Early access preview code used, with many thanks to Stride PR.
Zombie Cure Lab is a sandbox simulation developed by Thera Bytes GmbH and published by Aerosoft GmbH. Releasing on early access, Zombie Cure Lab sees players pitted against hordes of zombies. But, with an unusual twist, you don’t kill the zombies; instead, you capture and cure them in your Zombie lab.
Beware the Brain-Eating Zombies
At its heart, Zombie Cure Lab is a real-time-strategy base builder. Brain-eating Zombies are trying to take over the world, and anyone bitten by a Zombie turns into one themselves. However, scientists have discovered an antidote that reverses the zombification progress.
Scientists On a Quest
So you must manage a bunch of scientists on a quest to save the world. While collecting resources, managing workers, and surviving enemy zombie waves, you’ll build and expand your base.
The tutorial takes you through the basics of setting up your Zombie Lab. While the tutorial does help you along, it could be more in-depth, but since this is an early-access game, that’s likely to change. Furthermore, there are various levels on the map to choose from with multiple difficulties, including a sandbox mode.
Gather Resources
You’ll start by gathering natural resources in the area around your base. Resources include food, wood, stone and metal, all the usual things we’ve come to expect from the genre.
Then you’ll have to prepare for the first night, as when darkness falls, the zombies come knocking on the fence, literally. You’ll build wooden fortifications around your rudimentary base to give the scientists enough defences to stay alive.
Freeze the Zombies
With your base established, you set traps for the zombies and attempt to snag one. Then, using a fancy snow cannon a zombie is turned into a block of ice. Next, the Zombie is taken back to the lab and placed in the treatment chamber to reverse the infection to turn it into a Humbie. Finally, you can put them to work in your base.
You can assign specific staff tasks and set night and day shifts to keep things ticking. If you don’t assign tasks, your base will come to a halt because everyone has gotten a bit tired. As a result, the Humbies become increasingly essential to operations, and as a bonus, it helps them get closer to becoming un-undead, which is always a good thing and gives you more workers.
Keep Everyone Happy
You also have to complete research to open up new equipment for your base and unlock sci-fi techs like freeze rays and barriers to capture more zombies. You must also maintain the scientists’ and Humbies’ happiness with comfortable living conditions. Building bedrooms and a kitchen and making sure everyone is happy. Doing so helps to prevent the Humbies from regressing to their brain-thirsty tendencies.
There is a lot to do in Zombie Cure Lab, and the tutorial is pretty good at teaching you the basics of the game so you can play through the levels. However, it can be a juggling act trying to get every task done and repair the base’s defences each time the Zombies come to call.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the amount your workers have to do, especially in the later game. Therefore, you need to be very hands-on with managing all the workers and checking they are fulfilling their tasks.
Visuals and Controls
Zombie Cure Lab uses a cartoony low poly art style to bring a friendly touch to the zombie genre. The game has plenty of bright colours, except at night when the screen turns deep purple. It was rather hard to see what was happening at night, making it challenging to keep an eye on my workers.
When I first started playing Zombie Cure Lab, the music in the game was barely audible. I turned the volume up and still could not hear it. Since then, the game has been updated, and the music can be heard. It fits in well with the game’s sound effects and the overall atmosphere of the game.
Zombie Cure Lab is a fun game, with some fine tweaking and minor adjustments for balance in the later game, it has the potential to be the best cure lab around.
You can find the game’s Steam page here, where you can Wishlist it for its December 7th, 2022 release.