, which adds more random savegame-corruption!"

"remake" = "it's exactly the old one, but it runs now. Also it'll crash 300% more often now! Oh and we upscaled 5% of the textures to 110% (not with AI of course)"

"(blabla)'s edition" = "we changed three and a half shader and added a thing you won't like anyway (but are forced to use). We also introduced 50 new bugs! Enjoy discovering! Oh, and please pay the original retail asking price you observationally challenged buffoon!"


I got this one for free and feel ripped and p*ssed enough to write this "review". The "original" worked fine though. Will pirate that now to have a working game. /facepalm.

UPDATE:

I managed to solve my problems by installing Win11 instead of Win10. The win10 fresh install did nothing.
With Win11 + Ascendio3-ini-changes I'm getting 50-144fps in Hogwarts (average 100) and at least 70fps+ in Hogsmeade. All on ULTRA and DLSS (Quality) minus RT.
This is much better, but still unacceptable that some random dude and his random ini-changes actually give many more FPS and reduce stutter than the devs. Also this immense fluctuation in FPS is very annoying. Still WAY better than before though.
Now I can continue PLAYING the game and maybe change the review...


----original review follows----

I really really tried, but this is a performance-mess I cannot bear to "play" any longer.
At best I'm getting around 50fps when looking at a wall on LOW-everything. Even patched with Ascendio2/INI-tweaked. Most of my play-time is tweaking, restarting, being dissapointed, rinse repeat. I even threw a quick clean-install-windows into the pen. And hell, the massive load-times, including a shader-cache-refill each effing start, don't make it any better.

Settings don't really matter, the delta between lowest and ultra means one-figure-fps-gain.
And guess what enabling RTX does to the frames? Yup.

Luckily I'm no HP-fan (I even dislike HP) or else I'd be VERY upset. The whole thing is very cute, much love in the details and all, exploring the castle is a pure bliss, but this is a joke that gives me literal headaches. I'm waiting for the pirated version now to see if it was Denuvo or just bad optimization.

And yeah, "It's all my fault", "I don't know what I'm doing", "50fps is more than enough!", "my rig sucks", "you're stoopid", "the human eye can't perceive more than 30fps" etc. Spare me.

POST-RELEASE-UPDATE:
Of course they did it. And even faster than expected. Great company, great game!

----

Big thumbs up!

10ton improved upon everything that already made "Undead Horde" a very enjoyable title, and even added more layers.
The gameplay is incredibly simple yet never boring (If you're into such games). At times you're like "why is that so easy?" just to be crumbled to pieces a second later.
They changed the core-mechanic slightly in regard to the original title. Main difference is that you can pick what to summon now, which is great.
Due to the city-"building"-aspect you can now enhance your minions and other aspects of everything.

The carrot-on-a-stick seems to be always there and it keeps you motivated even more.

The game's visually more than fine (gameplay > graphics) and audibly very fitting and satisfying. There's absolutely no noticeable change to the original title though. Yet I didn't mind at all.

Yes, I usually don't buy eerie-access (no typo) but with some companies I do make an exception (and don't refund). 10Ton is one of such. They WILL deliver, I have no doubt in that. And even if not,
there's enough unique content already there to justify the asking price.

Yes, this could've been an expansion to "Undead Horde" because of the usage of the same engine and graphics, but who cares? It's fairly priced and a unique gameplay. If you're somehow liking games
like "Overlord" or "Tinykin" (in regards of the 'army' not the puzzles) you might really wanna give this one (and the original title before this one) a go.

Supraland meets Overlord. With no fighting and no way to loose. Less metrodvania than Supraland, yet no less fun. Good and fitting SFX, GFX and score. And on top of it it's cute and comes at a very nice price-tag.
Only downside is if you dislike easy games with basically no challenge. This is more of a frustration-free and relaxing chill-game than a challenge.

I hope DLCs are coming, as those will be a no-brainer.

(UPDATE: re-play on 1.62 with basic mods, no game-changers. Review adapted)


(Reviewed un-modded version 1.31, absolutely no prior impression, no pre-order, ignored the hype-train and following disaster. I'm just a gamer who loves games!)

Recommended? (AKA tl;dr)

HELL YES!

I waited until now to give it a go and had set my expectations EXTREMELY low. I went in as an unspoiled virgin :-)
Alas I have been more than positively surprised and enjoyed the ride tremendously.

I won't comment on CDPRs screw-up and will just focus on the thing we have here right now. It's one of the very very rare dystopian SciFi (RP-)games, which, despite being located in the USA, is totally NOT US-centric (yay!), for a change, has
an incredibly majestic atmosphere, awe-inspiring world-building, sublime story-telling, and deep characters to care for (If not, some of the best ever in RPGs. At least in SciFi-RPGs)
It's close to perfect now and has nearly no flaws anymore, the only things I noticed in another 50+ hours were some very minor texture-glitches and one npc being stuck half-way into the ground. Could've also been due to modding. Either way, not even mention-able in such a vastly complex game.

