All Of ZHEM

My first instinct when I loaded All Of ZHEM was that someone made this out of sheer love for Train to Busan and refused to apologise for it. KOEX studio is a one-person operation, and that handmade quality is visible in every corner of the game - sometimes beautifully, sometimes painfully. The developer opted for a semi-realistic 3D style with a deliberate edge-detection outline effect baked over the visuals, a choice that gives the whole thing a slightly stylised, almost graphic-novel silhouette rather than the flat ugliness that usually haunts low-budget 3D games. It does not look like a AAA product, but it has a visual identity, and that is worth something. The actual pitch is focused: you pick one of two characters, either Cloten Rogers or Ailsa, each carrying a different primary weapon, and you fight through waves of up to 200 zombies across three maps. The maps span a sewer, a building interior, and a moving train sequence that wears its film inspiration openly. What separates this from a static horde-shooter is the movement toolkit. There is a hook mechanism that lets you fling yourself through the air to reposition, and a slow-motion gunplay mode that turns frantic moments into something almost cinematic. When both of those systems click together - grappling across a train carriage, slowing time mid-air to pick off a climbing zombie - there is a genuine rush in there. The zombies themselves are not passive; they run, jump, and climb to reach you, so height is not a safe retreat. The difficulty settings are adjustable, which matters more than it might sound. On the harder end, the horde pressure is relentless enough to push you into using every tool available. On casual it is more of a slow-paced sandbox for players who just want to feel out the hook mechanics without getting overwhelmed. The honest weakness here is discoverability: even the developer noted that early players did not realise the hook and slow-mo options existed, which tells you the tutorial does not do enough heavy lifting. If you go in blind you may bounce off it entirely, not because the game is bad but because its best ideas stay quiet until you find them. Community feedback from the Steam hub also flagged missing quality-of-life options like a mouse sensitivity slider and an invert-mouse toggle - small absences that sting more than they should on a PC release. There is no multiplayer, no procedural content, no meta-progression. What you get is a compact, single-developer action game with three maps, one revive mechanic (an energy-bolt that clears nearby zombies on death), and a very specific kind of scrappy charm. It will not hold you for twenty hours. But if you give it ninety minutes on the harder difficulty with the hook and slow-mo actually in play, there is a handcrafted intensity here that most assembly-line zombie shooters never find.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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