Vultures – Scavengers of Death is a turn-based tactical survival horror developed by Team Vultures and published by Firesquid. As a VULTURE operative—a covert mercenary unit hired by an enigmatic client—your mission is to infiltrate the quarantine zone of Salento Valley, scavenge for critical materials, and extract whatever information might lead humanity to a cure.
It’s a game still in development, but its demo already makes a compelling case for the niche it’s carving out. Wishlist Vultures – Scavengers of Death on Steam now.
1. Story: Salento Valley Burns
It’s 1993. An explosion rips through Salento Valley, and within days, the population has turned. A month later, you’re deployed as a VULTURE operative to investigate the source of the infection and, if possible, bring back the key to a cure.
The setup draws clear inspiration from early Resident Evil: a contained urban disaster, a shadowy organization, and boots-on-the-ground operatives piecing together what went wrong—and the game wears that influence openly and well.
Leopoldo.
In the demo, we played as Leopoldo, a disciplined operative tasked with retrieving a briefcase containing investigative documents. The story drips through environmental details, scattered notes, and brief dialogue, which suits the pacing of a tactical horror game.
We hope the full release further fleshes out the background of each operative, because the premise has the bones of something genuinely engaging if it commits to its characters.
Arriving at the mission location.
2. Gameplay: Turn-Based Survival Horror
Before entering a mission in Vultures – Scavengers of Death, players must manage their inventory and build out their arsenal from whatever they’ve collected across previous runs.
Items can be moved freely between your inventory and arsenal during this phase, making loadout decisions a meaningful part of the preparation. There’s no arsenal box to fall back on once you’re inside the mission—what you bring in is what you have.
Fortunately, everything you’ve carried over from prior missions is available to bring along, so resource management starts before the first turn is even taken.
Inventory system.
Free Roam: Exploring the Map
Once deployed, players navigate the environment using Movement Points (MP), indicated by the blue diamond meter on-screen. During free roam, Action Points (AP) are not a concern, as you explore freely, interact with objects, open doors, and scavenge without a tactical clock ticking.
The city is scattered with notes, key items, documents, and weapons that reward thorough exploration.
Most collectibles are optional, but they carry real value: they expand the Vultures lore, and better weapons found during exploration directly improve your odds in the fights ahead.
We’d love to see the full game reward completionists with achievements for finding secret or hard-to-reach items. There’s clearly a world worth uncovering here, and more incentive to dig deeper would only strengthen the experience.
Police Station map.
Battle: Every AP Counts
Engaging an enemy in Vultures – Scavengers of Death shifts the game into combat mode, where both AP and MP become tightly rationed resources. With limited points per turn, every action needs to count before control passes to the enemy, who moves and acts based on their own moveset (visible by hovering over them).
The core actions available in combat are:
- Attack – Fire or Stab: Target specific body parts with distinct trade-offs: the body offers better accuracy, the legs can immobilize enemies, and the head deals the most damage but costs additional AP
- Push: Repositions enemies to create distance, useful for managing spacing after engaging in tight corridors
- Heal: Consume a Med-Kit to restore HP during your turn
- Move: Navigate the grid by walking, running, or sneaking. Note that running and sneaking each consume 2 AP if activated immediately, so reserve them for post-combat repositioning where possible
Fire action.
We spent a good amount of time in the demo figuring out the most efficient approach to each encounter. The combat has a satisfying puzzle quality once you internalize the AP economy—knowing when to play aggressively and when to pull back defines the difference between a clean extraction and burning through your last Med-Kit in a hallway.
We’d also like to see the full release expand the weapon roster, with more melee, ranged, and heavy options, giving each operative a more distinct combat identity.
A second playable operative, Amber, also appears in the demo, and her grappling gun allows for environmental traversal and enemy repositioning, offering a noticeably different tactical approach compared to Leopoldo’s strength-based kit.
Hallway combat.
3. Graphics and Audio: Welcome Back, PS1
Vultures – Scavengers of Death leans hard into a low-poly PS1 aesthetic, and it absolutely works. The chunky geometry, muted color palette, and CRT screen filter evoke the look and feel of mid-’90s survival horror with obvious affection rather than mere imitation.
Watching infected mutants shuffle through the ruins of Salento Valley in this visual style genuinely unsettles me in a way that a higher-fidelity approach might not have achieved.
The audio complements the visuals well. The score leans into tense, atmospheric horror action that keeps you on edge during free roam and ratchets up appropriately in combat. It’s familiar territory for fans of the genre, the kind of music that tells you to check the next room carefully before walking through.
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- Recording transcript.
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- Mission Select.
