Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville, Fighting the dead but livin' large

 Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville

Rebuild 3 "Gangs of Deadsville" by Northway Games, is the third installment (obviously) of a zombie apocalypse "city building" strategy series. You play as your main character and play them throughout each level, gaining more skills and becoming a 'jack of all trades'. In comparison to your citizens, you become an extremely valuable asset as the game progresses.

Gameplay involves building and expanding your city, managing resources such as defence, food, and building materials, meeting the various faction's, and potentially becoming allies or enemies.

Defence is an extremely important skill as it is used on your outermost tiles to protect against zombie attacks. The higher your characters defense stat, the better. Like any stat in the game, they can be improved by either going to school, or equipping weapons/accessories that compliment the character.

 For example, when you unlock a certain skill in the science research tree you are able to choose perks and personality traits for your citizens. One of these perks that will randomly show up for selection is 'Melee', which will allow your citizen to be greatly boosted in defence if they have a melee weapon equipped.

This is the screen that pops up after an attack. This was a really safe attack because it is early in the game and my defenders are well equipped.

Gaining resources such as wood and food require a citizen to work on that tile. However, you can also find these items by scavenging tiles that haven't been looted yet. Ammo, medicine, and miscellaneous items for characters to equip can be found via scavenging.

 There are multiple 'levels' that you ascend through, each one furthering the overarching story bit by bit, increasing in difficulty. Each level will require the player to start a new community in a new town as you literally travel through the story. Every time you move to the next level of the game you are allowed to take a maximum of 3 other citizens with you.

The map of every level I have been through, starting at Sequoia. Am I embarrassed by the names I wrote? Yes. Would I do it again? Probably.

 Currently I have Steve with a defense level of 21, Pollina who has a building stat of 20, and Larissa who has an engineering stat of 15. While Steve, Pollina, and myself, scavenge and build the city, Larissa performs research sitting on a science tile.

There is a pretty simple research tree that engineer characters can go through to benefit your city and its people greatly. Like I mentioned before, you are able to manage the personality traits of your people and choose beneficial perks for them. This can impact how your citizens interact with each other too.

When you choose to hear more of a citizen's story you get to choose perks for them that can make them more useful.

It is quite easy to sink hours of your time into this game. It's paced rather well, and easy to learn. However, zombie attacks which occur often and randomly ensure to keep things exciting and tense.

There are a few different types of zombies and hordes that get introduced as you play. Smart hordes will target citizens that are outside the base, roaming hordes are tougher than your average zombie attack and make a bee line straight for your base quickly, and attack shortly after arriving. Regular hordes spawn next to your base but take a long time to actually attack, and aren't as devastating; they simply require planning and strategy.

As you progress further into the game these roaming hordes and random attacks occur more frequently and require higher defence skills. If you expand your base but don't find new citizens to help protect, you can quite easily get overwhelmed and lose tiles, and thus, progression.

 This can all be prevented by having an engineer citizen progress through the science skill tree, and a good leader to recruit new people. Engineer's are very useful for a lots of mechanics such as better farming, security, and medicine. This can help you keep up with your growing population.

One of the more devastating impacts that smart hordes have, is their ability to catch your scavengers while out performing tasks. If they do get caught, this will force them to be an unusable asset in potential times of destruction and devastation. I remember my first encounter with a 'smart' horde being a little heartbreaking...

Story Time!

My main character Bella Luthor was out looting a hospital for supplies. No one else was more qualified than her for the job; She could explore the map quicker, scavenge faster, and, had a Chainsaw equipped making her defense stat 18 (most citizens average 9-12).

 This was the start of a new town near the end of the game, so the stakes are higher and require faster expansion and gathering. In addition to this, a new type of zombie had been introduced to the game. A smart horde. Knowing me, I probably skimmed the tooltip about them and figured I didn't really need to know that much. Learning the hard way should be my middle name.

This is what it looks like to start in a new town

The plan didn't work well. Bella was hunted by the smart zombies and attacked. Leaving her in a dingy home back at base to recover for about a day. If I had hospitals built, she would have recovered much quicker. 

While Bella was trying to heal, the zombies then came for the base. Because my main character wasn't there to help defend, the risk of danger increased immensely and resulted in a citizen dying. But this wasn't just any citizen, it was Steve :(

Steve had been with me for a few levels now. Steve and Bella were married, yes, they actually got married in the game. They went on dates keeping watch and killing zombies together. Speed dating in the apocalypse ain't no joke.

