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I got my hands on ICFSAAOB (Damn that long name!) shortly after the release, we've also done a multiplayer review in form of a video with the best bits of our gameplay that you can watch below and have a TLDR version.

ICFSAAOB is an arcade topdown shooter, thus all I expect really is fun. Replayability. Some decent variety of content, guns, gamemodes maybe. I'll talk about all the aspects of the game though. Let me start with one of the best things.

Graphics, stylization. The way this game is made on the visual side of things is great. The colors are well balanced, there's perfect contrast, weapons have diverse designs and the projectiles vibrant awesome different colours. If anything, this game is a pretty thing to look at! It's like looking at slot machines, you just can't turn your head off of it.

Hand in hand with graphics comes sound design. The sound effects are really good as well, everything sounds awesome (nope, not a LEGO reference) and even the gnarling horde of aliens is believable. Both your eyes and ears will get stimuled by these things and by the end of the playthrough you will surelly have problems realizing if what you see and what you hear is the real world. I had pink goo coming out of my ears.

Fun factor is definitely high and we had a lot of laughs playing this in two, and I can bet it would be even more fun playing in four people. The increasing difficulty of the game with changing levels is keeping everyone awake and a bunch of funny achievements only make it better.

Where the game falls short right now is content-wise. The weapon store and upgrade system is very bland, predictable and it's missing that “MOM I NEED THAT” factor. Same goes for replayability, it just doesn't get anywhere else after a while and I'd much welcome an addition of different gamemodes, or even the possibility of new strategies. There's been a mention of turrets on the forums, oh hell yeah! Give me turrets and a base I have to defend against these pink f*ckers and I'll fire this game any time! That applies to level design which is bland after a while, it just need that spark, maybe a little interactivity, but definitely a change.

Dont let that fool you, this game is great and has great potential. It just need that little kick in the back to make it awesome. And given the nature of the developer we can surely expect this kick. Promised weekly updates, feature-wishlist on the forums, etc. seems like he cares and to me that's one of the things that matter the most in a game. If a developer releases a game and shortly after abandons it, then why should I care as well?

On the technical side of things, it was very easy to set up a multiplayer game so I have to give a thumbs up for that, as it's still (even in the 21st century) not easy in every game. There were acceptable lag issues (US - EU multiplayer), so yeah nothing wrong.

And that's about it for the textual review, as I feel I covered the main points and I don't want to makle this too huge. For a price of 10$ (which is absolutely fair pricing) you get a pretty good looking indie game, with some cool content and adrenaline gameplay, get it, go spam that wishlist thread and be a part of this game becoming AWESOME, you won't regret.

If you're interested in multiplayer gameplay and a conjoined opinion from two people (a guy who makes reviews for indiegamebundles.com and a graphic designer) definitely watch this video:

https://youtu.be/7UVkrbjf9JY

Otherwise, thanks for reading this review, I hope it helped you out with your decisioning.

* This textual version of the review will diverse a little bit from the video-version, since I wanted to make the video version as straightforward as possible. *

I will try to not to compare this game to Minecraft, or any other voxel based survival open world games, altough it is hard, since the features that the competitive games currently offer are in my opinion much larger than of this one, but this one is early access so remember, you are buying a game that is still undergoing its development and creative process.

I have owned this game for quite some time now, I have seen it buggy as hell with hardly any content and recently coming into patches that added loads of new content, craftable items, new designs and very good UI changes.

So I would like to start by saying that this game is definitely on a very good track! And that the developers definitely deserve every penny you are willing to give them for this. The game receives constant updates, it is evolving, the developers are listening to feedback and adjusting the experience to it.

Altough I do feel there is still a lot to be done. The overall experience right now is smooth and can entertain you for several hours,. There are in-game ideas that definitely add some unique thinking and provide rage-free gameplay (teleporters, death relics, etc.). As well as ideas that I can see to be used to request payment in the future (after the f2p model goes live), and I hope it will not kill the game. (task based crafting)

The task based crafting for example is a good example of a feature that does not have to fit to everyone. Having to wait for a set period of time for something to finish crafting in a queue might eventually become frustrating. I personally liked this function as it allowed me to multitask and I haven’t been bothered by it, but I can imagine it will bother some.

