There are a lot of Vampire Survivors-style horde survival games out there at this point, and the pitch for most of them sounds very similar most of the time, but this one’s different. Ground Zero Hero, a new horde survival roguelike from solo Australian developer Rowan Edmondson, is not one of those games.
What makes Ground Zero Hero stand out immediately is not the game genre itself but the vibe instead. Within seconds of booting up the demo, it’s clear this is something very different from what a lot of other survivor games have, it has a hand-drawn art style that feels like a post-apocalyptic fever dream. If I had to really describe the fever dream, I would have to call it the love child of Rick and Morty, The Simpsons, and the chaotic raw charm of the early 2000s games you would find on Newgrounds. Genuinely, this would be the result of an Adult Swim roguelike, had they made one.
What is Ground Zero Actually Like to Play?
If you’ve played Vampire Survivors, the skeleton of what’s happening here is familiar: survive increasing overwhelming hordes, collect resources, pick upgrades (or mutations in this case), and try to push as far as you can before the chaos gets the better of you. Ground Zero Hero does feature a few different twists however, that allow it to earn it’s own identity pretty quickly.
The first thing that hits you is how interestingly chaotic the environment is. It’s not the type of environment where you just break open crates for random healing items, money, or mutation rads but instead Dinosaur pinatas roam the map, missile duds are on the floor, mutated cows are waiting to be ridden, and more. While sure, you don’t need to interact with any map objects it does allow for a more dynamic sense of gameplay, with one of the choices being shrooms you can step on that give a percentage of health back with the side effect of a slightly warped screen for a few moments and enemies having giant eyes.
The environmental interactions are fun to discover, as at one point in my first match I discovered a unexploded missile just sitting on the ground. After accidentally hitting it with the tentacle upgrade I watched as it exploded, dealing massive damage to everything around, and honestly, I think it instantly killed even the tougher enemies. Another interactable are safes. Cracking open safes require you to stay in a specific spot for a period of time, but if you’re able to hold off standing still when enemies are charging at you from all corners, you can get money that allow for permanent upgrades claimable between runs. It felt super interesting just naturally discovering what everything in this strange world did instead of having a tool tip guide me through each step.
When night falls vampires and skeletons start to plague the map. Now, I’m not sure if they’re intended to be harder than what you face in the day time as I felt they didn’t pose that big of a threat, but the game does warn you about the night. Sleeping in an unopened bunker lets you save, quit, or push through the night without resting at all, adding a light survival layer to the loop that gives more meaningful decision making to the player beyond just “play until you die.” The ability to save and quit is always a plus as well.
The Mutations
At the start of each run you pick a mutation from a random selection, and killing mutated fauna earns you rads to keep mutating as you play. The upgrades play very similar to Vampire Survivors, with each level allowing you to pick a few options to create a loadout, but there are some unique twists in this game.
Firstly, due to there not being a specific set of items you’re capped at having, you have a DNA system where you can have up to 20 mutations active in a single run. This prevents the player from just getting an insane run where every item to ever exist and upgrade is owned at the same time, but still leaves enough of a gap for people to build craft with the selections they have. As world-based drops you can find dice that allow you to re-roll the mutation selections you pick between.
Each mutation also has a “bonkers” form, which is an even more unhinged version that was unlockable within the demo by getting 500 kills with that mutations original form. The bonkers modifiers is a permanent buff, so an item you might not like at the start could become an insanely powerful full screen attack once you’ve used it enough! When you complete or lose a run you also fill up a Mutation Level bar that permanently unlocks new mutations for future runs, meaning even when a run turns sour, you can still get benefits to make future runs last longer.
The demo gives you access to 14 of the game’s 19 total mutations, which is a generous slice of the action while still leaving some excitement to be seen in the full games release.
Is This Worth Downloading?
Yes, without much hesitation. Ground Zero Hero is rough around a few edges, but this is a solo developer’s demo, not a polished AAA release. It has genuine personality and more charm than we see in a lot of other Vampire Survivors-esc games these days which help it stand out from the crowd. If you’re interested in old-school Newgrounds-era visual charm, enemies that sometimes feel a little too on the nose for being a radiated Homer Simpson face mutation, and the thought of becoming a mutant powerhouse, then this is your one stop shop. As the developer put it in the official steam page description, “therapy is expensive, and this is Free.”
Ground Zero Hero’s full releases launches on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, Switch 2, and Steam this summer. So what are you waiting for? Check out the free demo on Steam today!