Fair trigger-warning for those whom it may concern:
The game does cover topics like Snuff, human trafficking, abuse, suicide, depression, PTSD, MPD, addiction and such. Sometimes blatantly in your face, sometimes very subtle. If you're sensitive to those topics, be cautiousness, or just avoid the game.



The good (what to love):

• Beautiful and awesome scenery, graphics and overall art-style with a passion for details.
  
• One of the few RPGs that are NOT high-fantasy but (dystopian) SciFi. Actually I couldn't quickly come up with just another one. Nothing against Elves and Dragons, but this is a VERY welcome diversion of setting.
  
• People actually speak in their own language, it's not dumbed down to English as usually. I really love it. You got subtitles for that though if you're not fluent in Japanese or Russian :-)
  
• Great SFX and music. The timing and choice of the right music is almost always perfect
  
• Modding!! Can't emphasis this enough. It's always a game-changer! The mods for this one are not legion like in Skyrim but great nonetheless. Awesome UI-framework for most of them. I just love it!
  
• Damn great story-telling and (side-)quests. A strong hint of Witcher comes to mind here. It's not just only generic side-quests รก la "get me X of Y".
  
• Great performance. On settings near maximum (except RT) I had a solid minimum of 80fps (FHD), mostly around 120 though. With RT on I dropped to 60-90. Still nice, but I prefer speed over beauty.

The mediocre (neither good nor bad, or simply not objectively either. YOU judge):

• Some skill-trees could've used a bit more thought. Some things useless, some overpowered, etc.
  
• Raising certain required levels (to buy stuff and such) becomes very repetitive. But that's a thing of open-world-games to stretch some play-time. Not required though. If you like it, there's more than enough of it!
  
• Despite the tons of clothing-options, you don't have the option to visually wear something different to what you're actually wearing. So most of the time you're either going for style and suck, or going for stats and look like a clown. Considering you'll rarely see yourself it does not matter that much. Still annoying. Now you can have multiple outfits to show, and don't look like a patchwork-puppy anymore :-)
  
• Reskilling is not simple and costly. And not complete. Without modding you should really be sure which way you intend to go. I hate it, I like to TRY. Still costly but works now.
  
• The world is huge, the NPCs are VERY diverse AND legion. Yet they all are completely exchangeable and utterly use- and lifeless. They often just stand around, walk in obvious or weird patterns and have the personalities of a door-knob. Despite some exceptions. But yet, not every NPC can have a full life. The complexity would kill a game. And without NPCs the world would look bland too. Yet there were changes, sooooo many NPCs now talk with each other, having discussions, chitchat, whatever. Interaction with them is still useless. But it adds!

The ugly (what to hate, may kill the fun):

• No reflection of yourself. WTF? They call this raytracing? The optimization surely effed some things up here. This is such an immersion-killer once you'll notice that everything is reflected
  nicely except yourself. You think you're running into another room, but alas: A MIRROR/GLASS/REFLECTIVE SURFACE. WHY EVEN?! I Don't get it and hate it.
  
• During the game you'll often feel that there's something left. Things meant to be used more often, but rarely are.
  
• Your starting career is nice and all until you'll notice it doesn't matter in the slightest. Beside some random dialogue-choices (some of which change minor things) here and there, it has nearly zero impact.
  
• Sometimes your relation with a character makes drastic jumps. From foe to friend in 5 seconds. Hu? How?
  
• Not much of a choice in the whole game. You can either do a quest (then 99% in the way it's supposed to be done) or don't. Not many endings either and one of it only if you stick to it from the beginning and make no mistakes. I know it's meant more of a story than a full-blown RPG (like Witcher3). The better the story, the less options. But still...wished for more.
  
• Occasional minor bugs are still left. Nothing game-breaking (for me) though.
  
• Constant physics-related glitches. This is actually the only annoying thing. No real problems arose from that other than loosing immersion by flying boxes just because I walked near them.
  
• Without mods, driving (cars or bikes) sucks badly.
  
• Often incredibly disappointing rewards for incredibly long quests. If you're not in just for the quest itself, you come out "what? that's it? for all the searching/killing?"

Recommended? (AKA tl;dr)

Though the gameplay itself is very mediocre at best, I still highly enjoyed it and would highly recommend it. *IF* you like Zombies, Survival, (melee & ranged) combat and some more-or-less-open-world all wrapped up in
a brutally predictable - yet absolutely enjoyable - story. If you hate one of those though, stay away. You'd be disappointed.

