Review - HumanitZ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGyA5gbRe9k

Developer: Yodubzz Studios

Publisher: indie.io

Available on: PC

Review system: PC

Just Another Zombie Game?

Look, I'll be honest with you. When I first booted up HumanitZ, I had my eyebrows raised. Zombie survival is a crowded genre, and I've played enough of them to know when something is just riding the wave versus actually trying to offer something real. HumanitZ comes from Yodubzz Studios, a first-time dev team, and it blends zombie survival, crafting, base building, and multiplayer into one open-world sandbox. It's been in Early Access for a couple of years, so there's already a community built around it, which counts for something.

I ran through it in single player, which is probably the harder sell of the two modes if I'm being upfront about it. I've got time in DayZ and SurrounDead, so I came in knowing what this category demands. People have compared it to Project Zomboid, and that's fair, though this one feels more accessible and a lot easier on the eyes. Going in with reasonable expectations for a freshman studio, I found things to genuinely enjoy and things that genuinely frustrated me, and I'll walk you through both.

Where the Game Gets It Right

The early game loop actually hooked me more than I expected. You get multiple spawn points with different difficulty settings right off the bat, so you're not locked into one experience. Resources are tight, but the crafting system is flexible enough that you can stretch basic materials like stones, sticks, and plant fibers pretty far before you start feeling desperate. Building plans are also unlocked from the start rather than gated behind some progression wall, which I really appreciated. You can focus on what you want to build and gather for it, instead of wondering what's even possible.

The skill tree is probably my favorite part of the whole package. You earn points as you play and can push your character toward a specialty or keep them well-rounded, and that choice feels meaningful. It gives you something to work toward beyond just surviving the next ten minutes.

The zombie variety keeps things from getting stale. Slow hulks, toxic types, and sprinters all show up and behave differently enough that you genuinely have to read the situation. Urban areas are thick with them, so sneaking or using distractions like throwing rocks to pull attention becomes a real part of how you move through the world. Vehicles can be repaired if you track down the right parts, though I spent most of my time too focused on not dying to mess with that much. The world itself looks great. The lighting, weather, and environments do a solid job of making everything feel like an actual post-apocalyptic landscape rather than a placeholder backdrop. I can absolutely picture a good group of friends building a massive fortified compound together, and from what the multiplayer community says, that's exactly where this game hits its stride.

Where It Still Has Some Growing to Do

I want to be fair here because I think the dev team is genuinely trying. The initial 1.0 launch had some rough spots, a few physics quirks, and detection bugs that made the early hours a bit frustrating, though hotfixes came out pretty quickly after. And you can tell from how active the developers are in the Steam community that they're paying attention. That said, there are a few things that still need work, and I'd be doing you a disservice if I skipped over them.

Zombie awareness is probably the most inconsistent thing in the game right now. There were moments where I was crouched inside a building, and an undead on the other side of a solid wall somehow clocked me immediately, while a group right outside a fence didn't react at all when I was practically standing next to them. That kind of inconsistency makes it hard to build real instincts about how to approach situations. You can't really plan when the rules feel like they shift between encounters, and that frustration isn't unique to me. The Steam discussion boards have been talking about detection inconsistency for a while, so it's a known issue that hopefully lands on a future patch list.

I also had a moment that genuinely made me laugh out of frustration. I tried throwing a rock over a fence to pull some zombies away, a mechanic the game literally teaches you to use, and it bounced back on my side like it hit an invisible barrier. Small thing, but it's the kind of moment that chips away at your trust in the systems.

Did You Get My Good Side?

This is the section where my feelings get genuinely mixed, so bear with me. HumanitZ is isometric and third-person only, and I want to be clear that I don't think that's the wrong call for the kind of game they're building. The problem is that the range of camera angles available in the settings doesn't quite get you where you need to be for survival gameplay. The lowest position still cuts off enough of the horizon that scouting ahead in a dangerous area is harder than it should be. If I'm trying to find a safe path around a zombie-heavy zone, I want to be able to read the landscape ahead of me, and there were moments where I just couldn't get that view. The developers have actually acknowledged this and dropped the minimum angle in updates, and there are workaround mods out there, though the devs themselves have flagged that forcing the camera lower can cause world-loading issues. So this might genuinely be a technical limitation they're still working around rather than an oversight.

Where it hurt me the most was in tight spaces. Coming out of a building or moving through a dense tree line, the camera would land in a position where I couldn't see directly ahead of my character, and I'd take hits from something I had no chance to react to. Burning through supplies because of a camera angle is the kind of thing that wears on you over a long session. Sound cues for detected enemies were also hit or miss, with some zombies giving clear audio warnings and others going silent until the first swing landed.

On the visual side, the environments genuinely impress, but the character models and some animations are noticeably less polished. The UI has drawn some criticism from other reviewers for feeling a bit dated compared to the world around it, and there are certain interactions, looting animations mostly, that look a little rough. Nothing that stopped me from playing, but worth knowing going in, especially if you're coming from a bigger-budget title.

Quirky Melee Combat

Melee is functional, but it needs some tuning, so I wanted to speak briefly on it specifically. My biggest gripe was that hit detection doesn't always match what you're seeing on screen. I'd time a swing; it looked clean, and the zombie either took no reaction or closed the gap like nothing happened. You figure out quickly that spacing out your hits and backing off between swings gives you better results than trying to combo, which works as a strategy but feels like a workaround for a system that should be tighter than it is. The community has flagged this too, specifically around weapon range not matching the actual model, and consecutive hits losing their stagger. It's not enough to make combat unfun, but it's something you feel every time you get into a close encounter.

So Should You Play It?

Yeah, I think so, with some realistic expectations attached. This is an indie studio's first game coming out of a multi-year Early Access run, and what they've built has real legs. The survival loop is engaging, the world looks good, the skill system gives you something to invest in, and with the right group, the multiplayer experience sounds like it can be genuinely great. Those are not small things.

The rough edges are real, too, and I'm not going to pretend they aren't. The camera limitations and the AI detection inconsistency were my two biggest friction points, and if either of those sounds like a dealbreaker for you, I'd say grab the free demo first and find out for yourself before spending any money. The price point is fair for what's here, and the developers are clearly not done building, which goes a long way.

For survival game fans who don't mind learning a system that still has a few wrinkles, and especially for anyone who wants a co-op zombie experience that isn't a decade old, HumanitZ is worth your time. Keep an eye on the patch notes, and you might find it gets even better from here.

HUMANITZ IS RECOMMENDED

A code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.