Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden

XCOM MEETS STEALTH MEETS, ER, MUTANT DUCK AND BOAR-HUMANS

- Steve Boxer

On the list of elements you would most expect to find in an indie game, turn-based game play derived from a tabletop RPG would surely feature highly. On that criterion, it would appear easy to dismiss Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden as a clichéd indie game. But that would be unfair.

Yes, it was inspired by the cult Swedish tabletop RPG Mutant, which first appeared in the 1980s and has since endured in various iterations. But as far as its game play is concerned, Swedish developer The Bearded Ladies has drawn the vast majority of its inspiration from the mighty XCOM.

Even more impressively, it manages to find a new spin on XCOM’s familiar mechanics, via the addition of stealth. Which proves to be a necessary tweak, since Mutant Year Zero is pretty hard and thoroughly uncompromising. But the ability to stealth around, meticulously taking out straggling enemies to thin out the large and challenging group that you will eventually have to battle is a vital one.

Story-wise, Mutant Year Zero presents a fairly standard post apocalyptic scenario, but it’s nicely related and manages to avoid descending into the over-familiar. Initially, you control Dux and Bormin, mutant humans with, respectively, the head of a duck and the head of a boar. Dux majors on stealth, whereas Bormin is a tank. Soon, your party is extended to its full complement of three.