Listen up. This game isn't "good", but for 3.99 (or 0.79 on sale) it is WELL worth checking out.
The gist of it is that you're in control of the "Horde", you start off with one of your 4 generals, then it's time to turn humans into Zeds! And then you destroy everything in your path. The missions aren't "varied" per se, but each one is unique, and requires a modicum of thinking skills. Despite being the Horde you can't just "a move" everywhere. To help you you get more generals, more spells and more durability and/or attack power for your heroes and zombies in between missions. You can basically "farm" the campaign missions if need be to get extra XP, but you can't go past the level cap. Now, that's the good part. Took me 7 hours to beat, and I enjoyed myself, but...
Objectively speaking, this game is not good.
It starts with the lack of control you have over your army and your individual units. Selecting and moving them is almost impossible in the frantic action. At least they were thoughtful enough to let you cast your hero skills without actually selecting them. But good luck trying to dodge an AOE attack that will kill your ENTIRE ARMY! Since you regularly field 100+ zombies with a mixture of weapons you can only hope most will survive to zerg the boss' health down. Or you have to spend mana to resurrect a few, but that's not infinite, either, of course. If you CAN react quickly enough to get out of dodge, then your units might refuse to just move at all. Or they will get stuck on something. Or they'll instead attack a different target, instead of moving, because you can only left click move AND attack in this game... and the attack command is a circle around all enemies.
Even if all that doesn't happen, the game frequently drops FPS to such low numbers that controlling anything is a miracle in itself. Basically, you want as much uber powered ranged zombies as you can have. Too bad, the enemy units that MAKE them uber powered are nowhere to be seen on the final map. The entire final "chapter" is a slog, consisting of not one, but TWO 20 wave defense missions, which are almost exactly the same. The rest of this chapter is just regurgitating bosses you've already beaten ad nauseum. They clearly ran out of ideas and/or time, and instead of presenting the player with something interesting for the final part, they just gave us "5 of the bosses you have already fought, but all condensed on 1 map", and the missions before that also feature those very same bosses. The final mission also has a final boss, which is weaker than all the other bosses, but has a massive health pool. Hell, my 3 generals took care of him eventually with the help of some healing and protection magic, because everything else immediately died. My army was tiny to begin with, because the dragon aggroed and killed all of it. And then the gorilla killed the next army I could muster by ONE-SHOTTING dozens of dudes in melee range. Thanks. Not.
And since you cannot save during a mission, you might just be ♥♥♥♥ out of luck. For most missions that's not "that bad", because they only take 10 to 15 minutes on average ... but I've spent a long-ass time on that final map. I would've been very pissed had I had to start all over again.
Of course, there's also graphical, audio and gameplay bugs. The aforementioned zombies that won't move, no matter what, the zombies that move onto water and simply drown, despite not being told to move onto water ... zombies not entering vehicles, zombies not attacking, zombies not moving onto water DESPITE being told to do so, zombies not LEAVING the water, despite being told to do so ... god, those water maps were also pretty ♥♥♥♥♥, to be honest.
And then, there's the writing ... which is either completely AI invented or nobody actually cared, which I can somewhat understand, but the script tries to be funny all the time... and isn't. You have LENGTHY cutscenes with terribly slow written dialogue. The lines are atrocious, the entire backstory you can collect via documents is so ... a 1st grader could write a better story. Not only is it bad, it's also full of grammar and spelling mistakes, because the devs likely aren't EN native speakers (I couldn't find any info on Seed Lab, unfortunately).
The graphics are also nothing to write home about, and for that reason the frame drops are unvorgivable.
Also, game balance. Besides the uber zombies you can get, the 4 generals are also not balanced at all. 2 are ranged fighters, 2 melee. The ranged fighters offer a lot more utility in most circumstances, since you can often just wait out their cooldown to dismantle enemy fortifications without actually having to engage in combat. The melee fighters do a LOT more damage, but I usually only use one in my 3rd slot, the ice berserker, because he can attack air units with his special ability in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ huge radius, which is king for the final boss.
But Swarm the City isn't a rip-off, it's (probably) not a mobile port, either, someone actually wanted to make this game, and wanted it to be fun. And they somewhat succeeded, despite all the negatives. I'll reiterate: I'll ONLY recommend it, because it is SO cheap. Other developers would ask 25 bucks for this. Oh, also, don't spoil the final boss in your Steam preview screenshots ... Just one more piece of advice: skip the DLC. It's basically half the price of the base game, but offers nothing of value. It just makes your generals a bit stronger and gives them additional lightning damage. That is it. Not worth it.
Edit: Also got achievements for stuff I never completed... and sometimes in missions objectives just completed, although I definitely didn't complete them ...
