Empire of Zombies

Empire of Zombies leans hard into its own joke: you're not a dark lord so much as a necromantic middle manager, and the store page literally pitches the game as "Become the CEO of the Apocalypse." Solo developer Tomasz Letki, who also publishes it, released the game on 12 March 2026 for a low NZ$5.99. It's a dark-fantasy idle clicker: recruit skeletons, zombies, and ghosts, assign them to resource jobs or combat duty, and grind through a map of increasingly dangerous kingdoms while a prestige system lets you reset for permanent bonuses. The Steam review sample is thin, just six reviews, split exactly three positive and three negative, but the disagreement in those six reviews maps cleanly onto real, verifiable strengths and weaknesses.

A slow, resource-heavy build from almost nothing

The opening hours are genuinely sparse. The early-game screenshot captured for this review shows the entire starting state: one Level 1 Skeleton unit, a single "Peasant" target with 5 hit points, and a world map with thirteen of its fourteen territories still locked, everything from the Elven Kingdom to the Void Dimension greyed out and unavailable. One reviewer described exactly this stretch: "Beginning is very slow, you really need quite a few hours to achieve anything. But after unlocking the second unit, game pace and fun increase a lot." That's echoed by the game's own scaling curve, visible in the mid-to-late game screenshot, worker counts climb into the hundreds, resource hauls into the tens of thousands, and treasure chest rewards deliver 49,000 of each material plus bonus units in a single collection. The jump between those two screenshots is a useful illustration of how idle-clicker pacing is supposed to work: a slow, unrewarding start that eventually snowballs, and reviewers who stuck around long enough to see the second unit unlock generally came away more positive than those who didn't.

Not everyone made that jump favourably, though. One reviewer with over 10 hours logged (1,039 minutes) was blunt about what's underneath the resource curve: "Hardly any game here. Assign workers to collect materials. Summon undead to attack. Prestige if you get enough kills... There is almost no progression even after 10 hours." That's a real tension in the review sample worth naming directly: the game rewards patience with bigger numbers, but at least one long-session player concluded the underlying loop stayed mechanically flat the whole way through, even as the numbers grew.

Automation that reportedly needs babysitting

The store page promises true passive play, "Your army works 24/7, even while you're catching some Z's," but one reviewer specifically disputes how reliable that automation actually is: "The so called automation is a joke unless turned on before you close the game." Read plainly, that's a claim that offline/background progress depends on leaving a specific toggle active before exiting, rather than working automatically as the marketing implies, an easy trap for a new player to fall into on their first session. This review can't independently verify the mechanic's exact behaviour beyond what's stated in the store text and this reviewer's account, but it's a specific, checkable claim rather than a vague complaint, and it directly contradicts the game's own "make bank while you sleep" framing, so it's worth flagging plainly rather than omitting.

Interface scaling is the clearest, most repeated complaint

This is the one area where the review sample is unanimous rather than split, and the screenshots back it up. Two separate reviewers raised the exact same issue independently. One wrote: "Only works on higher resolution screens... There is no challenge." Another was more specific about the fix needed: "Game desperately needs a graphics or interface options menu so that resolution can be adjusted and it can be played on smaller screens. As stands cannot recommend." The achievements-panel screenshot gathered for this review shows exactly what that looks like in practice, a long scrollable list of achievement categories and progress bars occupying a narrow strip of the window, with a large, mostly empty dark background stretching above and below the actual game content. Whatever screen the developer designed around, it evidently doesn't match what a meaningful share of players are running, and with no visible display or scaling options, there's currently no way for affected players to fix it themselves.

Fifteen-plus units and a long territory ladder

To the game's credit, the structural bones for a lengthy idle campaign are genuinely there. The store page lists more than fifteen named unit types, from a basic Skeleton up through Doom Bringers and Lich Kings, alongside named buildings (Dark Forge, Soul Well, Bone Factory) and a Prestige system framed as "Reincarnation for Pros." The territory map alone spans fourteen zones, Human Lands, Elven Kingdom, Wild Barbarians, Mighty Orcs, Knightly Lands, Dwarven Mines, Holy Citadel, Frozen North, Demon Realm, Celestial Plane, Dragon Peaks, Titan Realm, and Void Dimension, each gated behind the last, with individual zones going up to level 100 in the mid-game screenshot. One reviewer summed up the tone well: "Empire of Zombies is surprisingly addictive! The mechanics are super interesting and keep you engaged for hours. For this price, it's an absolute steal." Another, shorter review simply called it "a sloooow game but i dig it," which is arguably the most honest one-line summary available: the pacing is a real cost, but it's a cost some players are happy to pay.

Verdict

Empire of Zombies is a cheap, competently-built idle clicker with a genuinely large content ladder underneath its comic-necromancer branding, but its review sample points to two consistent weak spots rather than one. The interface scaling problem is the more serious of the two, it's flagged independently by multiple reviewers, visible in the screenshots themselves, and currently has no in-game fix. The disputed automation reliability is a narrower but still concerning claim that prospective buyers should weigh before assuming the "idle while you sleep" pitch works exactly as advertised. For NZ$5.99, players willing to tolerate a slow opening stretch and a fixed display layout will likely find the addictive curve several reviewers describe; players on smaller or unusually configured screens should be aware going in that there's currently no way to adjust for it.