Undead INC Review: Entertaining rogue-like management sim
We start our journey as the boss of a private medical centre. We have to pay a lot of money every week to be associated with the Endswell name. If we don’t pay what we owe, we’ll be fired from the company or, more simply, the game will end. Then where should you begin if not in a clinic? Let’s pick a room that’s not being used and turn it into a doctor’s office.
The theory behind Undead Inc. is that Endswell Medical has begun franchising, and you are one of the travelling franchisees. You arrive in a town, establish your business, and earn as much money as you can for as long as possible. Even if a zombie/robo-gorilla epidemic does not completely destroy your premises, you will ultimately have to relocate when people realise what is going on. The good news is that you can evacuate your most skilled employees and, with plenty of cash, unlock bonuses to help you in your next run. And so the immoral behaviour resumes.
The primary gameplay element in Undead INC is managing and operating both a legitimate and criminal pharmaceutical firm. On the legal side, you diagnose patients through doctor visits and then create and sell them medicine in your pharmacies. On the illicit side, you create bioweapons and illegally export them to the black market. You are paying a growing franchise fee each week and must handle both sides of your firm while dealing with police attention, staff health and confidentiality, and vertical development.
In true roguelite philosophy, unlocked characters and perks that may be triggered by recycling prior mission progress provide replayability. The many settings, erroneously referred to as biomes, which include financial or industrial neighbourhoods, add to the variety, each with their own set of advantages and disadvantages.
Dead Inc. does not guide you through the game, leaving it up to you to discover its intricacies. And it’s well worth studying since, while primarily run-based, it’s satisfyingly deep. Consider your staff, who aren’t all as morally bankrupt as you are and can notify the police or the press.
Despite all of the hidden underground operations, such as studying bio-weapons and producing mutant gorillas, there is nothing new to discover after the first few successful efforts. Career Mode addresses this lack of content by using randomised biome maps rather than pre-set maps in Scenario Mode, however randomization can only go so far when there isn’t much substance to play with in the first place.
The thousands of perks and objectives provide replayability by offering checklists to strive towards, but they don’t really change the gameplay, instead creating an accomplishment system that rewards you with boosts and benefits during a campaign.
The inability to determine what a character is doing at a glance. You must either manually locate them on the map or click on the Characters tab and then individually choose each character’s profile. That’s three distinct clicks simply to view what your characters are doing, which is a bit excessive for multi-tasking games like Undead Inc. There should be a brief overlay that shows you your character status at a glance, similar in other management simulations. The game features three fast-forward toggles and neatly positioned facility tabs, so it’s frustrating that commanding your workers seems so clumsy in compared to the other clever menu designs in Undead Inc.
Undead INC takes a fantastic idea and fails to properly realise it. Whether it’s a lack of time or vision, the game seems unfinished, coasting on a brilliant premise but accomplishing very little to realise its full potential.
