Puzzles & Survival is a mobile game set after the zombie apocalypse. The player must survive in the wasteland by building a base, gathering resources, forming alliances, fighting zombies and other players. The game combines match-three puzzle games with survival base building.
Puzzles & Survival contains examples of:
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The higher the level of any building, the more resources are required to upgrade it. For instance, upgrading to level 30 headquarters requires more than 210 million food. Troops also progressively take more resources to train at the higher tiers.
- Allegedly Free Game: The game is free to download on the app store, but it quickly becomes very difficult to progress without spending any money on upgrading the player headquarters, purchasing resources, or powerful heroes. Players who do spend money will quickly be able to overpower those who don't.
- After the End: Set after a zombie apocalypse caused by a virus left the world a wasteland. Survivors fight each other for resources and dominance over the wasteland.
- Arbitrary Gun Power: Heroes that use guns as one of their combat skills cannot instantly kill opponents. When their shooting skills are used in combat, they only cause health damage to the enemies.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Only five heroes may be deployed at one time per march or puzzle battle. You can also only assign five heroes to sanctuary defense, with the rest being on standby.
- Character Level: Your Commander can level up through experience points, unlocking talent points which can be used to unlock special skills and improve stats. Experience points are gained through winning battles and can also be bought in some of the shops.
- Combat Tentacles: The hero Marlowe has a mutated arm with tentacles that he uses in the puzzle battles to inflict damage on enemies.
- Freemium Timer: Stamina and energy regenerate very slowly. Building upgrades can take several real world days to finish at the higher levels.
- Loot Boxes: This game is full of loot boxes. Some are literal, and others are disguised, but still are gambles. You can buy various tokens to get more chances at these loot boxes in the in-game mall with real money.
- Match-Three Game: The puzzles involve matching at least three pieces of the same color to make corresponding heroes of that color inflict damage onto an opponent. Each color is stronger or weaker than another color. Creating combos and deploying multiple heroes of the same color inflicts more damage. However, if your team of heroes lacks a color, pieces of the missing color will either deal no damage or Scratch Damage when matched.
- Monster Clown: Some of the enemies are zombie clowns wielding baseball bats.
- Plunder: One way of gaining resources is by attacking other players' sanctuaries and stealing theirs.
- Newbie Immunity: New players are given three-day shields that prevent them being attacked by other players.
- Writing Around Trademarks: Several of the characters are blatant rip-offs of popular characters from other media.
- Doctor J is basically the Jared Leto version of The Joker with a slightly different wardrobe and hairstyle.
- Requiem is Michonne if she were played by Hannah John-Kamen. There's even a TWD tie-in event that gives you a Michonne skin for Requiem as a reward.
- Ulrik is a barely-disguised version of Immortan Joe.
- Nataly bears a strong resemblance to the female Commander Shepard.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: The resources in this game are food, lumber, steel and gas. These are needed in order to train troops, research skills and upgrade buildings.
