$3.99 (−80%)Decision: Red Daze Survive, build, shoot back
Lead a squad of survivors through a zombie-ridden wasteland, claim its ruins and turn them into settlements that can hold out against the Red Daze.
Is Decision: Red Daze worth it?
Decision: Red Daze is worth it if…
- you like leading a band of survivors, assigning jobs and watching a settlement grow from a ruin
- you enjoy twin-stick shooting mixed with base defense, in one top-down package
- you want a game where any recruit can be leveled into a specialist, and losing one is not the end
- you have patience for fiddly management in exchange for a long progression grind
- you like games that play like the classics of the genre, isometric and old-school in feel
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A camp worth defending
Settlements are the heart of it. You claim an abandoned farm, factory or military base, and once it is yours, survivors from across the wasteland come pouring in. Keep them busy: assign them to factories that make food or fabricate resources and goods to barter with, put up defenses and upgrade them. When the monsters come, your best soldiers can hold the line while you are away, or you can join the fight yourself and push them back. Losing a settlement you built from a shell of a building stings, which is exactly the point.
Anyone can become a specialist
There is no chosen one here. Even the lowliest survivor you find in the wasteland can lead a squad, explore and shape their own future. You upgrade and specialize whoever you recruit however you see fit, and skills grow through use: carrying loot and sprinting builds strength and agility, taking hits builds endurance. When your favorite squad gets wiped, the recruits you passed over become the new plan. It turns every wanderer into a potential hero, and every loss into a fresh start.
Out into the red
The Dust Bowl is an open wasteland of abandoned farmsteads, factories and military installations, each full of monsters, loot and the foundations of a future settlement. Watch the map: packs of monsters always have a leader, and scouting missions gather intelligence on their movements so you can prepare your defenses, or find and eliminate the bosses to stop the attacks altogether. Some zones are best left alone until your gear is good enough to survive them. Planning the squad before you head out is half the game.
Loot, gear and progression
Equipment drops from the monsters you kill, in varying quality, with the best pieces coming from bosses. You scavenge, craft and trade gear to raise your survivors' stats, and those stats feed back into your towns, since construction has requirements your people need to meet. Resources are pooled across all your settlements, so an outpost can draw on the same stash as your main base. The loop of looting better gear, leveling your people and claiming bigger targets is what makes one more session hard to resist.
What should you know before starting?
Can you play it solo?
Yes, it is a singleplayer game through and through. You control one character at a time but recruit and level many survivors, switching between them as you see fit. Squad size grows as your leader's charisma does, up to seven, and your soldiers can defend settlements without you when an attack hits while you are elsewhere on the map.
Is the settlement management deep or fiddly?
A bit of both. You assign survivors to factories, defenses and production, and the economy snowballs into abundance once it gets going. The fiddly part is real: outfitting and moving dozens of individual survivors takes manual work, since there is little automation for it. If micromanagement annoys you easily, that is the trade-off to weigh.
What is the world like?
Bleak on purpose. The Dust Bowl is a desert wasteland of rocks, shrubs and abandoned buildings under a grim, oppressive tone, with the Red Daze illness having turned most of the population into mutated creatures. The dark atmosphere is part of the appeal: a hopeless world where your settlements are the only light left.
