Impressions from the God Save Birmingham Demo at Gamescom 2026!
A hands-on preview of God Save Birmingham, a historical zombie survival game that's rough around the edges but surprisingly entertaining, especially when running around naked with an axe.
Zombies and Pixels
Early access to the game was provided to us by Ocean Drive Studio, thank you very much!
Look, I didn't have a good initial vibe with the God Save Birmingham demo at all. The game aims to be an accurate historical survival game, with tons of zombies and lots of work building safe zones on the map, searching for clean water and food that you'll partly need to grow yourself. Then I took off my pants, stayed naked as the day I was born, and started killing zombies with an axe with my entire ass hanging out — and I enjoyed every moment.
The game's developers also admitted they still have a ton of work to do. The menu isn't very convenient, it's unclear which items come from where, the combat is too simple, and although it's fun to dismember zombies limb by limb, it gets old after a while. They talked to me a bit about how they want to create a story where you'll need to build an escape plan to a nearby city, and how we'll need to fix wells to drink or grow food to eat. None of this works great right now — but running around naked in a zombie world with a weapon and taking them apart one by one just cracked me up. I really can't wait to download the game at home and return to my pixelated naked human, jumping and falling in open fields with plenty of confused zombies around him. Well, they're zombies, so they don't have brains — but I think they'd be confused.
God Save Birmingham is expected to launch into Early Access next year, and it still has plenty of time until it's polished. Until then, take off your pants and start jumping in the fields — you won't be disappointed.