Zombies Overloaded, created by Vinterm Games, is very much what you see is what you get. Since I covered it during the February Steam Next Fest season, the game has been fully released with new maps and content. If you want to hear my initial impressions of Zombies Overloaded, you can read the review for its demo here. 

A Walking Armory

The basics of combat in Zombies Overloaded start with the weapon and item pickups. To summarize really quickly, there are five different guns in the game. The pistol is the weak but reliable starter with infinite ammo. The assault rifle has more DPS but runs out of ammo quickly. A shotgun has short to mid-range damage with falloff but can clear small hordes within 2-3 shots. The flamethrower is the short-range piercing weapon. And lastly, the space gun is the “railgun” of the game, dealing high damage that pierces full screen at the cost of having the lowest amount of bullets.

Just as, if not more importantly, are the other pickups. The demo review erroneously mentioned that adrenaline “increases attack power,” which is not true. What adrenaline actually does is heals the player to full and make them invulnerable for a few seconds. This is corrected now because it will be much, much more important later on. Alongside this are the speed boosts which lasts for a few seconds, and the nuke that deals a massive amount of damage to every enemy on screen. Occasionally, a crate or an explosive barrel also spawns. 

Overloading With Violence

Zombies Overloaded, at its core, is about surviving as many waves as possible of enemies between two game modes: Overloaded, and Pacifism, which will have its own designated section. Overloaded Mode has the player survive wave after wave of an increasing number of enemies, with every five waves featuring a boss that depends on the map. Pacifism has the player survive wave after wave, unable to shoot, though speed shoes and adrenaline will spawn. At the time of writing, there are three maps for Overloaded and two for Pacifism. 

Bones to Pick

The real objective of Zombies Overloaded, for the first few hours of gameplay, is collecting bones. Bones are the most important resource that the player can have, for a multitude of reasons. For starters, bones can be traded in for coins. Coins are used for meta progression and unlocks. You can upgrade your character by giving him more health, dealing more damage, being faster, and increasing their bone pickup radius. An update that rolled out also includes weapon upgrades, giving the guns more value. 

However, where bones really come in is the mid-match store. The pause menu also functions as a store where the player can spend their bones to instead gain pickups immediately. This includes paying to grab a gun of their choice and ammo. But most importantly, players can buy adrenaline at a fairly costly price. Adrenaline giving the player health and making them invulnerable is game-breaking, making surviving to higher rounds in Zombies Overloaded more about how many bones you have to spare on using adrenaline alongside learning how to kite enemies around in the top-down view. 

Electrifying Maps

The demo for Zombies Overloaded only had one map, No Escape, so seeing how the other maps and their associated bosses was interesting. Corned only has one entrance for the zombies, making a good chunk of the map roomier and safe for kiting. The map makes up for that by spawning in zombie rats, who are much faster than zombies and harder to hit, and the giant SWAT zombie boss. The SWAT boss has a number of different moves depending on distance, with his tracking shots being particularly deadly as it takes 1-2 shots landing to bring you down.

Blackout, the other Overloaded map, has a few interesting gimmicks. The map has a new item that spawns: an electric barrel. This barrel gives a new effect once exploded, giving the player the powers of both speed and adrenaline at the same time. The catch is that if a zombie is caught in its detonation, they get increased health and also move slightly faster. The boss of Blackout, Dr. Rotstein, also brings a new gimmick as he’s more of a support character that electrifies the zombies spawning in with him rather than directly attacking the player.

Final Thoughts

Zombies Overloaded is a tough game to rate and critique, as it really is very simple. There isn’t anything that the game does wrong, but it does not exceed the initial impressions either. The comic book-esque art style is fine. The gameplay loop is repetitive, but offers plain dumb fun. The fact that the game got an update in the middle of writing this review is promising, as I wonder where else Vinterm Games will take this project. As it stands, if you’re looking for a short little game to have fun with, Zombies Overloaded is a good choice for it.

Zombies Overloaded was released June 27th, 2025. It retails for $5.99.