When it comes to top-down action, the team at EKO Software know what's going on. I have put quite a few hours into Chaosbane so when I saw they were diving back into Zombies I had to jump on board.

Welcome to Paradize plays as a top-down survival/action game, set during a zombie apocalypse. It has the hallmarks of any survival game, explore, collect resources, craft better weapons and armor to help you survive the hordes of zombies, and I do mean hordes. Paradize throws zombies at you like they are going out of fashion. Very early on the game tells you its better to stand and fight. Running will cause you to be overwhelmed. You will explore swamps, forests knee deep in snow and even deserts.

The stand out for me is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. Filled with zany characters that will help you along in your journey, you take control of a nameless survivor who has just made it to Paradize to realize it's been overrun by zombies.

Your first task is to grab a stick and help defend the gates from a horde, this is your first experience with the combat system. I'm using a controller, so the left thumb stick controls the movement and the right controls the direction you are facing, while using the right bumper and trigger to do heavy and light attacks. There is both melee and ranged weapons, at the start its basic sticks and bows and advances to rifles, shotguns and even flamethrowers.

Very quickly you are introduced to the crux of Welcome to Paradize, you get your very own pet zombie, lovingly called a "˜Zombot', which you can customize with different behaviors, weapons and cosmetics. The options are basic at the beginning, but I started to find some amazing combinations very early on. You can equip your Zombot with a Bullseye, so it takes aggro from any ranged enemies; or ram giant spikes through it, teach it how to taunt and have all the enemies run up to give it big spikey hugs. You don't get everything at once but the pace that I was unlocking new goodies was quick enough.

The other massive part of Welcome to Paradize is crafting yourself a home base. This is where the game gets a little bit janky. You can automate your camp using your Zombots to collect resources for you and defend your camp while you're away exploring. What a brilliant mechanic right? But with little in the way of tutorials and a very in-depth customization menu you are left to just figure it out. Some of it was self-explanatory, you need water? Give your Zombot a bucket, put him beside some water and away he goes. However I was tasked with planting some vegetables, I had some seeds, but nothing was happening. After some google searches, I found out I needed a pickaxe too, so I had to go off and search for one (found one in the desert if you're wondering). Also, the Zombots are attached to pylons which groups your workers together. Each pylon has different profiles, you with me so far? You need to equip one profile with seeds add another profile and equip that one with the pick axe and hey presto you have got some carrots.

I love to build big sprawling bases, this was a massive drawing card for me. I found the structure placement to be clunky with the no clipping area around the buildings to be too big, so your base is very spread out. I had to move a few times because you can't build over a fallen tree or rocks which got old quickly.

You can build walls and traps and assign your Zombots to activate the traps when enemies are near, however I found they just didn't do what they were tasked with doing, so I would have to run back to base to help defend it, defeating the purpose of the traps all together. The walls snapped together very well, however the traps seemed to have big outlines that didn't allow you to place them close to anything leaving big gaps between your walls and the traps. It would have been good to see a snapping feature for them too.

There are 3 different skill trees you can spec your hard earned xp into.

• Hacking: This is based around upgrading your Zombots health and damage, you can even teach it to heal you. You can also give it its own little zombot friend.
• Combat: Based around your melee and ranged damage.
• Survival: allows you to upgrade your health, stamina and crafting abilities.

At the start I spread my skills between the trees, after reading through the skills I dumped everything into hacking. So I now have a small army of zombots following me around causing havoc. There is no cost to resetting your skills so go nuts!

The graphics are nothing groundbreaking, but they fit the aesthetics well. I did notice every person I came across in the world was old, not sure what that was about. I did have a few dashboard crashes and a bug that would freeze my aiming direction until I quit and reloaded, nothing too serious.

Welcome to Paradize also has a great Co-op mode where you can join your friends. I had my game set to open, but I didn't have anyone join. Defiantly would be great fun with friends, but randoms didn't want any help.

It's been an amazing journey into Paradize. If you can figure out the menus, it's a great game and well worth the trip.

Game was reviewed on Xbox Series X. Game is also available on Playstation and Steam.