When looking through my Discovery Queue and I see a game about an anime girl killing zombies in a home improvement center for only $2.99, I knew an impulse buy was about to happen and I am glad it did. This game is quite fun.
This game provides 2 different game modes: Score Attack and Time Attack.
Score Attack is the mode were the objective is to simply kill as many zombies as you can before you die, simple and straight to the point. I feel this this mode is the more difficult of the two because as you kill more zombies you begin to get more of them spawning into the map making it difficult to heal if you want to.
Time Attack is where the home improvement center is arranged in a maze like formation and your goal is to reach the exit and escape to safety. In a way this mode is a little easier in my opinion as you can take each section one by one if you want to take out all the enemies and back track to heal if you want.
As you can see there really is no story here (either you fight until you no longer can or you escape to hopefully a better situation) and is more of a quick and fun arcade type game.
As for the zombies you fight you get a variety of 4 different zombies:
The regular one that swings at you to attack
A zombie lady who vomits some kind of green stuff at you
A fat zombie who runs into you and knocks you down and disarms you
A zombie dog
When it comes to the weaponry there is a nice variety which I like (more weapons = more fun) however some weapons do feel to be not only more fun but also much better to use over others. Things like throwing a toilet at zombies or aiming the sledgehammer correctly to knock off a zombies head are really fun and satisfying to do, where the kitchen knife and your kick feel very underwhelming and honestly not much use. Toilets, bricks and flower pots will break after you throw them at a zombie but the other weapons do not have durability so you can use them as long as you like.
It is important to note that the chainsaw and the weed burner use your POW meter as a kind of fuel in order to function. Your POW meter is kind of like a fatigue meter that allows you to do defensive actions such as a backstep or a forward thrust/push to knock zombies back dependent on which weapon you currently have equipped. With the chainsaw and wee burner though this is used as fuel. Don't worry though, the POW meter will refill over time.
Your character may be strong enough to throw toilets at zombies but she is not very sturdy. With only 50 hit points, she can die very quickly if you allow yourself to take too many hits, which is not a lot. I found myself getting hit for 5 and even 10 hit points of damage making it more of a game where you would be better off not getting hit in the first place instead of trying to rely on healing.
That is right you can heal but it is so slow and tedious to do that you will honestly most likely not even want to bother. To heal you first have to crouch down and then wait somewhere around 4 seconds just to heal 1 point of damage. While you are doing this you can't attack, you can't move, you are completely vulnerable, so when you start to get overwhelmed with more and more spawns, you most likely won't find a good chance to heal. Just to be clear, this is the only way of healing if you so choose to bother with it.
As for combat this game is not a simple mash the button and win, you actually need to pay attention to your distance from the zombie while you attack. If you are too far away you won't hit, too close and you won't deal the best damage you could. You have to find the sweet spot which is different for each weapon to maximize your damage output. This is actually pretty cool as it adds to the challenge of the game while doing it's best to make each weapon feel unique.
Somethings I would have liked to have seen that would have made this game better in my opinion would be: a better healing system, tweaks to some weapons to make them more fun and better to use (more range for the flame of the weed burner for example), a bigger home improvement center to run around in, and even some kind of co-op multiplayer action. I am more of a solo player but dang this would have been even more fun with a friend or two.
Overall I am very glad this showed up on my Discovery Queue and I feel it was a $2.99 well spent. I highly recommend you give this game a shot if you enjoy a fun and quick arcade game experience. Throwing a brick at a zombie never felt so dang good.
