Bowman VS Zombies

My honest first reaction to Bowman VS Zombies was a kind of quiet respect for the ambition behind it. Antoine Hésèque built this solo, shipped it into Early Access in September 2018, set up a dedicated website, and laid out a roadmap with genuine enthusiasm. That kind of handcrafted sincerity is something I always want to root for. The problem is that the evidence, years later, makes it very hard to. At its core, the game is a wave-based survival shooter where your weapon of choice is a bow. You work through escalating hordes of zombies and grotesque monsters, with boss encounters punctuating the pressure. Between runs, a skill tree lets you invest in your character, power-ups can be unlocked, and an in-game currency system funds new levels and character customisation. On paper that loop, bow versus undead horde with light RPG progression, has legs. The skill tree and leaderboard system suggest Hésèque was thinking about replayability from the start, and a promised online co-op mode was listed as a roadmap goal. Those are solid building blocks for a small indie. What the search trail turns up is more sobering. Steam shows zero user reviews after roughly six years on the platform. Community forum posts flag a significant memory leak that reportedly pushes RAM consumption to extreme levels around wave 25 before crashing the session, and high scores are not preserved after a crash. One post from the Steam community sums things up simply: arrows feel better after a patch, but there are no enemies to shoot. The developer's own Steam page notes that the last update was over four years ago. A roadmap that promised a story-driven campaign and co-op has, as far as the public record shows, not been completed. The game remains tagged as Early Access. I do not hold early-stage roughness against a solo developer. Slow starts and feature gaps are part of the Early Access deal, and I have watched plenty of small projects eventually find their footing. But the combination of a years-long development silence, unresolved technical issues reported by the handful of players who did show up, and a roadmap that appears to have stalled is not something I can set aside. The bow mechanic and wave structure might offer a short burst of novelty, but there is no community around this game to guide you through its rougher edges, no recent patch notes to suggest those edges are being sanded down, and no review consensus to calibrate expectations. If you love supporting solo developers and want something to poke at for an hour or two with very low expectations, the kernel of an idea here is genuine. For everyone else, the current state asks you to bet on a project that has shown little public sign of movement in years. That bet carries real risk, and I would rather you go in knowing that than be surprised.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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