Emerge: Cities of the Apocalypse

Emerge: Cities of the Apocalypse is a turn-based strategy game set in a futuristic post-apocalyptic world ravaged by zombies. Players must manage resources, build and defend cities, and survive against hordes of undead threats. The game blends strategic city-building and managerial simulation with real-time defense elements, creating a unique hybrid experience where careful planning meets intense action.

Emerge: Cities of the Apocalypse: Review

In the vast, desolate landscape of post-apocalyptic video games, where titans like Fallout and The Last of Us cast long shadows, there exists a quieter, more niche breed of survivor. These are the games forged not in AAA fires, but in the determined, solitary crucible of a single developer’s vision. Emerge: Cities of the Apocalypse, a 2016 turn-based strategy and real-time defense hybrid from solo creator Emilios Manolidis, is one such title—a flawed but fascinating artifact of passion that dares to ask what happens when Civilization collides with a zombie horde at the gates.

Development History & Context

The Athenian Apocalypse: A Solo Developer’s Odyssey

Emerge: Cities of the Apocalypse is a testament to the sheer willpower of a single individual. Developed over four years by Emilios Manolidis, known online as “vdweller,” the game was created using GameMaker Studio 8, a tool often underestimated by industry elites but proven capable by indie hits like Hotline Miami. In a poignant developer note on IndieDB, Manolidis described himself as “31 years old and liv[ing] in the Post-Apocalypse that is Athens, Greece, hoping that things will take a turn for the better.” This personal context is not trivial; it infuses the game’s themes of rebuilding from ruin with a palpable, real-world resonance.

The game entered a crowded mid-2010s market saturated with zombie media and a thriving indie scene on Steam. Its path to publication was through Steam Greenlight, a since-retired system where community votes decided a game’s fate. Against the odds, Emerge was greenlit in less than a month in March 2016, a feat Manolidis attributed to strategic press outreach, including a crucial preview from Rock, Paper, Shotgun that gave the project visibility. Released on April 27, 2016, for Windows, it was a product of its time: a solo dev project leveraging digital distribution to find its audience, priced at a modest $7.99.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

A Canvas of Ruin: Hope in the Ashes

Emerge does not present a traditional, character-driven narrative. There is no intricate plot with twists and betrayals. Instead, its story is environmental and systemic, told through the decaying infrastructure of its cities and the desperate mechanics of survival. The premise is classic post-apocalypse: “Once glorious cities now stand in ruins, as the few remaining humans now live as scavengers, bereft of any organisation or hope.” Your role is to be the catalyst for change.

The “narrative” unfolds across a global campaign map, with missions set in various cities. Each mission is a self-contained story of reclamation. You are not playing a persistent character; the hero you create at the start of one city—choosing from classes like Bounty Hunter, Scientist, or Engineer—is abandoned upon victory, their story ended. This lack of continuity was a point of criticism noted in reviews, as it creates a sense of detachment. The story is the repetitive, cyclical grind of civilization itself: build, defend, expand, repeat. The themes are pure—the struggle between order and chaos, the value of knowledge (research), industry (production), and commerce (economy) as pillars of society, and the existential threat of a mindless, consuming enemy.

The dialogue is minimal, confined to random event pop-ups and functional interactions with recruits. The true narrative weight is carried by the atmosphere and the emergent stories created by the gameplay. The death of a high-level recruit you’ve carefully nurtured during a desperate defense feels more impactful than any scripted line of dialogue.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

A Dichotomy of Decisons: The Turn-Based Grind and Real-Time Panic

Emerge’s gameplay is a bold, if occasionally awkward, fusion of two distinct genres.

The Turn-Based Strategy Layer: This is the game’s heart and its strongest element. You control a grid-based city map from a top-down perspective. Each captured sector generates one of three resources: Production, Research, or Economy (Credits). A fourth resource, Infrastructure, is required to claim new sectors. The core loop is deeply engaging:
* Action Point Management: Each turn, you have 10 Action Points to spend on critical tasks: scouting adjacent sectors (to see if they are safe or infested), recruiting random survivors, maintaining weapons for a damage boost, converting crystals, or attempting to capture a new sector.
* Research Tree: A expansive, multi-branched tech tree allows you to rediscover lost technology. You can invest in military defenses (turrets, flamethrowers), economic bonuses, or scientific advancements, forcing meaningful strategic choices.
* Base Building: Each captured sector has limited slots for buildings like Workshops (production), Labs (research), and Trading Posts (economy). Optimizing your city’s layout for resource output is crucial.
* Team Management: You can recruit survivors with randomly generated classes, levels, and gear. Leveling them up grants skill points to spend on passive perks or weapon specializations, adding light RPG elements.

