Dread Nautical

This has been a bad year for cruise ships. Between headlines of passengers being stuck on board for weeks to the pandemic putting vacations on hold, how could things possibly get any worse? Well, Dread Nautical has the answer to that question, and it's zombies. In this new game from Zen Studios, we go through every harrowing deck of a cruise liner fighting the undead and locating survivors. Too bad the real villain of this game isn't some evil mastermind or a bunch of brain-eating zombies, but rather the clunky gameplay and randomly constructed levels.

This is the intriguing story of what happens when a luxury liner named Hope gets sucked into an alternate dimension filled with zombies and mutants. But it's actually a lot more interesting than that, because the few survivors appear to be stuck in a time loop where they repeat the day every time they blow the horn. And is it possible that our four heroes have been guided to this cruise ship by an outside force? What is going on? That's something you start to piece together as we guide four colorful characters through twenty decks of vacation Hell.

"Guide" is probably the right way to put it, because Dread Nautical is a turn-based strategy game. We point and click our way around the randomly constructed decks until we locate the bad guys, where we're forced to think tactically. The idea is to use all your points attacking the enemies and moving out of the way, at which point the zombies take their turn and you hope for the best. It's a back and forth struggle until somebody wins, at which point it's back to exploring the deck for more powerful weapons and health items. Unless you were the one who died, of course. If you get eaten along the way, then you'll have to start the day all over again and hope for better luck.

At first, the adventure revolves around the four hero characters, with each having their own unique personalities and abilities. But as you clean out the decks and make the cruise ship safer, you'll end up running into a number of eccentric survivors that need your help. The trick is to run errands for them and say the right thing in order to win their trust. Ideally, they'll team up with you and help fight off the evil monsters populating the decks. However, this comes with a cost. Housing a bunch of survivors comes with responsibilities, such as feeding them and making sure they are in tip-top condition. This means that you'll need to be even more thorough when exploring every level and need to make tough decisions about who eats and who doesn't.

Befriending the survivors is crucial, because you'll be able to construct teams with up to three fighters. Taking on the zombies is challenging on your own, because you initially don't have enough action points to escape, so having backup is a must if you intend to reach the higher decks and uncover the secrets to this mystery. The good news is that you can upgrade every character and repair the weapons you collect, allowing us to go into each deck prepared. In fact, the main hub has a lot of useful upgrade stations to put your hard-earned points into, so you may want to replay some of the earlier levels to grind for experience.

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This is the type of game that grew on me over time. I'm going to be honest, I kind of hated the early stages of Dread Nautical, especially when I was on my own trying to kill the ghouls infesting the cruise ship. I never had enough action points to both attack and get out of the way from harm. Things improved considerably as I upgraded my hero and recruited more help, but the turn-based gameplay never fully clicked with me. It's incredibly simplistic when compared to other strategy games, and I ultimately felt the gameplay was too limited for what it was trying to accomplish. I had an especially hard time moving my characters around with the PlayStation 4 controller. Perhaps this works better with a mouse and keyboard, but the analog sticks weren't precise for what I needed to do, and that led to an endless amount of frustration.

I also don't like how the decks are randomly constructed. Don't get me wrong, I normally don't have anything against procedurally created stages, but too many of the decks look and play out the same way. You'll see the same rooms filled with the same enemies that drop the same items, and it got old after a while. I feel like the randomness of the levels detracts from the inherent fun of being on a cruise ship. It's not hard to imagine these cool and elaborate decks that feel wholly unique and special, but all that goes out the window when you enter the same kitchen or bathroom for the tenth time in a row.

All this is a shame, because the gameplay and repetitive level designs nearly ruin a really cool setup. Even though I'm a little tired of zombies at this point, the overall story is genuinely interesting and I was curious what it was all leading to. I also loved the over-the-top survivors, especially the four hero characters. I knew I was going to love this cast the moment I saw them, which is one of the reasons why I was so disappointed by the execution. Killing zombies on a cruise ship should be more fun than this.