Over 9000 Zombies!hides behind little pretence. This is a game that revolves around fending off legions of undead humanoids that gravitate towards you from all corners of the map. As the exclamation mark in the title connotes, the USP for Loren Lemcke and Mastertronic’s project is the sheer volume of zombies on screen at any one time.
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| Setting up base inside isn’t the best option as you limit your escape routes |
Harking back to top-down shooters of yesteryear, you’re tasked with holding back vast swathes of zombies from a birds-eye perspective using a typical array of military ordnance. You start off with a bog-standard pistol, chipping away at a smattering of zombies homing in on your location by holding down the left mouse-button in their general direction. Before long you’ll be pirouetting on the spot, hot rounds of machine-gun fire radiating forth from an M16 assault rifle pilfered from a downed foe.
In the current patch, equipment drops are generous, meaning you’ll swiftly accumulate an arsenal of sub-machine guns, assault rifles and grenade launchers which you can cycle through at will. These weapons (at least in the version I demoed) persist through repeated playthroughs – so you only need to collect them once to have access to them in your inventory.
The first few waves pit you against your classic slow-moving zombie archetype – more akin to Shaun of the Dead’s tardy lot than the fleet-footed ensemble in 28 Days Later. In these early stages, there’s not much of a challenge, affording you time to stockpile grenades and scrap metal – the base material which you can use to build turrets and erect barricades.
At first, the regularity with which your assailants drops grenades seems like a design flaw, given the effectiveness of their blast radius in clearing out swarms of zombies. As the night draws in and the waves increase in intensity, however, you’ll be grateful of the foresight to amass a reserve of the globular shrapnel-dispensers.
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| You might feel safe behind your concrete barricades but the zombies make short work of them |
Whether it’s how the game was intended to be played or an inadvertent side-effect remains to be seen but owing to relative impotence of your primary weapons, it quickly becomes apparent that the best chance of survival requires you to slalom through streams of zombies, replenishing your grenades in an attempt to stem the tide. With gormless husks encroaching from all angles, that single stream of bullets emanating from your assault rifle isn’t going to cut it.
Nevertheless, help is at hand in the form of the aforementioned turrets and barricades that serve to stymie the inexorable flow of undead in the latter stages. By pressing B on the keypad you bring up a rudimentary construction interface with a choice of six turrets and two blockades. Simple single-fire low-damage turrets will set you back a handful of scrap metal, while the slow-firing rocket-expelling variants cost more but excels in crowd control.
Games with in-built tower defense mechanics normally present you with the dilemma of investing early or holding out for powerful models, but in Over 9000 Zombies! your fleshy adversaries are not short of scrap metal supplies. As such, by about wave three you’ll have maxed out your turret limit (six) with the resource-intensive models, leaving you to spend the rest of your materials on reinforced walls to keep the zombies at bay. This system works fine but it would be nice to have a greater range of pricier sentry guns at your disposal or an upgrade system that serves as a resource sink for the excess metal.
In terms of the presentation, it’s fair to say that Over 9000 Zombies! doesn’t trade on its aesthetic, with its dull palette of greys and greens creating a post-apocalyptic world devoid of much character. The absence of interactivity within the map doesn’t help either, dissuading you from exploring beyond the confines of your makeshift fort – hopefully this will be addressed in future updates.
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| Crowds of undead like these are perfect fodder for a well-timed grenade |
At this stage of development, Over 9000 Zombies! is very bare-bones, but there’s the framework for a decent game already in place. With more maps and expanded multiplayer to be introduced in the coming months, it’s shaping up to be an enjoyable – if a little uninspired – romp through familiar territory.
Over 9000 Zombies! Will be available on Steam Early Access from July 3rd, with a scheduled release date forecast for two–three months after this date.
Most Anticipated Feature/Element: Vehicles are scheduled to be added before the game’s release, which should introduce some much-need variety to the core mechanics.
