Ebola Village

Control+C, Control+V.

I have to give Indie Games Studio credit; Ebola Village is a title people can't stop talking about. From its eye-catching title, not to mention it is the fourth title in a series over the past six years, one that YouTube is intent on telling me is considered to be some of the worst games ever released, the game was also, for a while, promoted by Sony themselves, featured on the official PlayStation YouTube channel. However, the bulk of the conversation has been largely about the game's clear inspirations and whether it is truly that of inspiration or that of theft.

Now, until there is any sort of evidence for the latter, I can only state this game is a product of its inspirations. However, that is putting it mildly. This is something we see consistently from indie developers, and even AAA, in some cases. We all play games and can often be inspired by them. However, while most can integrate those ideas with some of their own, to create something fresh and unique, Ebola Village borrows from Capcom's golden goose almost wholesale, making it the most copy-and-pasted effort I've seen released, at least on console, given the asset flips that plague Steam.

While I always admire the efforts of a solo dev, Ebola Village is likely one of the worst games I've played in years. It gnaws at you with the lack of its own ideas, and those it borrows, which is, to be frank, all of them, and twists these ideas in ways that make them not only worse, but confusing at times, and why anyone would do this. Thankfully, your trip to this remote Russian village is just around three hours, meaning it thankfully doesn't overstay its welcome. Well, I wish that were true.

While the road to developing Ebola Village was one of clear inspiration, its opening moments are a mess of bad design, awful model work, and some confusing choices that will have you questioning what you're even experiencing, and that is all before we even get to the titular village. From an awkwardly placed hand, lying in bed in nothing but her bra and panties, Marina is caught off guard by a news program that has the longest intro I've ever seen. Maybe they were just so proud of it and didn't want to cut it. 

Either way, if it isn't the backstory about a strain of the Ebola Virus ravaging the world, the massive jar of pickles next to the TV may catch your eye, or maybe it is the tablecloth that is bent over an inch away from the actual counter. Either way, this opener is absolutely bizarre, complete with an unnecessary series of events needed to leave the apartment that does nothing more than confuse you as to what this game is going to offer you. For example, Marina mentions that she won't go into her bathroom because it is too dark, despite having an equipped flashlight. Sigh.

Marina travels to a remote Russian village to ensure her mom and her ex-husband, Ruslan, are ok. While the general story around her mother is standard fare for the idea of this story, it's a shame the game didn't lean more into the relationship between Marina and Ruslan, as while some of it is explored, including their shared feelings, it could have really developed these two characters in better ways than just how empty of a shell Marina can be. I also found it puzzling as to why Marina is so calm when she meets her mother, who is clearly infected and animated like an amusement park zombie. 

Decked out in some tight-fitting Claire Redfield cosplay and learning the ins and outs of combat from Jill Valentine, and no, I'm not kidding, you'll then enter the village, a location that borrows so much here that you can't help but see what the developer was aiming for. Capcom at least had the decency to make buildings the same size inside as they are outside, but here, even the smallest house feels about five times too big on the inside.

Nearly every enemy you encounter feels pulled from Capcom’s latest entries. From chainsaw-wielding maniacs, and werewolves, to countless shambling undead that are apparently born track stars, everything you face feels like counterfeit threats instead of unique additions that would give this game something original. Instead, it's a greatest hits of Temu-branded Resident Evil Village monstrosities scattered around maybe four or five actual environments. 

The main fodder, the zombies, have this almost inflated movement to them, almost like they were the undead versions of a wacky waving inflatable armed tube man. Their animations are all the same; they will swarm you en masse, rarely giving you any sort of strategy on how to deal with them other than the three or four headshots it takes to take them down. It also doesn't help that when struck by them in close range, your camera view is incredibly disorienting, and it's possible to just be repeatedly downed if you are trapped in a corner. Sure, you have a knife, but why would that ever be considered useful? 

While the actual shooting of the zombies is fine, even serviceable, it is the decent sound design and gore that could convince people there is something here. Sure, the developer has some talent, but it is hidden behind all this borrowing of other people’s ideas. Every moment there is some glimmer of good game design, the game shouts back with a half dozen questionable choices that just scream down your throat. 

While I can put up with some medicore aiming due to a poor framerate, the actual movement here is clunky and stiff, largely due to the fact that you cannot diagonally walk forward or backward. You can only move forward, backward, and side to side. Any sort of diagonal movement is from moving the camera and walking where you need to go. This feels like it was solely made for WASD keys on a keyboard and not a controller. It feels painful to play due to this.

The game also doesn't know what time period it wants to be set in. We see calendars all stating 1997, but a computer you'll interact with is of the modern era. This is to say nothing of the zombies dressed like they are from the turn of the century. This could be an issue of nicking from different asset stores, but if these assets were made from scratch, then there was no cohesive vision here to make everything work together. 

Inventory management was your passenger during many of the original survival horror games, and for good reason; it made you really think about what you could take with you and what you had to leave behind. However, later entries in the Resident Evil series would work to give you options, especially considering you were often not playing as just some random guy, but a fully kitted soldier. Further entries would provide quality of life upgrades such as being able to use medical items without placing them in your inventory, or managing the bullets into an empty rifle. 

However, none of those features are present here ,and Ebola Village has likely the most limiting inventory system of all time. You’ll start with four spots, move to seven once you find the nearby bag at the start of the village, and by the time the credits rolled, I had ten spaces. The amount of backtracking I had to make to the safe room to use the chest was likely longer than the actual game. The whole system is barely functional and made for a poor experience, but at least it was consistent with what else the game did, so I’ll give it that. 

Apart from the mindless shooting, you'll be tracking down keys and solving a few rather simple puzzles. Nothing is too complicated, and you'll never be stuck on one for any more than a minute or two. This is apparent when the whole experience is a bit over 3 hours and change, regardless of the difficulty you select. One puzzle, for example, has you moving a statue to numbered squares on the floor. You start with moving it to the one marked with “1” and guess how you solve “2”, “3”, and “4”. Yup. Yay, you solved it. Great. 

Visually, Ebola Village is a mixed bag. Some elements look fine as Unreal Engine 4 is certainly helping here, but some assets and character models look absolutely poor and feel like generic asset store slop. Hell, even the game’s endings are blatant uses of AI that are so apparent it hurts. I also found it off-putting that the sound cuts out when you go into your inventory, which pulls you out of the experience to a significant degree. 

It is also worth pointing out that Ebola Village does have voice acting, but no English Dub. While there are several other languages that are represented in the game, English is not one of them. The subtitles for English are bad, with a translation that certainly doesn’t live up to anything even remotely good.

Ebola Village feels like if you wanted to remake Resident Evil Village, but with AI. So much of what is here just doesn’t impress, and the blink-and-you-miss-it moments of the game wanting to break free of those inspirations just doesn’t cut it. There could have been an interesting story to tell here, but it skips over it in favor of some bland character moments and a reliance on other people’s ideas to provide filler to this 3-hour horror journey. Ebola Village is bad, there is no other way to describe it, and like the disease itself, should be avoided at all costs. 

Developer - Indie Games Studios. Publisher - Indie Games Studios. Axyos Games. Released - January 23rd, 2026. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, PC. Rated - (E 10+) Blood, Intense Violence, Language. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code for the game was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.