Zafehouse Diaries is a turn based strategy game which sets you in 3 different scenarios. Each scenario will provide a specified goal to complete such as building a vehicle in order to escape or finding out how to escape the area.
Unlike other turn based games the game doesn’t provide any visual clues as to what is going on. This game as insinuated by the games title. Places every detail of what events have happened in game are put into the format of diary entries that have been written by the characters in game.
Whilst I think that this makes it different to other games that are out there. In the sense that it is text based and provides little visual imagery. This game makes the game very dull as most of the game is based around reading logs of a diary. The diary logs I feel are dull as it isn’t personalised logs to a characters version of events. But rather a general log of what happened at a given location. The diary logs also don’t have any voiceovers; this will make the game unappealing to many. Due to the nature of this game, for many people this is a game that isn’t accessible. Mainly because the game is orientated around reading and only offers english as the language in game.
Whilst this game is very basic you would expect it to be fully functional on a technical level. However the game itself technically speaking is very poor. When I first loaded the game it wasn’t in full screen. In order to set it as fullscreen you have to do it through the options. I feel this is annoying as most people would expect it to go into fullscreen automatically without having to manually set it. Even when the game is set in fullscreen mode, the game doesn’t adapt to your screen. But rather the game places a blackboard around the screen (as seen above).
Decisionwise when it comes to making choices in game I feel that sometimes it doesn’t provide you with enough information. As it will provide you with a scenario for example a girl will come running to you saying she can help you. However it doesn’t provide you with too much information as to what they look like or what they can do to assist. It misses information that could help me make decisions easier. Personally I don’t like how it deals with you making choices as it will provide you with upto 3 choices and it is based on luck whether it is a positive result or not.
However in some instances I do feel that the game can provide too much information over more trivial issues. When you examine the biography of each character I think it goes into too much detail. It will explain their age,gender,sexuality,level of education etc. These details are largely trivial and not really of major importance in a zombie apocolypse. I feel that with some details of such as their level of education that they have it could be of useful if it was indepth. Primarily because the game will state only whether they have a degree or not. Whilst on some level having a degree may provide some use such as if it was a medical degree(for instance). But just saying they have a degree is meaningless as it could be a degree that is of no interest in the zombie apocolypse.
I feel that just because someone has a unspecified degree or was middle class pre apocolypse. This information shouldn’t hold too much weight and nor should it be a priority. Whilst it is handy to know that if you want to start a rumour in game. However, this game is very much your survivors against every zombie/threat out there. As a result of this, I feel that starting rumours is counter productive to the objectives in game.
Overall I wouldn’t recommend Zafehouse Diaries because it is a poor quality game. Although it tries to be unique in style it doesn’t provide much in content or delivery. This game sadly lost what potentially could have been a good game. However if you just wanted an interactive story based game. I wouldn’t say that the game is really bad. Since it is on sale from time to time and for the games low price it is ok for what is on offer. However this is based upon that this style of game is what you’re looking for.
