Shortly after shelving The Night of the Rabbit, I randomly selected a game from my Steam library that I had never played before, to review next.
Zombo Buster Rising was the lucky winner.
This zombie-slayin’ arcade game from developer/publisher Firebeast had me mowing down waves of encroaching zombies, in the company of a sniper and a dude firing rockets out of what looked like a snow blower machine. I could only control where my character fired, the sniper and the rocket launcher dude operated on their own. The gameplay was a simple aim-and-shoot setup, and the levels were filled with zombies that had slight variantions, so there was always something new to deal with, as I progressed through the game’s levels.
Completing a level awarded me with gold to spend on upgrading my character’s stats (as well as the abilities of my two sidekicks), and gems, which were used to upgrade my special abilities. Special abilities came in three flavors: a shock-wave that temporarily froze enemies in place, an artillery barrage that did heaps of damage in large areas, and a pack of TNT which I could place anywhere and would detonate shortly after being placed, dealing moderate damage to any zombie within the blast radius. The character stats that I was able to upgrade included reload speed, how fast the guns could fire, how powerful each shot was, and a handful of other customizable features.
If twenty zombies made it past your defenses, it was game over and the level would need to be reset. Luckily, Zombo Buster Rising is not too difficult of a game. I certainly lost a fair share of attempts at some of the final levels, but because I’m a completionist, I made sure to get three stars (a perfect score) in every level, before progressing onto the next level. This assured me that I would enter each level with the strongest set of character abilities available to me.
The levels themselves are fairly short, only a few minutes long, so even if you do fail, restarting isn’t too much of a setback; plus, you get to keep any gold you collected from your failed attempt, allowing you to spend it on upgrades to make the next attempt slightly easier.
At $1.99, I was not expecting much from Zombo Buster Rising, but I was pleasantly surprised. There were a few instances of broken English, and the audio/video presentation is what you’d expect to find in an online Flash arcade game (which seem to be where Zombo Buster Rising originated from), but for the price and how solid the gameplay was, I’m not going to complain about a few grammatical errors here and there.
VERDICT: Zombo Buster Rising is nothing fancy, but it’s quick, cheap, and fun.
[Zombo Buster Rising on Steam]
PS – I was provided a copy of this game from the developer. If you’re a developer and would like me to review your game, email me at tom(at)epicbrew.net.