One of the most effective parts of this game is its ability to humanise and expand your citizens personal stories, even though they get a bit generic overtime. You see, I had personally grown fond of Steve from his backstory, and because he was one of my first citizens.

 

 He saved children from burning wrecks, he never stole anything from anyone in the community, and my character frequently had happy events with him. I didn't even think about it until now, but the game had actually given my character a sense of development. Over some time my character began having events where she said she felt things for Steve and eventually I had the option to tell her to either pursue things, wait, or give up. Of course I had to let her get married to Steve! 

So naturally after finding out Steve died I quit and went back to my old save.

Rebuild 3 does well to simulate all the different aspects you'd expect of a zombie apocalypse. Your citizens can get pregnant, join religions, steal from your community, and even leave for an enemy faction. In regards to pregnancy, I have noticed that my engineer citizen gets pregnant very frequently...

 If you are wondering how babies have an impact in this game, you essentially equip children and infants as an accessory. So, my primary engineer who once had an engineer score of around 18 might now only have a score of 10 due to replacing her engineering accessory with a baby. You cannot have a child/infant that isn't equipped, but luckily, you can give them to any of your citizens. They don't have to stay with their parents. In just about every city I've been to, I am sure there are at least five random babies that belong to my engineer...Honestly I respect her game.

As the leader, it is always your responsibility to choose what kind of community you will run. This can be done through decisions you make when events pop up, but you can also choose if you will run the town like a democracy or dictatorship. I usually went with dictatorship for my previous levels but have found I never make any impactful decisions. I am a bit of a fence sitter in these situations so when the game would ask "Should people use more ammo, less ammo, or the same amount?" I would always pick the safer option of "the same amount". This way I don't really get a penalty but it doesn't do much for me in the long run anyway. Running as a democracy certainly keeps things interesting.

An example of some of the situations that turn up when playing. I gave him jail time because I don't think I should let something like that pass, but I also don't want to get rid of citizens either.

The way you run your town will greatly affect your citizens happiness, but may also give you some positive enhancements. I chose a democracy so my citizens could vote on our policies instead of me solely choosing. One policy that had an interesting impact was how we approach strangers. You can recruit survivors to increase your town's population by going to certain tiles and talking to them. If your leadership skill is really good then you increase the chances of having a good interaction, if not, you might get robbed or hurt.

My citizens voted that we welcome people with open arms, which meant we were more likely to recruit new people but also more at risk to get attacked or robbed by strangers. Running your town as a democracy can be a bit scary sometimes when it comes to decision making, as you have no say in it, but it keeps things interesting.

You might be wondering where the challenge is in all of this since this game is relatively easy to play. At the end of every level you get stats and a final score for how you did. I personally don't care for this sort of thing, if it's a single-player game I don't have much of a competitive spirit. I enjoy playing this game for the management aspect of it rather than the aspect of min-maxing gameplay to have the best score possible. But, some players might enjoy the challenge of trying to improve their play style to maximise their final score.

Can't believe I spent 667 days in Cringe city! I think I was stuck on a mission and forgot what I had to do...

I have spent a lot of this article writing about how the game works and my personal stories from it, But I haven't spoken too much about what I like or dislike about it.

 One thing I absolutely get so frustrated with playing this game is how the camera panning works. If you click on a tile to get information about it the camera will automatically pan to center its view around it. I HATE THIS. It is so jarring especially when you accidentally click on something and suddenly your entire screen goes "whoosh" and moves. The other thing I hate about this game is the little journal menu that pops up when events occur. You would have seen a screenshot above of  the 'Fight breaking out' situation, that is an example of what comes up.

 When events occur, this journal looking menu pops up and pauses the game, forcing you to make a decision right then and there. This is all well and good, except I exclusively play the game on 3x speed. This means every few seconds a new event is popping up, stopping me in my tracks, either informing me of a de-buff like food being less effective, or a situation where someone is caught stealing food and a decision must be made. It would be interesting if events were scaled back with the speed you play the game at but since you can switch speeds by just pressing 1,2,3, on your keyboard, I can see it being tricky to program.

Despite there being some awful feelings experienced with parts of playing the game, I actually really enjoy playing it. I have sunk around 43 hours into it so far and might consider playing the previous games and seeing how they might differ. I really enjoy the style of this game, the art, the sound, it's really easy for me to get into and lose track of time.