Them and Us

About Them and Us

Them and Us is a survival horror game by TendoGames, published with Cube Game on Steam. It came out of Steam Early Access on 28 September 2021 after three years, and it is a Windows game sold on Steam, GOG and the Epic Games Store, with a free demo on itch.io. You can play it in thirteen languages; English and Russian have full voice acting.

The year is 1978. Alicia, a former paramedic scarred by a life of tragedy and held on death row, is on a prison bus when it crashes on the dirt roads at the edge of a vast American wilderness. A comic-style opening shows what happened, and she wakes alone and injured in a locked room of an old mansion on an island, still driven to find her missing daughter. Around her a change is taking hold of the world, and the dead are walking.

You choose how to see it from the start. The fixed-camera mode, with tank or alternate controls, is the classic and harder way; the over-the-shoulder mode keeps some classic rules but plays more like a modern game and is a little easier. An optional retro mode switches to first-generation console graphics and forces the fixed camera. Either way you carry a small inventory, plan what to take and what to leave, read documents and notes, and open the house room by room with levers, crests, books, tools and cipher puzzles.

Zombies are the main enemy, and Prima Games notes that some play dead before they rise, while new kinds of creature arrive as you go on, one of which can only be hurt after you splash it with holy water. The damage system takes off limbs and leaves blood pooling on the floor. Reviewers praise the sound and the brooding music; Prima also met low frame rates and long loading times on a strong PC, and found errors in the written documents.

Past the mansion the game moves to its grounds, a village, a church and a graveyard. It has several endings, some firearms only appear on later runs, and finishing it unlocks new costumes and weapons. It suits players who want a new game built on the late 1990s survival horror rules, with rooms the makers say fans of the classics will recognise.

How to play Them and Us

1. Choose fixed camera with tank controls for the classic, harder game, or over-the-shoulder for a more modern one.
2. Search each room for ammunition, healing items, keys and the objects that open locked doors.
3. Read the documents and Alicia's memories in your inventory; they hold the clues for the cipher and key puzzles.
4. Plan what to carry in your small inventory and leave the rest behind.
5. Fight only when you must; two or three zombies at once is when to back off and think.
6. Play to the end, then start again to unlock costumes and weapons and see another ending.

Tips

• Play the over-the-shoulder mode first if you are new to classic survival horror; the store says the fixed-camera mode is the harder one.
• Do not trust a zombie lying on the floor: some play dead and get up as you pass.
• Keep your distance from the enemies that need holy water first: the splash takes a second, and they can still hit you while you throw it.
• Combine healing items to make stronger ones rather than using them one by one.
• Write down codes and clues; the game will not hold your hand.
• If the frame rate is low, the store advises checking that the game runs on your dedicated graphics card and on the monitor plugged into it.

Questions