ZERO Sievert

This review was created using an LCD Steam Deck. OLED testing will be carried out soon.

While I am not a fan of shooters like Call of Duty, I will happily play them if they offer something that appeals to me, like the Stalker franchise, Arma 3, and Cyberpunk 2077. They provide great immersion or massive customization to play as I wish. I have lost count of how many hours I have invested in these three games alone.

Then, there are multiplayer extraction shooters like Hunt Showdown and Escape From Tarkov. While I have never played the latter and have no intention of doing so, I always wished I had something similar that could be played and enjoyed alone.

In 2022, my prayers were answered. Zero Sievert is a top-down extraction shooter that feels like someone blended Stalker and Escape From Tarkov into a 2D blender. I like many games, so that might not come as rare praise, but I’ve always returned to it when I need downtime. Thanks to some recent updates, it is also a great experience on the Steam Deck. Although it isn't perfect, Zero Sievert was on my shortlist of best Early Access titles at launch and has improved considerably in the past few years.

This game is not easy; everything about Zero Sievert sells that reality. In a post-apocalyptic nuclear hellscape, humanity has regressed to surviving in bunkers, fighting desperately to survive at all costs. It is survival of the fittest, and whoever blinks first will often die. You start as a nobody in the bunker; to survive, you must learn quickly. While it contains some tutorials, most of the game is taught through trial and error. It throws a lot at the player, but you can customize difficulty whenever you wish with tons of modifiers to tweak for your play style.

What sold me is how well the game combines everything. The hardcore survival mechanics, brutal combat, and the ‘one more turn’ gameplay loop made this an easy game to love. I’m notorious for being terrible at games, but I find Zero Sievert so much fun that I never get put off failure.

The gameplay loop is simple enough: take quests inside the bunker from various factions, head to one of several randomized maps, and explore. You get to keep whatever you find on the map and survive with, but if you die, you lose all your loot. I also appreciated how atmospheric Zero Sievert is. The graphics are nothing to write home about, but the environments are rich in detail with immersive sound design.

While in the wilderness, you must consider your Health, energy, thirst, hunger, and radiation and manage them to survive. Weapons will degrade in durability, and most weapons need their separate ammo. In the wilderness, death comes quickly for the player. Enemy humans, ghouls, and hungry animals all hit hard, and constant radiation makes prolonged exposure outside the bunker dangerous.

With the custom difficulty settings, you can change virtually everything regarding the gameplay. Don’t fancy being killed in a couple of hits? Reduce enemy damage. You can even keep items on death and turn off the need to sleep. I’m happy keeping settings at default, but this was a nice accessibility addition to the game.

The only way to escape the map is by reaching an extraction point. Since all maps are randomized, There’s no way of predicting where they might be, so make good use of your map at all times! With the high-stakes gameplay, this leads to some brilliant moments. Often, I scrambled to the extraction point with my hungry, badly wounded character as fast as I could, necking my last anti-rad pills to prevent the radiation spikes from melting my insides while dodging enemies. I had a couple of bad maps when the extraction points spawned in a location I couldn’t get to, but these were rare. Map generation has improved greatly over time. Right now, there are five different map biomes. Only the Forest location is available immediately, and the others are unlocked by carrying out various missions within the bunker.

Between excursions, there’s plenty to do within the bunker. You can upgrade their lodgings with different modules, trade with locals, take on jobs, store loot, and rest. Many different weapons and items are available, all with different strengths and weaknesses. It sounds overwhelming, but there isn’t any rush.

Upgrading your base requires massive resources: a single module can take hours to accumulate. The grind in Zero Sievert is considerable, even with the addictive gameplay. Performance is pretty solid, but you will see a few frame drops when transitioning from the bunker to a map. This happens on any system, not just the Steam Deck. It’s nothing major, but it is something to consider.

ZERO Sievert - Steam Deck Performance

Overall, Zero Sievert is quite an enjoyable experience on the Steam Deck. There are a couple of quirks to consider regarding controls, but you won’t be disappointed with this. It has an official ‘Playable’ rating through Valve and will show the default mouse and keyboard controls. However, it was reported that correct controller icons were showing up on other Steam Decks playing the game. You just have to make sure you change the controller scheme to "Gamepad with Joystick Trackpad" in the controller settings for the game through Steam. There aren’t many graphical options to tweak in the game, and our options have little difference in performance.

Let’s talk about performance first. Zero Sievert runs great at the stock settings (60hz, 60FPS, and nothing tweaked), but it drains more with a TDP uncapped than I expected. On my LCD Steam Deck, it was most intensive when in the bunker, with an average of 11W. I expected it to sip more power when I was away from the bunker with all the environmental design, but it dropped to an average of 10w. While this is solid, a 40hz refresh rate is the way to go. There isn’t any real advantage to keeping it at a full 60hz, and the power draw decreased to an average of 9W on 40hz.

Zero Sievert can also be played very well at a low TDP. At 40hz with a 3-4W TDP, I found some impressive results. Most of the time, I managed at least 30FPS, although 40FPS was manageable as long as there weren't too many enemies fighting on the screen. I did find some significant framerate drops when managing my inventory to the mid-20s. These weren’t frequent enough to be a dealbreaker, though they happened more often at the 3W TDP. If you want to cap the TDP limit, I recommend keeping it to 4. The loading screen drops happened on all systems and at different TDP limits, so I wouldn’t lose sleep over this.

One obvious improvement is battery life. At this TDP limit, Zero Sievert had an average power draw of 6.6W, giving the LCD Steam Deck an estimated 5-6 hours of battery life. This is a significant increase from having settings kept in stock mode, although over 4 hours of battery life in default mode is also decent.

If you don’t mind some slow moments in inventory, I recommend going for the low TDP/40HZ mode for Zero Sievert. There isn’t much of an advantage to going 60FPS, and you will greatly increase battery life. If you want an experience that is as smooth as possible, an uncapped TDP will be your way forward. For consistency's sake, I will leave the TDP untouched in the Steam Deck settings, but you will also have a decent time with the battery-saving option.

Accessibility

Zero Sievert is playable in English, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese.

You can change the screen resolution and freely adjust the grass and fog of war density. Within the Data Collection screen, you can also turn off analytics.

There are no options for colorblind support, and the font cannot be changed or resized. However, it is fairly readable on the Steam Deck LCD. While Zero Sievert’s accessibility options on the technical side are disappointing, the custom difficulty offers a ton of modifiers. Everything can be freely tweaked from economy to progression. You can make it as easy as possible or a hardcore death simulator where even a single failure spells the end of your run.

Conclusion

There is a lot to like about Zero Sievert. It has been in Early Access for a couple of years now, and despite a couple of slips down the slope, I’ve found it to be a great experience overall. A single-player extraction shooter is rare in the gaming market, and it rises to the occasion.

Zero Sievert is available on Steam for $19.99 but frequently goes on sale. It is a solid pick if you are in the mood for an atmospheric extraction shooter for your Steam Deck.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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