How one billionaire flew to Mars and what came of it. Review of the shooter Deadzone: Rogue

Deadzone: Rogue is Returnal without the extra pathos and astronomical budgets, but with a powerful 1990s shooter vibe. And it's a good game. Now for some details.

To avoid any misunderstandings, let's repeat once again that Deadzone: Rogue is a roguelike shooter, so although there is a plot here, it is fully revealed only after completing the same missions multiple times. There are enough of them here, but still, you will have to die and start over more than once in the same locations.

The game takes place on the ISS-X ship, which billionaire and great CEO Elias Knight, of course with a certificate next to his name on the ship's social network, has sent to colonize Mars. The CEO insists that everyone on board the ship must post daily to the ship's SIG network, and anyone who doesn't will be fired. Yes, Prophecy Games, we know who you mean. We don't like him either.

Of course, everything didn't go according to plan. You wake up after suspended animation in a small cabin somewhere in the bowels of the ship. A gun in your hand, in your thoughts - a desire to find out what happened here. So forward to destroying hordes of androids and mutants, searching for logs, dying and starting all over again. Something reminds me of this.

In fact, Deadzone: Rogue is a kind of multi-layered homage to many games from the 1990s. The design of some monsters directly refers us to the classic DOOM, the plot seems to be borrowed from another popular game about mutants and a supercomputer on a spaceship (yes, its remake was recently released), the color gradation of weapons/armor - white, green, blue, purple, gold - from the classic Diablo.

As we already said, Deadzone: Rogue is a roguelike shooter for 1-4 players. So you will have to travel through 20-30 small levels of corridors / arenas, where you need to destroy all enemies, collect useful colorful loot and get skill upgrades or an item that gives some kind of bonus. Repeat 20-30 times.

There are only three major main story missions in the game (the last one was added with the release of version 1.0 five days ago), but don't try to rush through them, it's unlikely to work. It's better to distract yourself with additional missions, where you can get resources for upgrading parameters that are saved between runs, additional base builds, and weapon skins. But the main thing is experience, because in these additional missions you are forced to fight with specific builds, with specific weapons, this helps you better understand how this game works and how to choose a combination that suits your fighting style.

And there are really a lot of these combinations here. At the first level, everything seems simple. Skills, additional skills, prefixes, affixes and elemental weapon damage. At the second level, super-quality items are revealed that affect the gameplay. At the third, synergy appears between skills and items.

Understanding all this, looking for your own build and weapons is no less interesting than shooting the monsters themselves. After a dozen runs, I chose for myself a reinforced shield, a cold weapon (killing gives temporary invisibility), and increased elemental effects. It works well.

But the main dish in Deadzone: Rogue is, of course, shooting. And it is, firstly, good, and secondly, very nostalgic. It's like being transported to the 1990s and playing DOOM for the first time. There is something from boomer shooters here, but modern game mechanics are not forgotten. It's nice to play and this principle of "five more levels - and then sleep" works here, and this, in my opinion, is one of the biggest compliments for the game.

As for the plot. Already at the end of the first level you will understand what it is all about. Moreover, you may even remember the game that the authors were imitating. However, even knowing what awaits you ahead, reading new logs that appear in the main and additional missions is interesting. There is enough satire here, both on one specific person and on some modern phenomena, for example, on the so-called influencers.

Regarding the graphics and technical side of the game. Deadzone: Rogue cannot be called the most detailed and modern game. In the corridors of ISS-X there are not enough small objects and details and the graphics are a bit primitive, however, in the fragment that will be shown after the final credits, the graphics are much better, plus there is open space. And yes, this is a kind of reserve for the sequel, which, I hope, will still happen.

I played on a powerful gaming laptop ACER Predator Helios 18 PH18-73 Abyssal Black, for which I would like to express my special gratitude to Acer, which helped me out with a gaming system while I was repairing my own PC. At maximum graphics settings, including ray tracing, surround lighting, and DLAA anti-aliasing, the system produced a stable 75+ frames at 2560×1440. I didn't see any glitches, although the developers don't recommend using the latest NVIDIA drivers, but they were the ones I had.

This is quite unexpected, but Deadzone: Rogue has Ukrainian localization. At first I was very happy, because this is the fifth game in a row that I have launched that had Ukrainian. After the first run, I, unfortunately, decided to switch to English. The Ukrainian here is an AI translation and its quality leaves much to be desired - you can understand what is being said, but the errors are annoying. On the other hand, the English here is not very difficult.

Deadzone: Rogue was released in Steam Early Access in September 2024, and has now received a third act and patch 1.0. The console version is due out in September 2025. Back at the EA stage, the game sold 300,000 copies, now it seems to be 400,000. The number of players has been growing steadily since the full release and has already reached 7,600 people online. Not bad for an indie.

In short – pay attention to this game, especially if you like classics. On the occasion of the release, Deadzone: Rogue can be purchased with a 20% discount, for only 359 UAH. Believe me, the pleasure here is worth a larger amount. We wish the authors better sales and are already waiting for the sequel, the events of which will unfold on [CENSORED]…