We recently sent out a beta version of Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden to press and the coverage has been amazing so far! We’ve collected some of the previews we’ve gotten in the announcement below for your perusal.
PC Gamer:
It's fun, funny, and the combat is challenging from the get-go
A pig, a duck, and a mutant lady walk into a camp full of angry ghouls. There's no punchline—just a game over screen, because those ghouls lit me up with rifles and molotovs before I got a chance to move. Dux? Barbecued. Bormin, my gruff boar scavenger? Skewered. Selma? Also barbecued. Look, these ghoul guys live out in the Zone, what survivors in Mutant Year Zero call the wasteland of this particular post-apocalypse. Point is, they don't discriminate who they set on fire.
Gamezone:
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden has a lot of heart but also guts
I was thoroughly hooked on the story and wanted to know more about the world and its secrets. Clearly, there is more in this world than just a wasteland. With an early-point taste of the game, many interesting skills were out my reach but just reading the descriptions were enough to fantasize about tactical applications and new ways to approach combat. In terms of polish and performance, Mutant Year Zero is already up to a high standard, and with about a month left in the oven, it should get even better.
MMORPG:
Not So MMO: Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden – First Impressions
Right off the bat, the game is sort of a blend of story-based exploration and XCOM-like turn-based combat. That’s different enough, but your main characters for the story are a very Howard-like mutated duck and tanky mutated warthog that could easily be working with the Foot Clan. The two are far more serious-minded than the characters they resemble, however. They do joke and the game’s not short on puns, but the devs did a really good job of setting down a layer of humor that feels appropriate to the game.
Techraptor:
Embrace Your Post-Human Inner Beast in Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden
Smack-dab in the middle of a patch of woods, I took control of Bormin and Dux. It’s easy to guess who’s who I’m sure. The lovable critters are stalkers in the Zone. Sounds familiar? It should. It looks more like a tip of the hat to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. rather than shameless imitation. In any case, they are out on a seemingly mundane foray for scraps. Bormin doubles as a gravelly and dismal narrator, a kind of post-human Epic Voice Guy. Dux is more of a daffy little bastard, a comic relief foil in contrast with Bormin. The interplay between the two characters fits the setting. They move and explore the levels from a top-down real-time mode at first. When they encounter hostiles you get to turn-based combat that will inevitably remind most players of XCOM. The influence is obviously there, but Mutant is decidedly simpler and doesn’t feel bogged down by complex details. It’s a clear and humble quality in an indie game that couldn’t support the cumbersome maintenance of a full-on XCOM clone. The combat feels effective and polished, and that’s more than you can ask from a beta.
Critical Hit:
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is ducking hard, and that’s the way I like it
Based on the Swedish pen and paper game, Mutant Year Zero makes no bones about what kind of game it wants to be: Duckin’ hard, unforgiving if you make a single blunder and placing an emphasis on sticking to the shadows so that you can set your characters up in the perfect position to carry out an ambush. With a development pedigree that stretches back to the original Hitman games, that stealth aspect feels like a natural marriage to the ideals of XCOM and its turn-based strategy. You’re still going to be calculating every single move that you can make, from the chances of landing a deadly critical hit (Hello!) to just how effective that brick wall is going to be when you take cover behind it. That melting pot of diverse gameplay elements feels right, the in-game chatter between the core group of characters livens up a world that is teeming with danger and the idea of a smaller core group whose growth you can customise makes the game feel more intimate in its design. Unless you choose the permadeath option that is, you mad masochist you.
Gameskinny:
Mutant Year Zero Beta: Our First Look Impressions on Turn-Based Mutant Mayhem
It's hard to overstate how much I enjoyed this blend of real-time and turn-based systems. It fixes one of the biggest problems with X-COM: the inability to precisely position your troops for an effective ambush while retaining the ability to move quickly if the enemy changes position. In games like this, where you're consistently outnumbered and outgunned, planning and position are of the utmost importance, and I greatly appreciated being able to move about freely.
Gamecritics:
Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden Preview
This sense of being in a lost world to be explored drew me in. I don’t expect the full experience to deviate much from what I’ve seen, but I’ve always enjoyed the concept of ‘lostech’ and seeing a group try to make sense of discovered items that modern people find mundane always brings a smile to my face.
Polygon:
XCOM-like Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden preview highlights novel stealth mechanic
The hook in Mutant is the ability to hide your soldiers behind cover. Each mission starts out with a free-roaming, real-time phase where you can explore the map and spy on your enemies at range. Some of those enemies will go on patrol and, by moving your soldier along behind them, you can get surprisingly close. Then, with the tap of a button, you can have your soldier hiding behind a tree or a rock. Once the enemy turns around, walking their patrol in the other direction, your soldier can ambush them from behind dealing extra damage. Even more entertaining, once the trap is sprung, and so long as the other enemies on the map haven’t been alerted to your presence, you can reset your team. Once back in the real-time mode you’re free to keep exploring or searching for the next place to set a trap.