Ocean Drive Studio, Inc. and Kakao Games brought a castle mockup to Gamescom, where they set up numerous computers with a vertical slice of their game God Save Birmingham. This isn’t a typical survival title; it’s a zombie game set in medieval England, specifically in Birmingham. We had about 25 minutes to try the starting section, which wasn’t enough for a detailed look but gave us a feel for several key mechanics.
Impressive graphics and attention to detail
First, it’s important to note that the game is hyper-realistic, meaning everything looks very impressive and detailed. Second, as it’s a survival title, the goal is to survive, which means you’ll have to eat and drink, and your inventory will be limited. Each new house or area brings its own challenges. Third, you can fight zombies with various weapons like axes or pitchforks.
The game also features key areas and zones of interest, as well as places to spend the night. Unfortunately, the crafting system was very simple, limited to just lighting a fire, and items couldn’t be combined. Because of that, we can’t say much about this part of the game. The story is also interesting, as you play as a simple peasant, so don’t expect swords and armor at the beginning.
In the part of the game we tried, we only had enough time to get to a church or a mill by the river, and along the way, we encountered many zombies. The zombies in the game are similar to those from The Walking Dead series, they’re slow and not dangerous alone, but when a larger number gather, combat becomes much riskier. Two key features play a big role in survival: endurance (when you get tired, you can’t strike as often) and fear (panic can affect your abilities). Unfortunately, these features, as well as the possibility of having status effects like injuries, were only represented. Combat, on the other hand, was a bit more developed.
The combat could have been better
One of the developers told us their goal was to see how players would react to the combat system. Unfortunately, the combat was catastrophic. The animations were very slow, there was a big delay between strikes and swings, and it took five hits to finally kill a zombie. We only realized later that hitting zombies in the head is more effective, which greatly impacts the gameplay, but the system for separating limbs was inconsistent. The entire combat system in general left a bad impression because the idea is there, but the execution wasn’t good enough.
We all know that social media was filled with rumors that God Save Birmingham was a fake game, but all those rumors proved to be false. The only thing that worries us is the hardware requirements, which the developers didn’t reveal. They only said they were working on better optimization. However, the computer under the screen was literally burning; you could feel the heat when you got close to it. This tells us that, for now, you might need a powerful computer to run it.
A solid foundation that still needs work
Judging by everything we’ve seen, we probably won’t be playing God Save Birmingham anytime soon. There’s still a lot to test and refine. The good thing is that in the game you can pick up, examine, or destroy all items. There’s also an editor so you can create your own character, but there are also a large number of bugs. For example, our character often got stuck when jumping over obstacles, and once he got completely stuck among the zombies.
Zombies also have a special look; they can grab and hold you until you push them away. You have enough time to dodge attacks, but everything felt too slow. We won’t complain for now, and it’s possible the developers will add various types of zombies. All in all, what we played felt solid and had a good foundation. The only question now is how well that foundation will be developed when the game officially comes out.