The mediocre gameplay like gathering stuff annoyed me VERY quickly, but you can cheat those parts if you're not in the for the full hardcore-survival-experience. If you love endless gathering and a never-ending-treadmill, you will be at home here. It felt tedious to search for trees to stock up on darts or the next melee-weapon while you had to use them to survive to find them et cetera. At least for me :-)

Despite the gameplay-downsides, the story totally made up for it.
Predictable? TOTALLY.
Cliché-ridden? YOU BET.
Stereotype-flooded? OH LORD YES.
But it's a nice post-apocalyptic, (b)romance-filled, zombie-killing, biker-y setting in a beautiful scenery. Open-World is in big quotes here, as you have NO choices at all and whenever you complete an open quests, there comes the next one automatically without searching. This is definitely a very narrow-pathed, story-driven survival with decent combat.

And last but not least, the port is very decent too (with the latest patch). Doesn't always feel overly "console-y" like most other ports.

Do I regret purchasing at release-price? Not a second. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Do I see where the bad reviews are coming from? Yup, totally! Really depends on what you find enjoyable.
How many biker-themed Zombie-survival-games are there to judge against? Yeah right.


The good (what to love):

• Above average story, well told, even if very predictable.
  
• Well done port on the technical side, sadly that's a thing to mention as "good" nowadays. Performs well, options adapted adequately to PC, it does not feel totally "controllery"
  
• Good fighting, skill-tree-progression is noticeable
  
• Decent stealth-technique
  
• Good voice-acting (original language), except the one listed under "the ugly"
  
• Interestingly sparse score. Usually it's pretty quiet beside ambient noises, and if there's music it feels "special". I liked that kind of unusual approach to the score
  
• Difficulty from REALLY EASY to REALLY HARD. And even a New-game-plus.
  
• Auto-saves while in-mission are really fair. If you fail, you won't have to repeat EVERYTHING, just a little bit. That pleases my inner casual :-)
  
• Protagonist feels a lil like Jax from "Sons of Anarchy". IF that feels "good" to you ,-)
  
• Lovely setting and driving the bike was done very well too (except see "ugly")
  
• You sometimes get unexpectedly ambushed while doing a chilly stroll on the road. Loved it

The mediocre (neither good nor bad, or simply not objectively either. YOU judge):

• Often un-skippable, but at least pause-able, cutscenes. Of which there are a lot. Not that I mind a good story, but what about a replay? Or a reload because you screwed up?
  
• Some harder achievements, if you do care about those. Like finding EVERY collectible. Because exploring isn't very rewarding at all.

The ugly (what to hate, may kill the fun):

• Unless you totally love the world and everything, there isn't really any motivation to explore (after the first 5-10 houses) except to refill your crafting-materials. And besides the handful collectibles (which serve no purpose other than collecting them (and occasionally unlocking some decal for your bike)) there is basically nothing to discover.
  
• Simple "bugs" which were probably just introduced to annoy pirates, like incredible sucky camera-movement. But that's been "fixed" now. Now it works as expected and feels WAY better.
  
• Gathering resources is fun for around the first minutes, then it becomes annoying and tedious. Watching that plant-gathering-animation for the 5000th time is nothing than stretching time forcefully. If you love that, you're in for a ride. If you don't, you could very well cheat your way through. But you could not skip it "legally"
  
• The main-character's voice-acting. While being enjoyable and well-cast overall, the scripting often made me ponder if he's got just some serious speech-problems. The amount of "errr"s and "hmm"s and nervous coughs in his sentences, even for the minuscule of spoken words, was legion. It very very often killed the immersion/enjoyment of the story completely. It felt horribly forced and was absolutely overdone
  
• The survival-instinct could HIGHLY benefit from a distinction between "something you need" and "there is something you COULD use (but sadly your inventory-capacity for this things is reached, but we will only tell you if you're already in 1-meter-vicinity)". It annoys highly to sneak up around some houses to gather stuff, just to discover a ton of stuff you CAN'T pickup because you're already full. Which you will just see then you are already in front of it. UGH! Stop wasting my immersion...
  
• Have to follow someone? Yeah, we have this idea: How about you always walk/run a tiny bit faster than him/her, so you always have to walk around him/her in circles like an ADHD-hummingbird but off of Ritalin and instead on cocaine? Yeah. This. After millions of games having THIS stupid "feature". It still didn't die
  
• Survive a horde of Zeds? Yeah no biggie. Stumble with your bike over a rock and drive with 30km/h into a tree? WASTED! Sometimes it's unintentionally funny and a nasty immersion-killer
  
• Some un-skippable cut-scenes. Especially annoying are those where you free people from other people. And they all stutter the exact same crap
  
• Hordes don't require much planning or finesse. Once you figured you just need <SPOILER!> and then some <SPOILER!>, you're fine. It's more grind than puzzle or planning.