Lab 7: Cold Nights

Lab 7: Cold Nights is a refreshing addition to the zombie shooter genre. It has some strategy elements to it that make it far more interesting and rewarding to play than just a straight up shooter with zombies in it. It feels more like a survival horror with secrets and upgrades to discover.
The strategy elements are mixed with plenty of action and some mystery in discovering items that will help make the game more enjoyable. The game starts with a limited power generator. The available power acts as a credit system for 3 things: Light, Security and the Elevator. Your general goal here is to increase the power generated to these 3 things so that you can interact more with the environment. Power can be increased by adding coins to each power terminal. Coins are earned by killing zombies. A certain amount of power is subtracted from the applicable power bar when you open a door or use the elevator. You get numbered and graphic feedback, so if you go below zero, an alarm goes off and attracts zombies. You already have zombies that enter the lab once every night, so you want to keep the power managed and not make the mistake of triggering additional zombies at any time. It's a waste of time and ammo, both of which are precious.
Added depth to this system is that there are items like keycards and upgrades scattered around the different floors and rooms, but you need the light to reach a certain level to be able to identify them and then pick them up. Before you have enough light, you are able to see a small question mark when you walk by something that's usable. This clues you in that you should come back to that location later when you might have enough light. Further depth involves in deciding where it's more important to add coins to because focusing the power on only one thing may leave a power deficit in an area you might need to progress.
Time lapses pretty fast in this game and since the zombies are guaranteed to enter the top floor at least once every midnight, you need to do everything efficiently, Fortunately, there is a floor that has unlimited ammunition, but it costs coins and it is the only place that you can get ammo.
The ultimate goal of the game is to progress to floor zero through the elevator. You are underground, so the high you go in the elevator, the lower the number of the floor is. The first button of the elevator shows at level 15, but you can select the upper floors by pressing up while that button is highlighted. The challenge is that each upper floor can only be accessed after the fuse box is fixed/activated from the previous floor. For example, if you want to be able to get to floor 14, you'll first have to clear floor 15 of zombies and fix the fuse box, and so on. You can only carry so much ammo, so in the beginning you'll be only be able to clear 1 or 2 floors before you need to go back to the ammo room. As you go through the upper floors you'll also discover turrets and barricades that can be placed to help you kill off the ever increasing zombie hordes.
As you go back to the main floor areas, you'll have the opportunity to kill more zombies, restock ammo or explore other rooms as you slowly increase the power bars for each terminal. A basic power strategy is to avoid using the elevator when its power is low and let it recharge while exploring the main areas because your security power bar is higher. Besides the ability to add more coins to the power terminals, you'll very soon discover that there is an armoury on the ammo floor. It is here that you can upgrade your guns, turrets, barricades and even buy more guns. You'll need to do this as there are always more zombies in each nightly horde and in each upper floor. Fortunately, the game is made so that efficient and clever planning will lead to you having firepower and ammo to spare. You'll also find that close up shots can often kill zombies, making the game more fun and saving you ammo.
On top of this, the gun turrets and barricades add some real time strategy to the zombie attacks, whether you're in the main area or trying to clear the upper floors. While the turrets seem useless during the first 7 days, they have infinite bullets and can be placed or replaced wherever you want. Once you have at least 3 or 4 and begin to start upgrading them they begin to come in really handy. At higher levels with more turrets, you can prevent zombies from backing you up to a dead end, or the elevator door you came in from. there is also more than one strategy you can use with them. For example, you can set up 4 or more in a row and try to leapfrog them ahead every time you have a little bit of space. Or, you can set up a barricade or two in front of all your turrets giving them more time to shoot the zombies at close range before the barricades are destroyed. Note: If your barricade is destroyed it's not gone forever. Also, turrets cannot be destroyed.
Topping off the game are a couple of secrets to find and the fact that you don't need every single item, gun, or upgrade to be able to complete the game. This makes the game fun to replay so you can try to upgrade the guns more and do things more efficiently. I wasn't able to figure out every secret or buy every upgrade in my first playthrough, so it was fun to redo. Besides being able to upgrade guns in the upgrade room, guns also upgrade as you use them. They have a star ranking beside them. This is separate from the bought upgrades, but keeps them fun as they get more effective from use.
The music is great. There are a variety of tracks and they help set the mood. The sounds are what you'd expect. Gun shots are satisfying enough and even when shooting zombies offscreen, (a nice benefit of the Karabiner) you'll hear a more satisfying sound when you get a lethal hit.
If you looked at the screen shots you know what you're getting. I think the lighting looks good and the overall graphic design is consistent with the style. My only gripe is that things are quite small, but that just seems to be the developer's style. I would have liked to see more unique zombie models, but the ones we see are pretty good. Heads can get blown off partially or fully, sometimes just the face can get blown off leaving a red bloody hole. Regardless, this game is made by one guy, so I can't fault him for not having 3000 different zombie styles. Do we want the zombie fashion show or do we want a game? Well I would have liked both, but you can't have everything.
I highly recommend this game. It's not just a mindless shooter. If it was only a sidescrolling shooter with gun upgrades it might not have kept my interest. It's how the game had various elements of discovery and strategy in progressing and upgrading that kept me playing. I love zombie type games. That's what first caught my interest. Zombies can get tiring, so devs need to do interesting things to keep this genre relevant. This game does that in its own unique way.
I'm not the type of gamer that likes speedruns, difficult games or games that want to be replayable, but this game breaks my mould for that. It is quite challenging, which I kind of hated at first, but the beauty is in learning how to do things efficiently so that you can make the game easy for yourself. The learning curve isn't easy, but the payoff is satisfying. This isn't a one and done game for me. Whatever this developer is doing next I want it to be a sequel to this game or a new game in the same genre. Count me in.

