Zombies Ate My Friends

In Zombies Ate My Friends, players are placed in a zombie-infested town, embarking on an adventure as one of the few survivors. Players will explore the town to collect food and water, interact with other townspeople to accept various quests, fight zombies, and use found resources to craft powerful weapons at the town's artisan to inflict greater damage. Players will also need to build a safe house to house weapons and supplies, providing greater security. The game also offers extensive customization options, allowing players to create their characters with various weapons and outfits to better suit their aesthetic preferences.

Player Comments of Zombies Ate My Friends:

Welcome to Festerville, population 4,206 (mostly zombies). We hope you enjoy your visit: explore the town, take in the sights and sounds (mostly groaning), dine on whatever you can find, and get to know the locals (though we suggest you avoid the dead ones). For recreation, try zombie combat: use what you find, or visit one of the town’s many weapon-crafting merchants for your choice of the finest hand-scavenged implements of zombie removal. If you decide to stay, we recommend you find one of our relatively comfortable safe houses – but please remember to board the windows and doors. Have fun, and good hunting!

Create and customize your own survivor with hundreds of items including weapons, clothing, and equipment.

Fend off zombies from your safe house, then take to the streets to scavenge for loot: find kick-ass weapons, useful supplies, and hidden surprises.

Explore Festerville’s restaurants, apartments, police stations, stores and more... but make sure to return to safety before zombies get you!

Go on quests to help other survivors: choose your own path to uncover the story of this off-beat zombie apocalypse.

Player Comments of Zombies Ate My Friends:

Zombies and video games go great together. We tend to forget this, especially as zombies in general become increasingly played out, but it’s a fact regardless. While Zombies Ate My Friends is no The Walking Dead, or Zombies Ate My Neighbors for that matter, it still showcases why this combination is so strong in the first place.

As a zombie apocalypse tears through the town of Festerville, players loot and scavenge just to survive. However, since this is an RPG, that is only the beginning of the lengthy, 8-episode story. Throughout their quests, players will reconstruct helicopters, recruit new survivors into their camp, and desperately search for cures for their infected teammates. Sharp writing keeps even the grind-heaviest missions from getting stale. Complimenting that is the excellent art style best described as "Scott Pilgrim" but without the video game aesthetic. Raiders, boss zombies, and other characters have big, expressive, chibi cartoon heads and fluid animations that energize the presentation. Meanwhile dark, moody colors and macabre background details like “Murphy’s Law Office” constantly reinforce the funny yet bleak tone.

Also enhancing the horror, but perhaps inadvertently so, is the freemium influence on Zombies Ate My Friends’ gameplay. The action takes place on a 2D, sidescrolling plane so getting lost is never an issue. Meanwhile, plentiful and inventive weapons like shotguns, cricket bats, and zombie body parts do a good job at keeping the undead at bay. But the energy system, which limits how many actions can be performed without waiting, really makes players fight for every inch. In too many other mobile games this can feel like an arbitrary, cheap, cynical, money-grubbing way of slowing the game down. However, here it actually adds to the oppressive atmosphere.

Agonizing over whether to spend one’s last bit of strength on fortifying a safe house or taking one last swing at a zombie before the quest timer runs out feel like the choices survivors would face. Merchants are shifty, free resources are scarce, space is limited, and inventory management is clunky, but of course things are that way. Society has broken down to its bare essentials. The freemium wall doesn’t hit right away, but once it does, the unique tension it creates is a whole different kind of fun.

Zombies Ate My Friends rides high on its top-notch production values and compelling synthesis of mobile and horror game design philosophies. It’s definitely worth devouring.

Conclusion:

Zombies Ate My Friends delivers charming visuals and approachable, bite-sized combat, yet unresponsive controls and an aggressive energy gate limit long-term enjoyment. Fans of casual zombie fare may appreciate the presentation, though patience (or a willingness to spend) is required.