The Midnight Walkers Could be the Dark Horse Winner for Best Indie Game in 2025

The Midnight Walkers is a zombie game that combines the popular extraction shooter genre and the survival aspect of a zombie apocalypse.

Right off the bat, you can tell that it’s going to be a hardcore zombie game, where losing a game also means losing your precious resources. In a zombie apocalypse scenario, that kind of immersion sticks.

The Midnight Walkers have had a couple of playtests over the past few months, and since it is planned for release sometime in Q4 2025, the beta is expected to follow soon.

While it’s Still Too Early to Say, The Midnight Walkers Looks Polished and Has Tons of Potential Already

The Midnight Walkers features two main game modes: PvPvE and PvE. I only got to experience the PvPvE game mode as the PvE wasn’t available during the playtest.

The mode pits several players in an area where they fight for resources and progress to the next level or extract by searching for the lift. However, every player has the freedom to stay and look for more resources or even rarer tools. Staying increases their risk of being eliminated by zombies or other players, resulting in the loss of everything they brought along.

Since there are quests, trade items, crafting, and your hideout to build and maintain, you’ll most likely want to stick around until you get something done. You get the whole nine yards of the core features of extraction shooters popularized by games like Escape from Tarkov, Delta Force, or Hunt Showdown.

So far, the game immediately reeled me in to playing more, looking into what to get, and discovering more about the skill trees and classes. Even with so much content restricted during the playtest, such as the trade market or the PvE mode, there’s already so much depth in the game that the only concern is how everything will balance out with so much going on.

Will it be too grindy? How balanced are the classes, weapons, and teamplay? How would the economy impact gameplay? Are the zombies enough, or is it too PvP-centric?

As someone who plays a lot of extraction shooters and a fair share of zombie games, it’s the progression and reward system combined with a fun gameplay loop that is going to keep players going for a long time.

Will there be an item so rare and so useful that you’ll always keep going back to find it and get your heart racing to find the nearest exit to get it out alive? A quest can do the same thing, too.

For Zombie Fans Who Don’t Play PvP, PvE Could Be Something to Look Forward To

While PvE wasn’t in the playtest yet, there’s also a lot of potential in this game mode if it is tied to other features. If you can access and upgrade your hideout or finish trader quests by playing this game mode, it is going to be like another game completely, comparable to games like GTFO, Killing Floor, and other co-op zombie games.

There’s not much to discuss regarding the PvE, but if you’re interested in playing the game, another playtest or beta is expected around Q4 2025, and it could be up by then.