[H1]GAMEPLAY[/H1]
In a nutshell, there is a zombie infestation on the planet and you are tasked to build bases, with soldiers for ground assaults or choppers for overhead clean-up duties, to counter the global infestation. These bases cannot be customised and although they can be rebuild and placed elsewhere if you have the resources, you should think in advance where you place something to cover impending attacks.
Once you trigger meteorites carrying the virus that threathens humanity, you are tasked with suppressing the outbreak, doing side missions to earn yourself additional elements such as more choppers, turrets that halt the spread of an infected city to another node or more resources to help fund your buildings or troops.
Meanwhile, you can research better armaments for ingame encounters, albeit fully restricted to guns. As you trigger more meteorites the zombies will become stronger, so you would do well to balance doing missions and getting upgrades so you are more efficient in combat. Luckily you can also level up soldiers as they gain XP, so you got options to improve soldiers. You can earn bonus XP rates by not getting hit during your missions for extended periods of time. You also earn extra cash by defending cities through defeating an infected node before it reaches another city node. For some reason you must pick this up on the planetary view as a coin, as if this were a Freemium game. It's not, but it's odd that you need to click on it when it could just go straight into your resource pool like other mission rewards.
The only annoying factor I ran into was that zombies have a similar death animation to their animation of getting hit. At times you shoot a zombie near your soldiers, thinking you killed it, before it suddenly hits you and takes down your bonus XP rate. It's a bit frustrating, but it just means you have to count your hits. Your other soldiers fall under AI control, though, so they will normally help you out as well. You can freely switch to them or make your squad fire all at once as well, but unfortunately you can't give them any advanced commands.
The game is very arcade-like, though the missions do vary; there's defense missions, escort missions and the like. In the end the game offers a little bit of Strategy plus Tower Defense (planet view) and RPG (character leveling) on top of being a top down shooter.
Other than that the goal remains straightforward, destroy all meteorites before time runs out and the virus wipes out humanity. Unfortunately there is not much more to the game beyond that, but it's a short and small game to begin with and to be fair this game does have some replay value.
[H1]SIMILARITY[/H1]
The planetary view reminds me strongly of the first two [u][b]XCOM games[/b][/u], what with building your bases in preparation for random incoming missions. It's not as complicated, obviously, but it's nice to see a remote familiarity with such games.
In-game it's a typical top down shooter like games such as [u][b]AI Invasion[/b][/u], or [u][b]Alien Swarm[/b][/u] - but without utilities for soldiers. The game at its core is very arcade-like, as said before.
There is also a hint of [u][b]Dead Frontier[/b][/u], the popular zombie browser MMO. Although that game offers a lot more, the arcade-like combat feels somewhat similar, as well as the visuals on powerful weapons. I don't know if these developers were intentionally inspired by it, but it feels good to see the spirit of a game like that have an impact on a game like this.
[H1]PERFORMANCE[/H1]
The game runs well, there are no crashes or major errors or glitches to my knowledge - so I have to give them credit: the game seems properly optimised in terms of performance. Do keep in mind I use fairly recent and powerful hardware, so I can't speak for weak systems.
In terms of issues, the only oddities I found were that my graphical settings don't always seem to be saved. You also have to manually set the game to target running on 30 or 60 FPS, which definitely hints at this game being intended for handheld/mobile devices, or perhaps consoles.
The only ingame bug I encountered is that sometimes AI members which follow your main soldier can get stuck behind walls or other obstacles, but they do find a way back to you.
[H1]VISUALS[/H1]
There are two areas to cover, first there is the in-game graphics. Although not advanced, it's not that bad for this day and age, judge the screenshots for yourself. Personally I like vibrant colours, it gives the game a nice graphical style to stand out from many similar zombie games which often look grey and gritty.
Then we have the interface. The text menus and placement of some of the menus is dreadful at times and may take some getting used to. My biggest complaint is about pickup messages, which are also in bright Red, Green, Blue or Yellow which is an insane contrast to the rest of the HUD and makes it look very amateuristic when they appear in the middle of your screen.
The interface seems designed for controllers. However, mouse and keyboard do work fine. This is not a game like Dark Souls that is ported to PC while mouse and keyboard is forgotten.
[H1]RECOMMENDATION[/H1]
[u][b]Pick this game up if[/b][/u] you are looking for a short arcade game, with some degree of strategy on the overhead planetary view, to satisfy you in a singleplayer experience.
[u][b]Do NOT pick this game up if[/b][/u] you are looking for a long game, or a game with a ton of combat variables or tactical abilities or in general expect this to be an indie game that reinvents the genres it's part of. Also this is not a multiplayer or coop game.
My own verdict is that, while this game is nothing new, it's also not a bad game. It's not a cash grab or an unstable mobile port - it's a short and simple, but finished product. Especially if the game is on sale, it can be worth it for short hours in which you would want to play a top down shooter. But alas, just don't expect it to be a "great game".
[i]As a personal tip to Steam Traders: Steam Trading Cards for this game are currently somewhat rare due to a low player base and some may fetch a decent price, as of this time.[/i]
