Until We Die is a side-scrolling survival strategy game. It’s best compared to Kingdom: New Lands or Two Crowns.
You are a commander named Ivan and have to survive in the underground where mutants live. Usually, they sleep in the daytime, so you’re pretty safe exploring the underground then. At night, you should withdraw and hide behind the walls of your base because they will come and attack you.
As a commander, you’ll have plenty of people under your command. Well, three in the beginning, but over time there will be more. You have to manually tell every one of them what to do. Searching for supplies and food, building something, or attacking eggs, mutants, and what else there may be.
The map is full of resources, and some will grow over time (mushrooms), but you’ll need more. That’s why someone from the main station comes every day to help you out by bringing supplies and a worker. In exchange, you have to give him food.
Generator
This is the heart of your base. If mutants reach the generator, the run is over. You can also upgrade the generator from time to time which gives you bonuses. You can choose one of two random bonuses. Some will give you workers for free, others make diggers faster while searching for supplies, and a lot more.
Buildings
There are many different buildings each with its own uses. Tents increase your population cap, for example. There’s also one building for every different class. There, you can train normal workers to become a sniper, digger, and so on. Other buildings may give you bonuses such as more supplies per day or a higher fire rate. Some buildings can also be upgraded.
Classes
There are five classes in the game. The first is just a worker. He can build, search, and fight. Diggers search faster for supplies, while the engineer is specialized in building faster and can even build structures exclusive to the class. Furthermore, engineers can do research to give you bonuses or unlock something new.
The sniper is a combat unit and perfect for killing mutants at a distance, while stalkers have a machine gun and can also go on an expedition to collect fuel and such.
Exploration
Your base needs to grow to survive and for that, you need to explore the underground. You will not just find resources that way, but also walkers, nests, new mutants, and new rooms to explore. I can’t get into detail because it would spoil too much, but exploring is a lot of fun, especially when you have to deal with unexpected happenings somehow.
Progression
Depending on the difficulty, you can unlock new things. For example, on normal difficulty, you can unlock two new rooms after you’ve survived 18 days. If you want to unlock more, you need to play on a higher difficulty. New rooms can then be built in future runs.
Difficulty and balance
Speaking of which, there are three difficulty settings. The easiest option is Normal and already pretty hard if you ask me. It reminds me of a rogue-like in regards to that. Until We Die is a survival strategy game, so it’s fine for it to be somewhat difficult, but it’s too hard in the easiest setting, in my opinion. Tied to that is the balance. Some things are a bit over the top, while some bonuses are very weak compared to others.
Rooms you unlock also feel too weak with the difference in having them is minimal. They could stand to be stronger since you only get two on normal difficulty and this isn’t very engaging since if you can’t even win on normal, you won’t be able to unlock more stuff in the higher difficulties.
Although do note that I played the pre-release version of the game. Balance is a tricky subject and there were already a few patches that addressed some things and made it somewhat easier overall. Even after release, the developers will probably change quite a few things to try and get it better fine-tuned.
Summary
Until We Die requires your time management to be on point while thinking strategically every second the game lasts. Losing is very devastating since a run is pretty long and you almost get nothing for it. The initiative to play again isn’t as big as in rogue-likes since unlocks are very rare and not engaging enough, although challenging enough that you still will want to come back to change how you played and make it better.
If you like a game centered around exploring and managing your crew coupled with demanding gameplay, this will be perfect for you.