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Game Details

Title: Jungle Z
Developer: Rising Win Tech. CO., LTD
Publisher: Rising Win Tech. CO., LTD
Website: https://www.rising-win.com/jungle-z
Genre: Action, Adventure, Other
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Audience: PEGI 12
Release Date: 08/04/19
Price: £10.39 – Rapid Reviews UK was very kindly provided with a review code for this title.

What the Developers say

● Life or Death?

Your choice! You need to survive on the last day of Earth with limited backpack space. Supplies are hidden at somewhere, explore it. Be careful! Every decision you make may related to your life and death.

● Battle with a variety of zombies
Remember to always to be ready and prepared to face varieties zombies come from nowhere.

● Zombies who know the sound

In addition, zombies also have hearing ability to recognize the surroundings. Your running, exploring, shooting or attacking will attract the attention of zombies. You can attack zombies by sneaking.

● Overall arrangement strategies

Night is the real battlefield! The zombies are extremely powerful in the night. You need to arrange and build your own defenses before dark.

● Cooperate with your friends

Exchange your supplies with other survivors and make friends with them when you meet them. They could be your partners but remember that not all survivors are friendly.

● Maps Diversity

You will be reborn in different location, face different map and new experience if you die.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1015580/Jungle_Z/

Introduction

There’s nothing I like more than a good survival horror game. Throw in the post-apocalyptic angle, and I’m sold. So when the chance came to review Jungle Z, I just skipped.

I knew nothing about the game before it crossed my path for this review, but I am glad I took the chance to play it. The switch is an excellent console for these types of survival games. I enjoyed The Flame in the Flood and Dawn of Survivors, and Jungle Z fits right in there among them.

Seemingly alone in the world, surrounded by endless numbers of the dead, you have to fight and scavenge your way through each day. Hoarding supplies to defend yourself at night, for in this world, when the sun goes down, the dead come out to play.

It’s a fun but utterly ruthless game that will have you seething at the sight of your corpse as it fades from the screen, but utterly helpless to avoid giving it just one more try.

Gameplay

You play as either a male or a female character, and they have different strengths and weakness, from speed to power. Which is better? That is up to you. I played as both, and while there were some differences, I don’t feel the way I played the game changed that much.

The game loads with you dropped onto a randomly generated map. Sometimes you could start in the middle of a camp with supplies aplenty, or you could, as happened to me once, spawn with two gun-wielding zombies around you and get blasted away before you can get moving. It’s the luck of the draw, but I will say that I received a favourable spawn site more often than not.

There are two elements to this game. One is survival. Plain and simple. You need to spend your day scavenging for supplies because once night falls you need to build yourself a stronghold because the undead comes in unrelenting waves, seeking you out as if they had a TomTom and you were their only point of interest.

This is not easy, and it took me a great many attempts to merely survive the first night, and even longer before I made it through night two. Machine gun turrets and spiked defensive walls are your best friend, but they decay as the night goes on and will not make it through a second without repair or replacement. I can’t count the number of times I died because I was missing one more ingredient to mount a good defence and ventured too deep into the undead territory in search of said item.

The question you are then faced with is how far do you travel to find supplies, and do you make a new camp or try and make it back to base and fortify what you have. (HINT: Both options are equally hard).

The second component to the game is fetching quests. Find a radio, find supplies to make the radio work, etc. This forces you to explore the map and venture further and further afield. It also increases the difficulty exponentially, and essentially force answers the question above for you.

One thing is for sure, and you cannot go into this game, expecting to be able to arm yourself and hack and slash your way through. It might work during the day if you are fortunate, but at night, without defences, you don’t stand a chance.

Audio and Visual

When you first load up the game, it is evident that the Developers have opted for a more cartoonish style when it comes to the graphics. This didn’t bother me one bit, and if anything, I think it works to the benefit of the game.

The game made is revealed to you in small increments, forcing you to explore and search out camps, shops and strong military holds. While there is a vast open world feel to it, each mission/objective set only opens a portion of the map to you. This is a blessing in disguise due to the difficult nature of the game itself.

From the characters to the zombies and the world around you, the game looks good and offers enough variety to stop things from getting too repetitive. The Dev team put a lot of thought into making their zombies different from one another, with each having their characteristics as well as visual design.

If I had to pick a weak area of the game, it would have to be the audio side. However, with that being said, the setting of the game is the post-apocalypse, so having minimal sound kind of works. A good soundtrack can make a game great, but in this instance, the lack of different soundtrack does work. But if you are playing for a more extended session, you might find yourself wanting a little more choice. Similarly, while the undead all look different, the sound effects used are somewhat monotone.

This is only a minor bugbear, however, and I don’t feel as if the game suffers unnecessarily as a result.

Replayability

The difficulty of the game in terms of how fast and how often you will die lends itself to high replayability. Each death makes you think to yourself; I should have done this or should have gone this way first. The random map generation and item locations also mean that while you learn from each death, it doesn’t guarantee you survive longer the next time.

On top of that, there are achievements built into the game that, for those driven by that kind of thing, will provide countless hours of replayability. Especially as one of them is to survive 90 days in a single save game.

I can see myself putting in more time over the weeks and months in this game, chipping away a little bit here and there, ever searching for that tipping point where you have enough supplies and allies to help you get through the nights without fear.

Conclusion

Overall I found Jungle Z to be a highly entertaining game. It was not without its low points. The loading screens, in particular, were quite a drag. The first time I fired up the game, it took a good five minutes to load, and while respawns after death move quicker, the first load of the day always took some time.

If you are a fan of survival horror games or the post-apocalyptic landscape, then this game has something good to offer.

Rapid Reviews UK Rating

You can purchase Jungle Z from the Nintendo eShop at the following link, https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Jungle-Z-1542020.html