HordeCore

I wasn't expecting to find a collectible card game inside my zombie shooter, yet here we are. HordeCore is one of those small-studio swings that tries to pack several games into one box: a 2.5D side-scrolling shooter with depth-of-field movement (you can step toward or away from the screen, not just left and right), a squad RPG where each survivor carries distinct perks and abilities, a base-camp crafting loop, and an optional deckbuilder called Horde Tactics that features over 60 unlockable cards mirroring the gear and creatures you meet in the wastelands. That last piece is genuinely surprising for a game at this price tier, even if the card mode only surfaces during specific Tournament mission types rather than sitting in a dedicated menu you can access freely. The mission structure itself is the engine that keeps you moving. A branching map sends you into Scavenging runs, Ambushes, Treasure Hunts, Assassinations, and main story beats, each playing out across semi-procedural environments. Stealth is an actual option early on - crouch, don't fire, avoid the scattered debris and silent police-car sirens, and you can thin a crowd before it wakes up and rushes you. Squad composition matters more than it first appears: survivors are not interchangeable, and choosing who comes along for a mission changes how it plays out tactically. Between sorties, the base camp is where you craft weapons, manage food and water resources, and equip your crew with gear split across four slots. The comic-strip storytelling between missions has a scrappy, handmade charm, and the two storylines that eventually converge give the campaign a shape even if the narrative itself is thin. Now for the honest part. HordeCore sits at a "Mixed" rating from its Steam community, and the friction points are real. Bugs have been documented - perk values not applying correctly, inventory changes not saving if you quit before a session ends, and the Ambush mission type offering no visible progress indicator so waves just continue until the game decides you've had enough. The online co-op situation is worth flagging directly: the developers turned off dedicated online co-op servers due to cost, shifting players toward Steam Remote Play Together for co-op sessions. It works, but it's a downgrade from a native lobby system and catches people off guard. The horizontal-only shooting also feels like a constraint rather than a design choice once you've spent a few missions wishing you could aim at the crawler coming from the depth lane. What HordeCore gets right is the texture of the thing. The papercraft-adjacent visual style holds up, the enemy variety (crawlers, spitters, explosive variants) keeps the shooting from going fully rote, and boss encounters land on the tougher side of what the casual tag might suggest. If you've got a friend and a few evenings to kill, the co-op loop scratches a very specific itch - accessible enough to hand a second controller to someone who rarely plays, layered enough that the survivor-building keeps you invested past the opening hours. Played solo it's a decent weekend game, not a long-term commitment.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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