Montag, 17. August 2015

{Review} Zombie Ablockalypse


"Zombie Ablockalypse" by Gazzapper


Either my work day wreaked more havoc on my brain than I thought, or I am a more entitled gamer than I thought. Because I didn't actually read the instructions and relied on the game to tell me what I needed to know, I almost dismissed "Zombie Ablockalypse" too soon.

Story
Story presentation in the actual game is certainly a bit lacking. Which is to say, it tells you to shoot the zombies. Okay, fair enough. I don't need to know that the hero's name is Private Joe Blockhead (which is not me being sarcastic, by the way, that's his name, according to the contest site). And that your gun is a "cure gun"... It's a game about shooting block zombies, so nobody is going to ask to see your work on that invention. Moving on.

Mechanics
I played "Zombie Ablockalypse" with my keyboard, since my controller always requires some amount of dark voodoo magic and a sacrifice to actually work. But that was not a problem. Moving with WASD and shooting with the arrow keys went pretty smoothly.
Good thing too, because that is the games core mechanic. Or lat's rather say core and mantle, with a crust made out of item stashes and growing opponents which you... have to shoot.
You are put in a room with several other blocks. Healthy ones are green, infected ones are purple and tend to bite green ones. On the minimap you can see the spread of the infection. This system may seem simple, but I enjoyed the feeling of battling the tide.
But when I cure a zombie, his pals tend to run to the newly healed block to see if he is alright and, if possible, turn him back into one of them. This often results in the zombies moving around in pairs. One of them is being used as a human (zombie? blocky?) shield, absorbing all my bullets that do a body good, while the zombie is grinning at the back.
Staying ahead of the zombies is relatively simple, the block version of "Zombieland"'s Columbus would only have one rule in his notebook: "Don't get bitten". Simple does not mean easy, especially if you let the infestation fester too much and are facing overwhelming odds.
You can recruit reinforcements that you find in static blocks to grow your own army. So the game nails the growth theme of the competition.
Only when I read the instructions did I manage to find them though, because the walls looked like they were just shrugging off my bullets, so I left them alone. As I said, entitled.
And now I am wondering if there is any relation between the blocks moving around and the blocks making up the walls. Are they maybe... dead blocks? Am I fighting of the living dead by robbing the dead dead?
Anyway, higher difficulties fill the room up with more blocks to block your shots (see what I did there?) and to serve as zombie chow, giving the infection more room to spread.

Presentation
The best word I can think of to describe the game's look is "homegrown". It's colourful blocks shooting colorful bullets. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing to write home about either. The popping sound your weapons make underlines this inoffensive tone.

On the whole...
I feel like there is little in the Ablockalypse I can sink my teeth into. I'm not someone to go score-hunting, and while the mechanics are competently implemented, there is little variation to keep me coming back.
If you just want to evade and shoot something and are not in the mood for actual weapons, blood and gruesomeness, "Zombie Ablockalypse" scratches that itch.
___

Link: http://contest.gamedevfort.com/submission/213#.VdIXBPntlBc

Dev: Gazzapper

Time Played: 20 minutes

Got My Vote? No, since I feel the same about it as about "Far Cry 3". I don't regret my time with it, but there is little calling me back to it.

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