Under Zero – by Whippy
Genre: Indie Action Adventure Early Access
Developer: Dagestan Technology
Publisher: Dagestan Technology
Release Date: Mar 25, 2016
This game’s score is almost under zero.
If you’re reading this review, then I assume you’re looking to see if Under Zero is worth the purchase. If you can’t make up your mind by looking at the steam store pictures, then I think you need to really consider the way you’re spending your money. Under Zero is an early access, open world survival game, where you have to “survive” in the blistering cold weather and hide away from the occasional wolf.
I came into Under Zero with an open mind, I understood that it wasn’t going to be very good, but I gave it a chance, I wanted to see if there was any hope for this game. I booted the game up with a clear mind, open to anything. The main menu gave me a good first impression, it was clean and looked quite nice, but the game Ride to Hell: Retribution also had a good looking main menu. I was put into a world with an art style that looked like someone had put little effort into it. It’s a massive shame, it could have been worked on a lot more. Most of the buildings in the game have little to no textures.
While I was wandering around in the snow, I couldn’t help but notice this weird blue rectangle thing in the bottom right of my screen. I don’t know what it is. It doesn’t do anything, and when I hold down right click it just wiggles slightly. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a Unicorn. So I wandered around with my blue Unicorn, and admired the trees that actually had been done correctly to match the art style. It appeared that the insides of some buildings were also matching the art style because they were either textured, or blue.
I could say the same for the items that I found in said buildings. Some were just red and I only realised I was picking up wood because the game told me I was; wood is just a blue texture at the point of writing this review. After I collected some fuel and some clothes, I tried to interact with the objects I had just collected. But I was never given the controls of the game, so I had no idea how to use the inventory system. I knew how to get it to appear on my screen, but that was about it. I never figured out how to equip or use anything.
So I just wandered around figuring out what I was supposed to do. There was no HUD to show if I was starving or dying of dehydration. For the entire time I was playing, I was just assuming that I was some sort of immortal guy that had gotten lost in a skiing competition, and was now going into random buildings and stealing luxuries. The first building I was in was a barn that actually had a tank in it, I found fuel in the same barn so I assumed that I could get into the tank, so I was going to jump onto the top of the tank to find out that when I hit spacebar, my character doesn’t jump. Instead, my character just bounces his head down slightly. How do you sell a game on Steam Early Access that is so broken that jumping is broken? As I bobbed to the nearest building to raid, music randomly started to play and I found another thing that was done correctly. The music in this game is bloody creepy. It made me turn around in circles because I didn’t know if it meant I was being followed or not. I got kinda creeped out because I was alone for all of that time. So +1 for the music.
I found a watch tower! I went up into the watch tower and I found a gun, which I picked up. It went into my hands, but it didn’t replace my blue unicorn. So I was holding a unicorn and a sniper rifle in one hand. The rifle was already loaded and, what a surprise! It had unlimited ammo. So with all my fears of being killed removed, I ran around seeing if I could find out if I was alone in this wasteland. After hitting the edge of the map TWICE I finally found something else that was living! It was a wolf and it stared me down from a distance away, it was kind of creepy. I stood in front of it hoping it would chase me because I was begging for something exciting to happen. But the wolf stood as still as a tree until I was close enough to pet it. Once it started to run at me I unloaded my Unlimited Ammo Bolt Action Sniper Rifle with no scope at the wolf and it died, unsurprisingly.
I apologise for rambling on about my experience with a wolf for so long. It’s legitimately the only exciting thing in this game. The time you spent reading this review is going to be longer than the time you spend in Under Zero. Under Zero is a buggy, boring, rushed, and poorly made mess of a video game. If you have $5 burning in your pocket, please don’t spend it on this game.
Whippy gives Under Zero a Drastik Measure 1 out of 10 (10).
PROS:
- Spooky music
CONS:
- Everything but the music.