This layer successfully evokes the “one more turn” hook of classics like Civilization, as you meticulously plan your expansion while managing the ever-present zombie threat.

The Real-Time Defense Layer: When zombies attack a sector your automated defenses can’t handle, or when you try to capture an infested sector, the game shifts to a side-view defense shooter. Your team lines up behind a barricade, and you must manually aim and shoot waves of zombies—from standard shamblers to armored soldiers and acid-spitters—before they break through.

This is where the game’s most significant flaws emerge. Reviews from outlets like GameSkinny and The Drastik Measure consistently highlighted issues:
* Weapon Imbalance: Sniper rifles and grenade launchers are vastly superior to automatic weapons due to their high accuracy and damage, making most of the weapon roster obsolete.
* Cumbersome Reloading: Players must manually click to reload weapons after emptying a clip, a counter-intuitive mechanic that often leads to frustrating delays and lost seconds in the heat of battle.
* Repetitiveness: While tense at first, these sequences can become repetitive, especially on larger maps with frequent attacks.

The two layers are interconnected—your performance in the strategy mode directly impacts your strength in combat (through research, gear, and team levels), and vice versa (losing a battle can mean losing a sector and valuable veterans). This synergy is innovative, even if the execution of the real-time component is rough.

World-Building, Art & Sound

A Hand-Drawn Desolation

The aesthetic of Emerge is one of functional minimalism. The art style is simple, utilizing a muted color palette of grays, browns, and greens to effectively sell a world reclaimed by decay. The developer noted he had to “learn to draw/paint with a graphics tablet to make in-game pictures,” and this DIY ethos is evident. The portraits for characters and zombies have a distinct, almost amateurish charm that suits the indie nature of the project.

The UI is menu-heavy and can feel cluttered, a common pitfall for complex strategy games developed by small teams. The sound design is utilitarian: weapon reports and zombie groans serve their purpose but are unremarkable. The music, however, was a point of significant criticism. Reviewer Faris on The Drastik Measure noted it was poorly balanced, “so annoying that I had to turn it off completely,” citing jarring volume shifts that broke immersion. The atmosphere is therefore built not on a stellar audio-visual presentation, but on the tension of its systems—the eerie quiet of the strategy map punctuated by the sudden alarm of a zombie attack.

Reception & Legacy

A Cult Classic in the Shadows

Upon release, Emerge received a “Mixed” rating on Steam (65% positive from 144 reviews). Critics who did cover it were generally positive but niche. Rock, Paper, Shotgun acknowledged its depth compared to free Flash games, while GameSkinny awarded it an 8/10, praising its addictive “one more turn” loop. The Drastik Measure gave it a 7.9/10, calling it “pretty innovative” but flawed.

Commercially, it remained an obscure title. Its legacy is not one of massive sales or industry-wide influence, but of what it represents: the ambitious scope a solo developer can achieve. It stands as a precursor to the more polished and successful “strategy survival” hybrids that would follow, demonstrating a compelling blueprint of interlocking systems. Its true impact is seen in the dedicated small community that, even years later, continued to post on Steam forums requesting a sequel, with one user in 2024 noting, “It’s a shame this game died out… I put hundreds of hours into this game.”

For the indie development community, Emerge serves as an inspiring case study in perseverance. Manolidis’s journey from freeware developer to a published Steam creator, overcoming the challenges of solo development—from coding to asset creation—is its own powerful narrative.

Conclusion

The Verdict: A Flawed Gem of Indie Ambition

Emerge: Cities of the Apocalypse is not a perfect game. Its real-time combat is janky, its presentation is barebones, its narrative is thin, and its systems can feel unbalanced. Yet, it is a game brimming with ideas and heart. The core strategic loop is deeply compelling, offering a satisfying and addictive blend of city-building, resource management, and tactical progression.

It is a game that deserves to be remembered not for what it failed to do, but for what it dared to try as a project birthed from a single developer’s vision. It is the video game equivalent of a fortified outpost built from scrap: it’s not pretty, it creaks under pressure, but it stands as a testament to resilience and ingenuity. For players with a high tolerance for indie jank and a love for deep, systemic strategy, Emerge remains a rewarding and unique experience. In the annals of video game history, its place is secured as a compelling, ambitious artifact from the trenches of solo development—a flawed but admirable attempt to build something grand from the ground up.