Ebola Village [IMPRESSIONS] – We have Resident Evil at Home 

It is impossible to look at Ebola Village without immediately acknowledging the tyrant-sized elephant in the room. From the moment you start playing, you know exactly what you are getting into… this isn’t just a survival horror game inspired by classics of the genre, but a game that wears its influences not just on its sleeve, but tattooed across its forehead. In fact, one might argue it rips them off a little too much, but who are we to judge? 

Check out some screenshots down below: 

The premise is standard genre fare: a massive Ebola outbreak has occurred, driving people into a violent state of insanity. You play as Maria, a woman returning to a remote Russian village to check on her mother, only to find the location overrun by vicious, mutated enemies. If that sounds familiar, the game is just getting started – the developer, Indie Games Studio (original name), clearly LOVES Resident Evil, and that affection is plastered over every inch of the experience. You have the classic, suspenseful door opening animations, herbs used for healing, and locked doors that require keys emblazoned with card suits to open, just to scratch the surface of the clear inspiration. There is even a not-so-subtle nod to Jill Valentine during the tutorial, and Maria eventually changes into an outfit that feels distinctly like a Temu Claire Redfield cosplay. I think the biggest compliment I could possibly give the game is that it feels just like a Resident Evil game… only… bad. 

Moving past the clear homage to Capcom’s beloved survival horror franchise, the experience begins to crumble under the weight of its own jank. The audio is exclusively in Russian, meaning you have to rely entirely on subtitles, which would be fine if the localization wasn’t so rough. The English translation is plagued by poor grammar and sentence structures that often border on nonsense, with it making for some unintentionally hilarious reading, particularly when you stumble across lore notes. At one point, I found a diary entry regarding a chainsaw-wielding madman who apparently treats a haemorrhoid with cucumbers… or something like that, I was so baffled by the text that I had to pause just to process what I had just read. Yeah, it’s clear throughout that English wasn’t the developer’s first language, and it just makes the storytelling of the game all the more bizarre. 

The gameplay unfortunately fares even worse than the script. The controls felt incredibly stiff, the aiming is iffy at best, and the movement logic is baffling – I found I could only move in four directions (forward, backward, left, and right) with absolutely no diagonal movement… it felt archaic and incredibly jarring. The enemy AI is generally dim-witted with foes blindly rushing you, yet they possess an uncanny, sniper-like accuracy when throwing weapons. Close-quarters combat is equally messy, and when enemies grapple you, the camera shifts awkwardly, creating a disorienting and unpolished visual cacophony that made me glad that the game didn’t take the modern Resident Evil approach by also being playable in virtual reality. 

Check out some screenshots down below: 

And yet, despite the broken English, the stiff movement, and the shameless borrowing of assets and ideas, there is something about Ebola Village that kept me invested. It is technically a bad game – actually, it is a really bad game – but it manages to be oddly entertaining and has a lot of heart. I found a strange satisfaction in the combat mechanics, specifically the gore system that allows you to shoot flesh off enemies, and whilst it doesn’t look good at all (the skulls of enemies actually look pretty funny), I could appreciate what the game was trying to do. 

So, where does that leave us? Is Ebola Village a bad game? Yes, absolutely. Do I hate it? Surprisingly, no. Will I keep playing? Maybe. As a big fan of Resident Evil, its blatant ripping off of everything about the series has fuelled a sort of morbid curiosity to see what strange, broken, or surprisingly fun thing it tries to do next… and hey, maybe playing this will help be appreciate the brilliance of Capcom’s series even more when Resident Evil Requiem releases next month. 

Developer: Indie Game Studio 
Publisher: Axyos Games Entertainment 
Platform(s): Xbox Series X|S (Played), PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC 
Website: https://indigame.ru/ 

What are our ‘Impressions’ features?
As a small part-time team with busy lives, we can’t always play every title to completion for a full review. Instead, our ‘Impressions’ features serve as a snapshot of our early experience with the full release of a game. We dive in for roughly 1 to 2 hours to get a feel for the mechanics, the presentation, the atmosphere, and the vibe of the game, all whilst offering our initial thoughts to answer the question: has it hooked us enough to want to keep playing?