I picked up Zero Sievert to kill some time while waiting for the new STALKER to drop. Both games share the post-nuclear catastrophe setting, but this one is a 2D, top-down extraction shooter.


Since it's an extraction shooter, most of the game is spent diving into the procedurally-generated lawless zones, fighting monsters and different factions, while looting and shooting your way towards the source of the calamity. After each attempt you'll try to build up your own little base in the only safe space around Zakov: the bunker

The gunplay is actually quite enjoyable. The guns in Zero Sievert are fully customizable which means a lot of weapons can be made into whatever you want them to be e.g. close range mowers or scoped semi-snipers. Some maps encourage sneaking and clearing the way from a safe distance, while others force you into close-quarters combat.

One notable problem, in my opinion, is the lack of melee combat. If you get bum-rushed by a large number of mutants or animals at once, shooting them is a huge pain in the ass since they 'attack' you by phasing through your character. Combine that with many weapons having a pretty strict minimum engagement range and you end up dead fast.

All raids, of course, serve the purpose of making you stronger. Both by gaining levels and assigning perks to your weapons and character, which are fully reassignable and base modules which unfortunately are not. You can only set up a couple of them and AFAIK if you change your mind regarding a module, you'll lose all the updates of the one you uninstall. That said, I was happy with the choices I made and it was fun to dive into maps and try to get enough resources to upgrade my base to become strong enough for the late game.

Speaking of the maps, I really enjoyed the game world. It reminds me of the old STALKER games, where the zone 'lives' its own life. You'll frequently hear sounds of fighting and shooting alerting you to potential danger or opportunity. The different factions clearly hate each other based on the number of skirmishes that happen in the zone. One regrettable aspect would be lack of interactions with most of the factions while they're on the map. The friendly ones will greet you and unfriendly ones will shoot you, but that's about it. I think some additional quests you could pick up while already exploring, would make playing the game even more interesting.

The game clearly lacks a bit of polish here and there. There are odd artifacts that prevent you from walking through in some places. When extracting you'll often see the timer restart and map suddenly become 'weird'. What's more, the AI of the human enemies can be a bit inconsistent. Sometimes they'll start flanking and actually peek you in a smart way, but most of the time they'll blow themselves up with their own grenades and just run in circles or even stand in place when sniped from across the screen.


I like the art style of Zero Sievert. I enjoy pixel graphics in general and while the one here might not be top-notch, it's definitely solid work. Some maps are definitely more well-made than others. The Forest and Swamp are filled with repetitive assets, while the inside of the Mall and Zakov are way more interesting and original.

There isn't much music in the game, since I think it would be detrimental to the experience of being a solitary hunter. Additionally, listening to the sounds of your surroundings is crucial to your survival, since you can clearly hear what kind of a mutant is around the corner and even tell which weapons your enemies are using. The only problem I found is that the 3D 'positioning' of the sound can be a bit misleading. I would hear shooting to my right, but it was in a completely different place.


Probably the most disappointing part of the game. The story is mostly told through the missions' briefings, but to be honest, there's very little actual explanation of what's going on. More of a 'go there, do this, because generic reason'. The characters are forgettable and the ending left me rather dissatisfied. Perhaps it was rushed to meet the 1.0 release deadline?


I think Zero Sievert is a cool, little game to pick up. If you're waiting for STALKER 2's patches or a price drop it could be a nice way to get yourself into that depressing, loner mood of a slavic post-nuclear world, where the best cure for radiation is vodka. It offers a solid 20-30 hours of fun if you're playing on the lowest difficulty setting and way more if you actually need to watch out for your loadout or character (there's a permadeath mode). I think a DLC or patch to iron out some of the issues, flesh out the story and maybe add some more non-human enemies would also go a long way of making this game truly top-tier.