Anyone who was in school in the early 2010s (and had access to a mobile device) might remember a game called Into the Dead. Released in 2012, the game was a first-person endless runner where you dodged fields of lingering zombies, picking up crates, and seeing how far you could make it before your luck runs out. Five years later, in 2017, came the sequel, Into the Dead 2. This retained the first-person endless runner mechanics from the first game but added a more structured campaign that had branching narrative paths, multiple endings, and companion dogs. Two years later, the game was even ported over to the Nintendo Switch.
I had played the first game back in the day but, truth be told, I had not realized there was a sequel, let alone one that had special event tie-ins with Night of the Living Dead and Ghostbusters. So when I saw Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days, a new game from developer PikPok set in their post-apocalyptic universe that I hadn’t visited in over a decade, my interest was piqued at what was being pitched. No longer an endless runner, Our Darkest Days is a side-scrolling survival game that focuses on base-building, scavenging, and character-driven choices.
Set against the backdrop of Walton City, Texas, in 1980, Our Darkest Days starts with a simple choice. Out of a handful of survivors, you have to pick one pair to play as. These can range from an overprotective father and his daughter to a dedicated therapist and her patient, and they each have their own back story as well as character traits. These survivors are who you begin your journey with, but not necessarily who you will be ending with.
The simple goal is to escape, although that is easier said than done, as you have to juggle numerous game systems to ensure your survivors can make it to the next day. Most of the resource management is done at your shelter. This is where characters can craft weapons, make food, or get some rest. Each character has four bars to keep track of: health, hunger, energy, and morale. While this may seem like a lot to players new to the genre (such as myself), it’s not too complicated.
Health is pretty straightforward. Characters lose health when they take damage, and they can gain it through the use of medkits. Hunger can be filled with food, although the quality of food matters. Junk food will not fill the gauge as much as a hearty stew. Energy is managed with sleep, but there are items like coffee that you can give characters to keep them awake for longer periods of time. Lastly, morale is managed at the shelter where you can assign characters to just decompress. Or drink alcohol. Their status bars also impact temporary states. If you bandage up an injured survivor, they will gain a “Bandaged” state until they are better. If a character is sleep-deprived and loses someone close to them, they might get “Grief” while they recover. These states impact both what you need to do but also what you can do. For example, if a character has a stomach virus, feeding them when their hunger is low will yield slow results without first giving them pills to get rid of that state.
Each in-game day is split into two playable periods: day and night. Every character in your shelter can be assigned to one task per period. While it might sound as easy as dividing up the to-do list between your roster and moving onto the next period, character traits play a big role in optimization here. Some characters might have a trait that lets them produce more items with the same resources, meaning they are best when set to crafting tasks. Others might have a higher carrying capacity when scavenging, which makes them the obvious choice to go out and search for resources.
No matter what shelter you pick, zombies will crowd you from both sides, and between periods, there will be zombie attacks that widdle down your barricades. In that regard, this is one more bar you have to keep an eye on. Over time, barricades will break, and having an unprotected shelter means characters will take damage overnight, putting them at an added disadvantage.
There is one big part of the gameplay loop that I haven’t fully touched on, and that is scavenging. At your shelter, you can scope out the local points of interest on a street map of Walton City. Each point of interest will have its own set of resources to loot (such as food or building materials) as well as a threat level. It’s up to you what threat level is worth the risk and who you want to send out to face it. Once all players have been assigned a task, you can end the current period, and if anyone is set to leave the shelter, you play as them on their scavenging run.
This is when Our Darkest Days can get the most intense. Whether you are out to loot in broad daylight or the darkness of night, the game maintains an incredible sense of atmosphere that is elevated by the fact that, should things go south, your character will be permanently lost. This not only gives you one less survivor to work with but also impacts the morale of other characters back at the shelter.
