The App Shelf for iPhone and iPod touch

Flash Review: ZombieSmash - Castle Defense Makes Room for Zombies

posted on March 24, 2010 by Art in Reviews, Games, Action Games, Strategy Games

Zombie Smash is a castle defense game where you play Joey, a man trapped in a house with a bewildering array of weapons to call upon.  Those weapons come in hand as your house is assaulted by wave after wave of well-animated zombies.  The main defense is flicking the zombies away with your finger, but they are surprisingly tough and may take more than one flick to destroy.  As the game progresses, the zombies do as well, becoming faster, more resistant to flicking, and even carrying guns and bombs.  Increasingly, you’ll have to turn to Joey’s arsenal of weapons, such as wrecking balls, mines, various guns, and natural disasters like rolling boulders and meteor showers.  If you can last the month (31 rounds), you’ll unlock hard mode, endless siege, and the sandbox – a place to test your smashing skills.

The game was a ton of fun.  The zombies never end, the weapons keep gameplay from getting stale, and the animation of the zombies being smashed according to the manner of death is just unbelievable.  If you’re a fan of the genre, you’re definitely going to love this game.  In fact, its biggest downfall is that it’s so short, with only 31 rounds (one month for Joey) and after that, you unlock hard mode – the same game with tougher zombies.  Outside campaign mode, the game has a sandbox to test your smashing skills and an endless siege mode to see how long you can last.  The siege saves checkpoints every so often, so you don’t always have to start over.  Though after playing through the entire game, you’ll probably feel that the siege takes too long to become difficult.  Yet by far the biggest problems with this app include a gameplay mechanic flaw and weapons glitch.  Since weapon power-ups are randomly given, and some enemies can only be killed with certain weapons, you may find yourself unable to survive.  Being patient and trying again will usually solve that problem, but there’s another dilemma that isn’t so easily solved.  Occasionally, the weapon slots will simply not respond, even with multiple attempts; it appears to be a bug that goes beyond the touch screen UI.  Thankfully, occurrence is extremely rarely and the developers are still tweaking the app, so hopefully it will only be a temporary problem.

All in all, ZombieSmash is a great game, well designed and balanced, and I think most players will love it for the week it takes them to beat it.