Vultures – Scavengers of Death Is The Hardcore Retro Strategy Mashup You Didn’t Know You Needed
The world is drowning in a bio-hazard disaster, and you are stepping straight into a brilliant, sun-drenched nightmare where retro survival horror clashes head-first with brutal tactical strategy. This isn’t your typical, safe narrative journey; it’s a punishing, resource-limited gauntlet that drops you right into the claustrophobic halls of Salento Valley. You are forced to look over your shoulder at every turn, fighting off mutated monstrosities where one single misstep means bleeding out in the dark. It grabs you by the throat right from the starting line and refuses to let go.
[Specs] [Gameplay] [Performance] [Settings]
Vultures – Scavengers of Death Steam Review
- Developer: Team Vultures
- Publisher: Firesquid, Gamersky Games
- Official Website: Vultures on Steam
- UK Store Link: Steam Store
- Genre: Turn-based Tactical Survival Horror
- Release Date: May 13, 2026
- Download Size: 1.86GB download size.
- Platform/System Tested: Steam.
- Achievements: Steam achievements included.
- Aesthetic: Awesome PlayStation 1 era graphics.
- Game World: Full 3D game world, and you have full 360-degree camera control and can zoom in and out.
- Structure: Generally, the world is split into rooms, and you go from room to room.
- Tutorial: Opening tutorial mission, it’s optional and goes over the basics.
- Hub Area: The Nest is your hub, and here is where you can deal with your team, inventory, and missions.
- Hub Management: Before going out on a mission, you can choose what’s in your load and what to store in your arsenal, change outfits and costumes, and spend cash in the marketplace.
- Saves: Eight save slots, you get checkpoints in the level, and you can save in the Nest.
- Save Mechanics: There is no mid-level save from the menu; you can save in safe rooms, but you have to find them first.
- Mission End: End of mission breakdown shows kills, side missions found, weapons recovered, AP and MP used.
Vultures – Scavengers of Death Steam Review
The game is a hardcore resource-limited strategy game that is heavily inspired by Resident Evil and brings it into a new genre. It’s a game that is straightforward enough you can jump straight into, and aside from the controls, it’s relatively easy to pick up and play. It’s just sometimes the menus to submenus get clunky. In-game cutscenes and character interactions look awesome and can be skipped if you are a monster. Outside of combat, you can move around freely and interact with the world, find loot, etc. Walking is your basic movement, but you can choose to sneak and not alert zombies or run and alert a lot of people. Sneaking is possible, and when you use a melee weapon, you can choose which body part you hit and give a percentage of hitting them. Guns let you do the same as melee and pick your body part; there is also a chance of zombies’ heads exploding. Find new guns and weapons like Molotovs and grenades. Find collectables and items; they pop up when found in a 3D viewer. Pick up files and tapes to get more story and background. There are slight puzzle elements, but it’s mostly about getting this key for this door type stuff. Levels are not short, but they do have a lot of meat in them, things to find, optional side missions and the main story.
Combat is turn-based, and depending on what you can do is policed by AP (attacks) and MP (movement). Each action has an AP or MP cost to it. Combat is wide open; there is so much you can do, but this can also cause issues as you fumble actions, at times it felt more like a puzzle where I had to work out what to do first and then in what order. One cool mechanic in the game is that you can move and push objects in the world, and the tutorial gets you to learn this by moving a barrel and blowing it up. You can also swap places with zombies, and it’s just cool little additions that mix it up. Hover over zombies to get a profile-like pop-up showing health, name, reach limit, and stats of attacks, etc. I do love the world, and shooting a zombie in the leg to stun them is awesome, as is pushing a zombie into fire. Going into combat stops the game and gives you a pop-up like an introduction, but finishing combat it just ends, and it at times feels like you don’t realise it. So many times, I would stumble into fights even if it was the same room, and it just felt wrong for the theme. Play as different team members and they all do something unique, like Amber has a grappling gun to get over holes and can grab zombies and drag them to their death or jump to them using it. No undo move option or game rewind. So many elements of the world cannot be interacted with, and it feels wasteful.
Vultures – Scavengers of Death Steam Review: Performance & Fidelity
- Visual Design: Fantastic-looking locations and rooms to explore.
- Camera System: The camera is not perfect, and both the follow and the free camera have their issues.
- Options: Bare minimum graphic options.
Settings, Customisation & Control Details
- Controller Support: Controller support and the right stick act like a mouse; it’s the basic controller integration and not native.
- Display Settings: Video settings – fullscreen, resolution, post processing, and gamma slider.
- Keybindings: Mouse and keyboard support, and you can remap the controls.
- Camera Options: Two camera types – free and fixed, you can change the controls for them individually.
- Grid Overlay: Grid placement can be in the game, and it can be set to always, never, or combat only.
- Accessibility: You don’t have any accessibility options like font choices or Colourblind support.
- Map Navigation: Using the map is clunky and slow.
- Map Interface: The map and mini map are so basic that I never found it to be of any use.
- Movement Input: Placing your movement marker has to be a certain way, otherwise the game doesn’t recognise it, and you cannot move.
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Vultures – Scavengers of Death Steam Review
Summary
GOOD STUFF
I absolutely love the world, and shooting a zombie in the leg to stun them is awesome, as is pushing a zombie into fire to mix things up. The awesome PlayStation 1 era graphics deliver fantastic-looking locations and rooms to explore, and the in-game cutscenes and character interactions look completely awesome, though you can skip them if you are a monster. It is a game that is straightforward enough you can jump straight into, and aside from the control quirks, it is relatively easy to pick up and play. The combat loop is wide open with so much you can do, and cool little additions like pushing objects, blowing up barrels, swapping places with zombies, and utilising Amber’s unique grappling gun to drag mutants to their death make the tactical layers incredibly engaging.
BAD STUFF
Until you get used to the combat and learn how to use the mechanics and the environment to your advantage, this will be a stressful, tedious learning process. The combat can cause issues as you easily fumble actions, making it feel more like a frustrating puzzle where you have to struggle to work out what to do first and in what exact order. The UI and navigation are completely unhelpful; the map and mini-map are so basic I never found them to be of any use, using the map is clunky and slow, and placing your movement marker has to be done a specific way, or the game throws a fit and doesn’t recognise it. To make matters worse, there is no undo move option or game rewind, absolutely zero accessibility settings like font choices or colourblind support, bare-minimum graphics options, and a clunky menu-to-sub-menu system. It also feels completely wasteful that so many elements of the world cannot be interacted with, the dual camera options both have their distinct issues, and finishing a fight just abruptly ends to the point where you don’t even realise combat is over.
FINAL VERDICT
Vultures – Scavengers of Death is a hardcore, resource-limited strategy nightmare that successfully blends classic Resident Evil survival horror elements into a punishing yet satisfying tactical genre. While the nostalgic PS1 presentation and wide-open combat mechanics offer a ton of unique variety, the clunky sub-menus, useless map, and stressful learning curve will test your absolute patience. It is a rough diamond that demands you master its environmental mechanics to survive, but the lack of simple modern quality-of-life features like an undo button holds it back from greatness. If you can suffer through fumbled actions and awkward movement markers, there is a brilliant retro tactical shooter hidden under the viscera.
