Unturned is a new survival/horror video game released by Smartly Dressed Games on July 7, 2014 and was created using the Unity engine. The game was designed by a seventeen-year old by the name of Nelson Sexton. It’s a free-to-play game on Steam that hasn’t been fully released, however it is still technically in alpha and is receiving bug fixes and updates to further improve the game. The game is limited to Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X and most likely will not be released to other platforms, but it’s too early to say for sure.

The game starts out with the character being released into Prince Edward Island, or PEI, with little to nothing as an inventory. The game requires discovery of randomly placed items that respawn everyday to assure survival when faced with the undead. Players must maintain basic needs such as hunger and thirst, avoid deadly infection, and fight through the ravaging hordes of zombies.

The game has three different game modes, with the first being easy mode. Easy mode offers a 50% higher spawn rate for items and the in game character starts off with three random items. Beyond that, there is normal mode which offers standard spawns and nothing is added or removed from the game. The next game mode is hardcore mode which offers many different changes to the game such as some of the GUI (Graphical User Interface) being removed, and a variation of different tasks made more difficult.

As players progress through the game they earn experience points (exp) that will help the character level up and improve skills. These skills include greater damage dealt from melee weapons or ranged weapons, increasing vitality, or decreasing the time it takes for a player to starve or become dehydrated.

For an extra $5 players can upgrade to gold version yielding a greater spawn rate of survival items and a few other perks like different character appearances and a different colored icon next to the player’s name when chatting in multiplayer. Gold mode also offers an additional game mode called ‘Gold Mode,’ possibly the best name that could be given to the mode. The mode offers double experience for kills, the standard rate of loot drop is increased, and cosmetic options for the interface is unlocked.

Unturned also offers a multiplayer option within the game itself, so players can interact with friends and try to outlast the challenge of survival. Play also takes place on servers created by other people that are usually highly populated. Most user-created servers are a cluster of players versus players (PvP), and it is hard to actually play the game sometimes, but there are others dedicated to playing as a team to survive the zombie apocalypse.

The graphics might be cheesy, and the zombies aren’t the scariest, but Unturned is an excellent game that is in the process of being made perfect. There are moments where players will be on the floor laughing due to a funny death, a friend’s mistake, or a zombie breach in a base, but the game also has moments that place users on the edge of their seats praying for dear life.