I Shall Remain

My first hour with I Shall Remain had me convinced I'd stumbled onto something the internet quietly buried. A top-down action RPG set in an alternate 1940s America, where Nazi scientists released a viral plague called Z0M81 and left two brothers to pick through the wreckage of civilisation, that premise alone is more textured than most zombie games bother to attempt. The atmosphere holds up in a way that surprises: a shifting day-night cycle, weather that genuinely presses on your mood, and what community members have called a "dark, creepy" soundscape that earns every quiet moment. The systems are where ISR gets interesting and also where it trips over itself. Character progression is action-driven, shoot things and your shooting improves, run and your stamina attribute climbs, repair weapons and your crafting competency ticks upward. There are 128 Doctrines to invest in, functioning like a hybrid skill tree and perk board, and the serum economy ties everything together: serum buys weapons, ammo upgrades, and trainer sessions, but it also controls your infection level, which acts as a slow creeping debuff if you let it climb. The tiredness system piles on top of that, punishing players who skip rest stops inside buildings. None of these mechanics are explained gracefully. ISR respects you enough to let you figure it out, which is either charming or exhausting depending on your patience for systems documentation written in second-language English. The squad dynamic is one of the more underrated pieces. Up to seven AI teammates accompany you, each with their own background story, and the dialogue system branches enough that whole side threads can simply vanish depending on your choices. Weapons range from brass knuckles and baseball bats up through SMGs, shotguns, flamethrowers, and rocket launchers, with each weapon carrying upgrade tiers and bullet enhancement options. Occasionally a tank shows up and you can climb in. It is exactly as chaotic as that sounds. The hospital area in particular has been flagged by players for framerate drops when the infected swarm gets dense, and the indoor visibility when navigating small rooms is genuinely awkward, walls do not go semi-transparent, so close-quarters play becomes a guessing game. The inventory UI is clunky and the button targets for switching between companions are too small. These are real problems, not nitpicks. What redeems it is the accumulation of intent. This was Scorpius Games' first commercial release, built on their own engine, and the ambition of fitting a 20-plus hour story campaign with alternate-history lore, mutation mechanics, faction-aware quests, and a serum-as-currency ecosystem into a small indie release is hard not to respect. Steam reception settled around 66% positive across 99 reviews, which reads as "the people who liked it really liked it, the people who didn't bounced off the rough edges." That split is honest. ISR is not a polished product, but players who connect with its particular frequency describe something closer to an old-school Diablo-adjacent experience dressed in post-apocalyptic WW2 noir, and that is a rare enough combination to warrant attention at a low price point.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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