I was looking for a game with Kingdom roots but with a twist. This is exactly that kind of game. The only thing that keeps me from praising it fully is the absence of co-op. There is a VS mode, but no co-op. A co-op mode would be more logic to me as this is a survival game. But I still recommend the game.

3 dollar flash game. 6 guns, 8 reload upgrades, one ammo capacity upgrade, 2 baracades 3 turrents. All upgradable.
Game was mainly designed to be played on easy, this can be felt in higher difficulties as your ammo will end up running out from the overwhelming hoards and the reload speed will become too slow to properly push back said hoards. Roughly a 3-4 hour game.
6/10, could have been more. Needed more content.

I really like it! Even though it has really simple mechanics, there is still a sort of complexity to them. However, some bugs that occur is that there would be colorful flashes on screen, don't know if that was patched, when reloading the shot gun, sometimes when I would reload once then fire, it would stay stuck on only loading 1 shell. Another one is that when I would get into the elevator, sometimes i can't scroll to the floor level that I want and exit and re-enter the game. Oh I even though I searched all the lockers, I couldn't find the upgrade for one of the machine gun. On the other hand, this game is really fun and addicting! I can't wait to reveal secrets within!!!

Fun little game, would be really fun with a co-op mode but still good without. I play to kill time now and then I'd recommend getting it if you find yourself waiting for something often or like to get to top of leaderboards etc...

Interesting 2d Action Defense game, tough learning curve.
Had fun, would recommend it, if you like demanding games.
About the gameplay: When you wake up for the first time (ingame) you should definitely follow the tutorial carefully and study the provided aid (in the game menu). Otherwise you will, like myself, have a hard time to figure out what to do and how. Especially the power management system is hard to understand. In-game help or community hub can help here.
Once you've overcome this obstacle, the actual gameplay begins. You start to research the floors of the lab, equip yourself with weapons, turrets, keycards, and so on to reach out for the upper floors. In the elevator there are several floors hidden behind a switchable button (unfortunately easy to miss). You have to fight through each of these to unlock the next one and to fight your way to the outside. Additional monsters storm into the laboratory every day or when you fail your powermanagement. So you have to take care of your time management to avoid being overrun.
If you die you have to start all over again. Luckily the tutorial is skipable. There are some puzzles to solve and things to try and learn. Trying, dying and restarting is therefore part of the game concept and desired. It's nice that you improve your weapon knowledge from run to run and keep your knowledge. It is unusual that you don't have to aim by yourself. But RNGsus is quite gracious if you have mastered your weapon.
You can choose between controller or mouse & keyboard. Controls are close to the controller when using mouse and keyboard, but you can reassign it to what ever you want.
Graphics are atmospheric, while the rooms come with nice details, some turrets are kept very simple. All in all quite ok.
However, the navigation is a little confusing. Unfortunately, the game only remembers part of the game settings. While the language (german and english available) can be defined in the main menu, the resolution and sound volume have to be set again each try. The important "game help" is also hidden in the menu after a run has been started. It explains the power management and the most important basics that result from it. This should be more easily accessible to the player.
To emphasize positively: The developer is on the forums with advice and action and is currently providing the game with patches very quickly.
Have not seen the end yet, will update when i finish my first run.

Lab 7 is a fun 2D zombie survival action rogue-lite which relies on player exploration and resource management in order to succeed.
The goal is to escape a zombie infested underground research lab by repairing electrical conduits on each floor in order to to access each new floor above, via the elevator, until you reach the top. While doing so you explore the mysterious facility, unlock weapons, unlock defensive turrets, discover new items, and discover the lore surrounding the facility.
The game can make you a bit nervous at first because everything is thrown at you all at once right from the start.
The (sole) developer of the game was kind enough to make a short youtube video describing the basics, which he links in the main menu; as well as provides a in-game poster right near the start that you can read which explains the basic mechanics.
I only read the in-game poster and it took me about an hour to get the hang of everything and about 4 hours to beat the game on Easy difficulty. Normal took me about 4 hours as well.
There are quite a few "secrets", optional areas to explore, and special activities to complete which will keep you busy for at least a few complete runs through the game.
Main game mechanics:
-Day/Night cycle. The zombie horde appears every midnight and grows in strength with each passing day.
-Resource Management in the form of electrical power used to operate parts of the facility (doors, lights, elevator)
-Ability to upgrade weapons
-Ability to upgrade character
-Ability to upgrade defenses (turrets and barricades)
-Currency (coins) that are mostly earned by killing zombies, which is used to purchase all upgrades and unlock special items
-Ability to level up weapons for extra damage (weapon levels carry over between deaths)
-Exploration to find keycards, items that improve your stats, items to use for puzzles, etc
All in all it's a very simple, but very fun game. The gameplay is quite addicting and even though there is not a ton of variety with the music, it's all very enjoyable.
This game deserves a lot more recognition for what it is.
Hopefully if it gets more popular the developer can keep improving and adding onto it. It's a good game right now, but it could definitely be a great game if expanded and paced out a bit more.