I just can’t stop doing write-ups about bullet heaven titles, can I? After the ludicrous success of the iconic Vampire Survivors, countless titles in that style have popped up – dozens of which even arrived on Xbox. The name Yet Another Zombie Survivors may sound somewhat familiar, and we tried its upcoming Game Preview version in advance. Here’s our impressions after testing it on Xbox Series X!
Yet Another Bullet Heaven
Contrary to its title, Yet Another Zombie Survivors is more than just another identical bullet heaven, or survivors-like if you may. Based on the similarly named “tower defense shooter” Yet Another Zombie Defense, this title tasks players with creating a group of survivors, moving together and trying to stay alive until the end of the zombie barrage by powering themselves up as they go. After over two years on Steam Early Access, the game still isn’t quite finished, but it seems close to it, with it entering Game Preview on Xbox on the 10th of September, 2025. So… how is it so far?
I don’t have to explain this genre’s formula by now, do I? Survive a certain amount of minutes, gain XP by killing neverending waves of mobs, use said XP to level up mid-run to unlock brand new weapons and perks, use the rewards in each run to gain permanent upgrades for all future runs which help completing harder areas and higher difficulties… we’ve done this before, many times, haven’t we? Yet Another Zombie Survivors has a somewhat unique twist, however. We begin with a survivor unlocking weapons and such, but then we can recruit up to two more, creating a little group of characters moving in unison, each with their own stats and attack patterns.
Circle of death
While controlling up to three characters may sound like a good plug for a co-op mode, or perhaps an oddly convoluted control scheme to send them all back and forth, Yet Another Zombie Survivors actually does the most simple thing. The survivors just join our starting character, and move with them as if they were a single thing, with our stick handling everything. As is often the case in such games, auto-aim and auto-shooting are the default options, though the player can absolutely turn these things into manual mode. Frankly, not a lot of good reasons to do so, but the option is there!
What’s interesting in having up to 3 survivors at once is the build options. Not only each of them can unlock multiple weapons they can use at the same time, but each of them has their own unique stats related to health, attack speed and more. As we find upgrades, we can even find things that only apply to certain characters, rather than everybody, creating even more player agency and build variety by allowing us to either focus on certain survivors’ strengths, or to keep a more balanced group altogether. There’s even objects to unlock, of which initially 6 can be kept in our inventory, which can alter the gameplay quite drastically. One of the most interesting ones, called Devil’s Deal, has a sharp increase in all survivors’ damage numbers, but a constant health loss as if we were being hit. Many such risky objects and perks exist, rewarding aggressive playstyles with massive gains.
Can you unlock it?
Even in this Game Preview form, the game already features five different stages, 10 or so different survivors, large skill trees for each character and even a global one, several difficulty options, match modifiers, weapon evolutions, secrets to find and more. There is no co-op or multiplayer options, the different game modes are only slight variations really, but all the basics of a very solid bullet heaven are here. The game has decent 3D graphics, the various levels contain a few interesting quirks, such as the desert area featuring giant sandworms in the style of Dune, and the multi-survivor idea gives the game a solid identity, even though it’s hardly a revolutionary experience overall.
Over at Steam, Yet Another Zombie Survivors was in my library for a while now, and there it’s been one of the more interesting titles in the genre. It’s polished, fun, has a solid depth and variety, with the multiple survivors to control at once giving that special hook that distinguishes it from the others. It may not reach the heigths of the absolute bests in the genre, but even in this unfinished Game Preview version, Yet Another Zombie Survivors is one of the most interesting bullet heaven games on Xbox, and I encourage fans of the genre to give it a shot. It even has a free demo up, with the progress carrying over to the full game, so check it out!
Has there been any news surrounding release date for XSX?