Outbreak: Endless Nightmares Review (NSW/PS5)

Written by Anthony L. Cuaycong

Title: Outbreak: Endless Nightmares (PS5/NSW)
Developer: Dead Drop Studios
Publisher: Dead Drop Studios
Genre: Action
Price: $19.99

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“The soul is willing, but the body is weak” is how Outbreak: Endless Nightmares can best be described. As the brainchild of Drop Dead Studios, Outbreak is a game of lofty intentions, with aspirations of combining an old-school approach to survivor horror with the random nature of a roguelike game. Featuring a straightforward but understandable progression system, a decent selection of maps to explore, and all the quirks of classic survival horror gameplay, it really aims to highlight the nostalgia for those who wish for a return to the classic Resident Evil style of gameplay.

Creditably, Outbreak: Endless Nightmares does well to meet the aforementioned objective. The levels you can travel around in are, by nature, repetitive, albeit with unique themes. From an abandoned mansion to a ruined factory, you’re pretty much exploring the best a standard horror setting can offer. Each level archetype has its own loot table with its own levelled gear and rarity, with different types of traps to conquer, enemies to face, and puzzles to solve. These are all randomized as well, forcing you to ration the few supplies you can find along the way. While you can hoard items you wish to use while navigating the levels, you can hold only eight unique items in your limited inventory, forcing you to either drop the ones you don’t need or place them inside randomly generated item boxes. Progression through a given level is as simple as finding the exit door, with some levels being as short as five seconds should you be fortunate enough to spawn next to the exit door itself. Complete enough levels, and you earn the reward of either going home with whatever loot you scavenged or moving on to a more difficult set of levels with better rewards to claim.

Granted, Outbreak: Endless Nightmares is really just standard roguelike gameplay, wearing the mask of a survival horror game to keep you going. That said, it’s actually fairly entertaining, if somewhat cheesy. Levels are usually simple to clear, and the surface-level survival horror rationing gives the game a little depth when it comes to inventory management. Any permanent progress you can gain comes off in the form of better items to use, and of more varied levels to explore. And while it’s not deep, it keeps you interested, at the very least by the concepts it mashes together. After all, few games can lay claim to the title of rogue-like survival horror.

Admittedly, Outbreak: Endless Nightmares is far from perfect. For starters, it looks mediocre at best. Animations feel stiff and unwieldy, to the point that it alters depth perception; it makes you avoid melee weapons it’s not able to properly convey their reach. Guns feel great to fire, but the comical blood-spatter effect combined with the damage output of your weapon being tied to its rarity and level can lead to some pretty absurd moments.

And then there are Outbreak: Endless Nightmares’ puzzles. Most of these come in the form of switches to activate or statues to push into place – not too hard to solve in and of themselves. It’s just too bad that environmental hazards don’t have a good tell if you’re going to be hitting them or not, causing you unnecessary frustration when you get hit by a laser that you’re absolutely sure shouldn’t be hitting you. Meanwhile, an occasional puzzle can be absurd in its simplicity, calling into question why Drop Dead Studios even bothered putting it there if all you needed to do was press a button to “solve” it. At the other end of the spectrum is the odd puzzle that just doesn’t work. It won’t be bad per se, but the setup makes it almost impossible to complete properly. It won’t feel difficult or challenging – just broken, broken and unfinished, and ultimately frustrating.

Outbreak: Endless Nightmares needs to be appreciated for its efforts to be unique and present hitherto-unseen concepts. It has a lot of content to play through, a lot of unlockables to peruse, and even some cooperative content for when you want to play with someone else. On the flipside, it can appear clunky and unfinished, and can test your patience. To be fair, Drop Dead Studios continues to listen to feedback and is bent on making requisite changes, perhaps even to the core design. Left unsaid through the course correction is the fact that it should have been far more polished upon release.

All told, Outbreak: Endless Nightmare is an ambitious indie title, the little game that dares try. When – if – it will succeed is the question.

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THE GOOD

• Decent amount of content to run through
• Fairly straightforward game design
• Coop-enabled to enjoy with others

THE BAD

• Some puzzles and environmental hazards seem broken
• Content-heavy, but very light on depth, with shallow, surface-level mechanics
• Evidently limited options for randomization, likely leading you to seeing the same room layouts shortly after you start

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RATING: 6/10

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