God Save Birmingham by South Korean developer Ocean Drive Studio is one of the hottest games on display at PAX East 2025, and after a hands-on session, it’s easy to understand why.

The game casts you as one of the few survivors of a zombie outbreak in a 1400s English village. Instead of blasting away with shotguns and grenades, you’ll have to arm yourself with pitchforks, hatchets, and the like to fend off the zombie hoard.

Survival is the name of the game here, as you’ll not only need to worry about having reliable weaponry, but ensuring you have food to satisfy your hunger, clean water to maintain hydration, bandages to treat your wounds, and a light source to aid you when the sun goes down, among other valuable resources.

When Darkness Falls

God Save Birmingham will undoubtedly remind you of the classic Resident Evil franchise—in particular the fourth entry which primarily takes place in a similar looking village setting, and enemies wielding many of the same weapons yourself can use here—but the inspiration behind the game is more in line with Project Zomboid and Dying Light. These games not only focus on making it through the zombie hoard unscathed, but also the basic survival needs of humans when the worst is upon them.

Unique nighttime mechanics are a compliment to this direction. When night falls, your vision is obviously impaired, but you’ll need to seek warmth with the dropping temperature. You’ll also need to conserve your stamina, as your body will be naturally more tired without the sun glaring down.

The night also affects your flesh hungry enemies, but not in the way you may suspect. Their bodies, too, will begin to relax as a natural response to the lack of sunlight, and they may even mimic sleep-like behavior, but get too close and their desire for food will kick into high gear, and escaping will be far harder when you can’t see properly.

Local fauna may also brave the zombie-infested village in the cover of darkness. These were not available during the current build of the game, but the idea is to have murderous crows, bloodthirsty wolves, and possibly even ravenous bears roam into the village in a desperate bid to find food and shelter. This mechanic reminds me greatly of what State of Decay 3 promises to bring to the zombie survival genre, and I’m greatly excited at the possibilities.

A Village Full of Possibilities

The current build of God Saves Birmingham is a sandbox where your only true goal is to survive. To keep things exciting and fresh, each time you begin a new game, your starting location within the village will be different. Furthermore item locations and enemy placement may also vary, ensuring that you never know what you may encounter.

Unique items can also be obtained if players know where to look. Places such as a blacksmith’s forge, an esteemed church, or a lord’s manor are prime locations to find more powerful gear like a great sword, halberd, or a suit of armor.

Likewise, these areas are also most likely to be the hunting grounds of more formidable foes. While there aren’t plans to introduce such outrageous creatures like Resident Evil’s licker or Left for Dead’s witch, zombies who were strong, talented men in life will carry on their enhanced attributes in death. This means that when facing down former knights or stout blacksmiths, you’re going to have a much harder time bringing them down.

Although God Save Birmingham will launch as a sandbox title, the team does have strong aspirations to include a narrative driven mode at a later date. This will include more scripted moments, collectibles to obtain, and an emotional story to become invested in.

Hands-On Impressions

My playtime with God Save Birmingham was mostly free of issues. I had a great thrill scavenging for resources, and running from the throng of undead villagers. I felt that for the most part the game was extremely intuitive; after just a few lessons from a presenter, I was making my way through buildings like a pro.

For most actions, you have to have the mouse reticle directly on the object, which did take a little getting used to. For instance, when I downed a foe, I often pressed the command to smash their skull in and prevent them from standing back up, but I would simply kick at the air unless I was aiming just right.

Another mild frustration was shaking off a flesh eater when they got a hold of me. There isn’t currently much of a struggle animation, so my character would just kind of spasm and take the zombie punishment while trying to slowly get away. I have extreme confidence that this will be improved upon however.

I didn’t make it too far into the demo—sun had just gone down on the first day when I finally met my fate—but that was entirely on me. After brushing off some walking corpses and filling my belly with pilfered eggs and bread, I snuck around a large building I would later discover to be an inn, and attracted way too much attention. I was able to valiantly escape, running through a back door, but became trapped in a small, one room abode with zero light just as night took over. When the door burst open, all I good see was the silhouettes of three hungry, shambling zombies coming for their meal, and I knew it was all over. The attendant next to me squirmed in her seat, as she struggled to see the massacre, and soon only the chewing of flesh and gnawing of bone could be heard.

I died gloriously.

God Save Birmingham is Coming Soon

God Save Birmingham delights in its unique perspective in the zombie genre. Its physics based game play and incredible attention to detail make this one of the more realistic zombie games I’ve ever played, achieving the kind of game play that I’ve desired from the zombie genre since first exploring the Spencer Mansion back in 1996. The fact that the game has only been in development for a single year is even more shocking, and speaks to the extreme talent the team at Ocean Drive Studio has assembled.

God Save Birmingham does not currently have a release date, but the title will be launching in early access on Steam “soon.” From here, the team hopes to generously take player feedback, and shape the game into the ultimate zombie survival experience. After spending time with them and the game, I have no doubts that this will be one we’ll be talking about for years to come.

God Save Birmingham is available to wishlist on Steam now.