Escape Dead Island vs Highrisers
Escape Dead Island
Escape Dead Island is a Telltale-inspired, story-driven survival-mystery spin-off for the Dead Island franchise where the game's fans will be able to uncover the story behind the zombie outbreak through the eyes of documentary journalist Cliff Calo and fill in the gap between the first Dead Island game and the upcoming Dead Island sequel. Unlike the open world game that the franchise was defined by, this spin-off uses a comic-like style to bring the story to life. The virtual environment is also reactive to your every decision and as such, you might want to sometimes opt for a stealthier option rather than diving straight into combat, especially when the combat system - since it's not the main focus of the game and all - can be a bit boring.Escape Dead Island is very different from what you might be used to in Dead Island or Dead Island Riptide, and despite the heavy use of backtracking, the story and animation made everything worthwhile, especially if you're into this kind of stuff.
Highrisers
Highrisers is an “escape from the tower”-style survival-slash-resource management game that’s fairly similar to the first Skyhill game, except that instead of traveling to the lobby, your end goal here is to scavenge the resources you need from the lower floors to fix the helicopter on the rooftop so your team of 4 survivors (if none of them died, that is) can escape the tower. It’s basically a quarter of the plot of Zack Synder’s most recent and relatively controversial zombie flick, Army of the Dead, really… and like the film, the game is fun but it has its own caveats.And of course, there are the zombies… ahem… I mean, mutants that will attack your team and any fortifications you’ve put up if they spot you… so there’s that.
For what it’s worth, I really liked resource management-based survival games like Highrisers and I have had a pretty good experience with the game myself, minus all the issues I’ve pointed out. The game definitely has some good stuff going for it, but the dev team really needs to work on the game more to revamp some of the gameplay designs and also to fix the game-breaking bugs reported by their players. Only then I would be comfortable recommending the game. For now though, it’s probably wise to keep it in your wishlist.