When it comes to creativity and the overall design of the game, I have to put my hands down, open my mouth and look around. This game feels very, very smooth, every block in the game feels like it belongs there, everything seems like it has been thought through and the colour design is amazing. I always disliked minecrafts default texture pack for being too rough and hard on the eyes, but in the case of this game, it’s a world where’d I’d love to be in person. And everything is perfectly layered, it really feels like it’s one big connected world. Going from top to the very bottom is just amazing, and the creative minds behind this game really have some imagination.

Regarding UI there have been some changes through out the development and I feel they were very good as well. I was skeptical about the UI in the past and felt like I’m a little lost in it. This cloud has been a little cleared, but I still feel a little of it floating around. I’d definitely welcome some in-game guide, more informative tooltips, or basically any other way of guiding my hand through the crafting windows and such, and once you’d get used to it, you could turn it off ofcourse. (Same goes for first game start, I’d like to see some guidance there as well)

Story-wise I feel like this is the part of the game where there’s really.. nothing. I have not included this point in the video review since I don’t feel like it’s a priority for the developers. At least I have not seen any mention about it in the forums or on the store page. There are some in-game notes to be found containing some text, but there’s nothing more to that right now. I’m don’t deliberately need a story at every cost, but it would be nice to get to know something about the world I’m getting thrusted into, since it’s very colorful and nicely done in the fist place. I know the main selling points of this games are probably elsewhere, but it’s just something I’d like to see even if it would be in a very small way.

To cut the chase I’ll say that I think the main selling points of this game are the social features and the game design. It’s incredibely easy to start a multiplayer game, takes literally one second, or the blink of an eye. That makes sharing your world with someone very easy, showcasing your builds, or just generally derping around. As I recall from other similar games, I’d have to have a dedicated server application, sometimes even venture into config files, and other necessary setting ups, which is just awful, and I’m glad this game is doing it right. By game design I mean how things look, what items you can craft, how is it concieved. The entire game has a very distinct style, it’s a mix of traditional things with modern technology and possibly a little bit of magic here and there (or at least it feels like that). This gives a sort-of-a “steam-punk” feel (altough not entirely) and I definitely like that, it’s very different to other games where it’s the same thing all over again, just with different textures. 

Having said that I think that the entire game is well designed not just by the visual means, but also the progression and game mechanics design. Crafting and getting further in the game feels natural and follows a nice expanding path, while it’s most of the time very clear what you need to create next, altough when starting the game for the first time it was very unclear to me.

There are definitely bugs right now, I’ve been able to pick-up my things when still being on the death screen, I can often see through blocks, the lighting system seems very fragile, I had invisible mob attacking me and some general multiplayer issues (latency, missplacement, etc.),. But that’s all expectable right now, and I feel like it will definitely get fixed, since already a lot of bugs did get fixed.

I am going to say what I said in the video review, and that is.. If you feel like supporting the developers (whom in my opinion deserve it) definitely go for it, get the game, play it right away and address your feedback to the devs. If you feel like you can probably smash out more value and entertainement from other similar games (you are probably right) and you’re hesitating with the cash (I’m not surprised, Creativerse is not cheap) just wait and see, it can still happen that this will turn into an annoying pay2play title that will slowly die, as well as it can turn into a beautiful well balanced game (it’s heading there right now). Right now I feel it’s a little “dull” and for me it doesn’t offer that much replay value (my opinion), but I feel otherwise very positive and I can see how it will become great.

Below I’ll just put some Pros and Cons to have a brief overall review.

Pros

(+) Beautiful Visuals

(+) Easy to set up multiplayer

(+) Unique game design

(+) Natural progression

(+) Honest, fair and hard working developers

(+) Constant updates

(+) Different approach to crafting (stations, extractors, etc.)

(+) Task-based crafting (altough this might be a con for some)

(+) Progression supporting features (teleporters, etc.)

Cons

(-) Price (20 is seriously too high)

(-) Future f2p model (might go bad)

(-) No in-game guidance system, player has to figure it out

(-) No story

(-) Bugs

(-) No linux support (Win/Mac at the moment, absolute multi-platform would be nice)

Thanks for reading this, watch the video for some more different information, or vice versa, also check out my channel for some more reviews if you’ve enjoyed this one and/or other gaming related content. (https://www.youtube.com/user/playintosh)

Sincerely,

I was able to test this game before it even got released and I tested both singleplayer and multiplayer aspects of it. The multiplayer review can be seen on the video below this paragraph and it also covers visual and functional part of the game, if you're craving for a textual version, scroll a little under the video.

