Introduction

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is a hybrid mix between turn-based strategy and a free-roam RPG, developed and published by Bearded Ladies Consulting and Funcom respectively. While it takes ideas from the basic concoction of strategy games, it sets itself apart from the group with a nice sprinkling of compelling story and some truly bizarre and unique characters. The main characters featured are an anthropomorphised duck, creatively named Dux, and a hog called Bormin. The game doesn't focus exclusively on animal-orientated characters, however, so you'll see plenty of humans and mutants, as well as light-humored, post-apocalyptic bots that somehow still function.



While the game doesn't have a particularly large budget, it does a damn fine job of giving games like XCOM a seriously good run for the money. The graphics are pretty tight, the storyline is well written and implemented, and the game systems and items, while vaguely shallow, are all right where they need to be to compete in the TBS market. Much of the game heavily relies on stealth and resourcefulness since your characters are quite vulnerable, and it does a fairly good job of stapling on the stealth mechanic despite it being a tricky prospect. It does manage to make light of the apocalypse by offering a light humored narrative of how ridiculous human life was before mutants became a thing, and constantly pokes fun at some of its own tropes.

I also made a video review, see below: