Dread Dawn Review: Dawn’t Bother—A Zombie Survival Game That’s Dead on Arrival

Dread Dawn had potential—on paper, at least. A zombie survival game in a gritty, chaotic open world, with crafting, combat, and waves of undead terror? Sounds great. Sadly, once you dive in, it quickly becomes apparent that this is one of those games that only lets you have fun in rare, fleeting moments—and even those are few and far between. If I had to sum it up: Dread Dawn is a tedious slog wrapped in zombie skin, with just enough ambition to keep you curious, but not nearly enough execution to make it enjoyable.

A Zombie Game That Lurches from One Boring Mechanic to Another

Right from the start, Dread Dawn teases you with a promising setup. You’re holed up in a school with other survivors after the obligatory zombocalypse, and the way the camera pans across the desperate, makeshift living arrangements creates an atmosphere of dread and tension. The sound design is even more impressive, capturing the chaos of this ruined world—alarms blaring, panicked survivors screaming, fires crackling in the distance. It’s a haunting soundscape that pulls you in.

But then, the game hits you with the first of many frustrations. Looting. Instead of rewarding exploration, looting in Dread Dawn is like watching paint dry. Every container, every corpse, every bookshelf requires an agonizingly slow process, with loading bars and a limited inventory that forces you to constantly drag items around. It's not that the stuff you find is bad; it's just that the act of looting itself is a joyless chore. Imagine trying to enjoy a good book while someone next to you is loudly farting—yeah, that’s what looting feels like here.

Combat: When a Screwdriver Is More Effective Than a Pistol

Combat should be a highlight in any zombie game, right? Sadly, Dread Dawn manages to suck the fun out of this too. Early on, you find a screwdriver, which becomes your primary weapon against the undead. You’d think finding a gun would make things better, but no. The pistol is so weak it makes the screwdriver look like Thor’s hammer by comparison. Combat feels clunky and unsatisfying, with melee attacks that barely affect zombies and ranged weapons that don’t pack nearly enough punch. Even the game’s giant zombie hordes, while visually impressive, are more of a nuisance than a thrill. The AI leads these massive crowds into predictable lines, making them more of an obstacle to avoid than a real threat to overcome.

System Messiness? Occasionally Interesting, Mostly Frustrating

There are moments when the game hints at something more. Early on, I accidentally kicked a football into a sleeping survivor, and he decided to follow me around for a minute, knocking me over every time I got back up. It’s these weird, glitchy, and sometimes anarchic moments that offer a glimpse of what Dread Dawn could have been—an unpredictable sandbox full of chaotic fun. But they never amount to much. These glimpses of interesting scenarios fade into the background, leaving you to deal with the game’s more tedious and frustrating systems.

Inventory Anxiety: Too Much Stuff, Not Enough Fun

Dread Dawn’s economy is all kinds of strange, with absurdly priced items like $800 cooked chickens and $200 guns. It gives you a sense of scarcity that makes you want to hoard everything you find. But inventory space is limited, and looting every single zombie after a horde fight quickly turns into a nightmare of dragging and dropping items, pixel hunting for corpses, and feeling an ever-growing sense of anxiety about what you might be leaving behind. It’s not fun—it’s just stressful.

Some Glimmers of Fun: Skateboards and Water Hoses

There are a couple of bright spots. At one point, I found a skateboard, which provided a brief five minutes of joy before the crowded streets turned it into a tool of constant self-destruction. More surprisingly, the game’s fire hoses—randomly placed around the world—are oddly satisfying to use. You can control the water’s intensity, and the hoses snake and squirm in a way that’s strangely more enjoyable than anything else in the game. In fact, it made me wish the whole game had been about putting out fires with a hose full of “zombie-killing juice.” It would’ve been a much better experience.

Conclusion: Avoid the Dawn

There’s a point in Dread Dawn where you realize that the writing isn’t interesting, the crafting system is rote, and the exploration is painful. Once you hit that wall, all that’s left is the appeal of killing zombies—and there are far better zombie games out there. The game’s core mechanics are broken, the combat is frustrating, and the looting is a slow grind that drags down the entire experience.

Unless you’re the kind of player who enjoys punishing themselves with survival systems that make chopping wood feel like a form of medieval torture, I can’t recommend Dread Dawn. Sure, there are tiny sparks of ingenuity here and there, but they’re buried under so much murk and mediocrity that it’s just not worth the effort.

So, in case it wasn’t clear: Dread Dawn is a hard pass. Don’t buy it, and don’t let it waste your time. There are better ways to survive the zombie apocalypse.