Mechanically, these sequences don’t seem too complicated. You explore a small 2.5D level and find resources until your bag is full before heading back to base. However, the levels have more than just zombies and loot. There are secrets that help you progress the narrative to escape the city. There are also ways to find out about new points of interest around the map, as well as to meet new survivors.
When a character is out scavenging, they can have one weapon at a time equipped. This allows them to stand a chance if they get spotted. Ideally, that won’t happen because there are a few features to help you slip by undetected. When you get to a closed door, you can press up against it to peek into the next room. This gives you a sliver of what’s on the other side, which is often enough to give you an idea of the threat you have to deal with. Thanks to the 2.5D design of the game, there are also areas where you can dip into the background to get out of view or use stairs or climb up ledges, which adds a nice bit of verticality and depth to the world.
It’s when all these mechanics and game systems work together that the game is at its best. Going out on a scavenging run when you know your shelter is in desperate need of food automatically increases the stakes. On top of that, going through room by room, taking out any zombie with its back to you and sneaking past the rest might seem easy until your weapon breaks, and your only two options (if spotted) become either to run or take a zombie on with your fists. Knowing you need the resources, you push forward. Then, to your dismay, a wandering zombie spots you. You manage to beat it down and finish it, but your exit is blocked because now the zombie you had snuck past is on alert too. So you go upstairs, into the first room you see, and close the door. The lights are low, and you move towards the next room to reach a window you spotted on your way in. That’s when you realize that the next room has three zombies, two in the back, one in the front. Still crouched, you open the door, creep toward the window, and jump down. Your heart is racing, but you made it.
That is the addictive gameplay loop of Our Darkest Days. Its two-period a day design makes the game easy to pick up and play in short bursts, and the intense gameplay sequences keep you coming back for more. I’ve been playing the Early Access build of the game for a few days now, dipping in whenever I get a break, and it’s surprising how continually engaged I am in a game where there is such little character development. This spin-off of the once mobile endless runner games is unique in that the connection the player makes to the characters comes from its game systems and not meaningful writing or voice acting.
While I have given quite an extensive breakdown of the game so far, there are a few more points I want to quickly address. I played through the game on my Steam Deck, and I am pleased to say that, barring some odd shadow effects, the game looks and runs well. And I do think that playing on the Deck is a big factor in how often I would boot up the game. In line with the graphics, the game also has a great visual aesthetic. I am not sure of the significance of the 1980s setting, but it works well, and I dig the look of the title cards for each area of the map. Similar compliments hold for the audio department as well. Special mention to the sound design when playing with headphones, which can sometimes give you an idea of the threat ahead even before peeking into the room, and the small musical cues that play when a zombie gets too close. And I can’t forget to mention the song “It’s Only the End (of the World)” which is an original track produced for the game. It’s featured in the Early Access trailer and perfectly fits the game’s atmosphere.
The thing that surprised me the most about Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days, in the couple of hours I have played of it so far, is how it mimics the ebb and flow of hope in the post-apocalypse. I lost one of my two starting characters in the second week, and much like the remaining survivor, I too had lost hope in that moment. I was debating abandoning that save and starting a new playthrough. Then, two days later, with little health left, I found a new survivor. He came with his own traits that added a lot to the survivor dynamic, and through efficient management, they endured. A week or so after that, while exploring an area past what was reasonably safe, I found one more survivor, and that trio is who I am playing with now. How will their story end? I am not sure. But I look forward to finding out.
Which also happens to be my thoughts on Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days overall. The game comes to PC via Steam Early Access on April 9. The developers have released an Early Access roadmap that promises major updates every 4 to 6 weeks, including environmental and world events, new starting shelters, NPCs such as traders and factions, companion dogs, and more. All alongside ongoing development with regular hotfixes and patches. How the game evolves over time is to be seen, but PikPok has crafted a unique post-apocalypse experience that I am keen to keep playing. You can check out the demo now to get a taste of the action for yourself. A code for the Early Access was sent for review.
