When Steam created its Greenlight service in 2012, which simplified the entrance of independent games on Valve’s popular store, no one thought that there would be a flood of “asset flips”. For those unfamiliar with the term, an asset flip is a piece of shovelware that features pre-made assets, barely changed and packaged in a way that avoids any legal quarrels. From bog-standard Minecraft clones to lazy survival games, the most prevalent type of asset flip was zombie shooters, all with the same mind-numbing gameplay loop and lack of variety.
Those days may seem like a thing of the past, but alas, that is not the case. Deadly Rain is a triple-B game: basic, boring, and banal. The most direct inspiration is Call of Duty’s zombie game mode, only on one map and with no multiplayer function whatsoever. After choosing their difficulty, players are presented with an ugly, darkly lit Soviet village that just so happens to feature a church, a mansion, an industrial complex, and a cabin all next to each other. The level design is so simple, that it is as if no real thought was put on the placement of each of these sub-areas, which can be unlocked with keys which randomly spawn in each round.
The random locations could be excused if they were fun to run through. Instead, they rank among the most barren, slapped-together areas in these cheap shooters: no props, no graffiti, absolutely nothing is found indoors. Not even the bare-minimum set dressing, like old cabinets inside the medical centre or beds in the mansion, are present. It makes Deadly Rain lack any type of identity, further exacerbated by the painfully vapid soundscape: no music, repeated sound effects for the creatures, and no changing reverb based on player placement.
Deadly Rain is such a low-effort and poorly-tested shooter, a physically draining experience to sit through, that the final nail in the coffin came when a bolt-action rifle was acquired around round seven. One would expect this to be a powerful yet slow-firing weapon, that requires careful aiming to bring down a heavy zombie. The gun can be fired like a semi-automatic rifle, the reloading animation completely glitching as five bullets are fired in 2 seconds. Such a ridiculous oversight is emblematic of the whole of Deadly Rain, a nauseatingly claustrophobic and repetitive zombie game that no one should experience. It is very likely that this exists as nothing more than a cheap cash grab from unassuming customers who confuse this for a fun and functioning CoD Zombies homage.