  Now, I haven't played the first Trapped Dead, so I can't really compare, altough I have looked at the reviews both on Steam and by external sites and authors. It did not received very good scores, mainly due to being buggy beyond an acceptable point, and generaly awful gameplay. I was curious if anything of the above has gotten better with the sequel.

    Now I will say this right from the start, it might be better than the first, but it still seriously lacks. The first one was apparently very buggy, and this trend mildly continues, the bugs were random, but there were many. In singleplayer I had some weird issues with my inventory (items that I had before, dissappearing on death and returning to checkpoint), and in multiplayer we experienced horrible missplacement issues, crashing, invisible zombies and as you could have seen in the video, I get stuck in a warehouse unable to progress at one point. This forced us to play this for the second time and switch hosts.

    The game did receive a big update after we played it for the multiplayer review and I went in to see if stuff got fixed or what was that update about -- I have no clue, since the item problems still happen for me, and I had one game crash happen.

    Visually it's “alright”. There are definitely prettier games, but to what it is (isometric “3D” rpg game) I have to say that it's absolutely enough and the game doesn't do bad with this,.

    The UI on the other hand is something absolutely horrible and I hate it. It's clunky, the game doesn't pause when you go into inventory/etc. And the whole thing is just really hard to figure out and use, since there's buttons that totally don't look like buttons (skill points) and the game is using “apply” in several parts of the UI which makes me totally forget to push it every time, since I'd not expect a feature like that.

    Speaking of skill points and such, this game is supposed to have RPG features, and I can't really say I'd be enjoying them. Character progression felt boring, nothing new or innovative, due to the UI complications it's really hard to give attention to it anyway and the overall game just felt more like an action adventure zombie slasher whith annoying rpg features.

    Story by it self is like a B-rated movie and you shouldn't expect a plot worth your brain cells,. Literally, if you're going to play this game, just expect nothing, turn your brain off, and go hack&slash some zombies. On the other hand if you do enjoy B-Rated movies, it might appeal to you a lot.

    The good part of the story is the voice acting, which is funny and adds a little humour to the game, altough sometimes I feel like the characters are talking for way too long, thankfully you can skip it. Soundtrack on the other hand is absolutely generic, can't recall any track to be stuck in my head and I believe it's 85% just ambience noise.

    I was starting to be annoyed roughly two hours into the game, level design felt like it's intentionally slowing me down, bugs, no great story, just killing zombies all the time, with weapons that go down with durability faster than you blink and a skill system so weird that you'll end up using bare fists just to not have to go into the inventory all the time. I saw about 3-4 boss fights and.. the store page claims “Diverse enemies and boss..”. That is so not true, the 4 bosses I encountered looked almost the same and acted roughly the same. That is just killing the game as well, and only adding to the annoying repetitiveness, not even talking about the repeating quests and game mechanics (“place explosive here”).

    I did had some laughs when playing it with my buddy Brandon Dayton, and I think the main selling point of this game is definitely the co-op multiplayer (so the developer better fix the issues lol) and playing this in singleplayer is just plain not worth it.

    For me this game has almost no replayability, and I will probably not be coming back to it, only if things get better (fixing the god damn UI would be enough for me to clench my teeth). It would make a good game for an iPad, as I recall having some similar games installed on it, so I could play it in the subway.

    If you're a fan of the first one (despite all the bad about it) you'll probably get this regardless of my review, and that's ok, after all its just my point of view, but I feel like it doesn't introduce much new to the series (based on my research), apart from not being tactical but a hack&slash. And with this price tag, I just have to say to everyone else.. don't buy it. Just don't. Wait for a sale, or a bundle to include it if you want it, because you'll regret spending 20 bucks. (Price tag not yet confirmed, game should be released in 2 hours)

      Pros

(+) Cool voice acting

(+) Zombies (seriously, this is enough for most people)

(+) Co-op campaign for up to 4 players

(+) Multi-platform (OS equality ftw), also XBOX ONE and PS4

    Cons

(-) Bugs, sometimes game-breaking bugs, this really shouldn't be happening..

(-) B-Movie story with typical zombie clichés

(-) Multiplayer issues, missplacement, latency, etc.

(-) Generic RPG features, that more annoy than excite

(-) Level design is gonna make you go zig-zag all the time, ehh

(-) Whole game feels very repetitive

(-) HORRIBLE UI DESIGN

(-) PRICE

    Thank you for reading this review, hope you liked it and it helped you decide. If you're fancy for some more reviews and/or other gaming content visit my youtube channel, there's a review playlist available, as well as much more. (https://www.youtube.com/user/playintosh)