Atom Zombie Smasher

A jewel, a polished diamond for 20-30 hours of fun. It allows for the most accesible modding and mod creation I have seen, useful for getting any kind of experience desired, from the easiest of easy to the most insane of modes. The cleverly designed units are great for getting different challenges, thought they can sometimes end up in such a way as to make it impossible to win. There are a variety of preset options for the game, which allow you to make the game go on indefinitely, let you pick your units and so on. All in all very cleverly designed. Even when you get bored of the normal saving civiians / killing zeds, you can play Kringlejammer the most hilariously overpowered weapon of mass destruction, with a bit of strategy to see how long you can last. It is suprisingly addictive, akin to a tower defense game but with a bit of a twist. The story behind the game is also quite odd, but provides some comic relief.

Worth it's price? Yes
Gameplay time: 10 hours for basic experience, 20 for some modding and messing around, 30 for achievement completion.

Atom Zombie Smasher is a super little indie strategy game. The basic premise is that you take on the guise of a commander holding back the zombie hordes from overruning your city.

It works on two levels; first is the strategy where a map of the city districts is where you see the progress of zombie infestations and plan your next mission. You can choose which military assets you take with you from: infantry, snipers, mines, demolitions, barricades, gas attracting teams or artillery. Once you initiate the mission, the game changes to a tactical sub-game where you place your units on the map to best protect the civilians you are trying to extract from the map, while avoiding collateral damage. To many dead civilians and you fail.

There are a number of tactical elements that affect each mission type such as: map layout, dangerous area which can explode if you are not careful, more or less time-limit & available/unavailable units.

You win if you extract a minimum number of civilians or your units are able to destroy the encroaching zed hordes. However if you do not clear the map of zeds before nightfall more zeds arrive to swarm the map. Successful missions reward you with points that go towards an overall victory target. Units also receive XP to increase their unique zed destroying abilities and they can level up to increase those abilites to make them more clincial.

The zeds then receive strategic points allocated to some city district (1-4) which determines the strength of the zombie hordes and the difficulty of initiating a mission there. This continues until you reach the campaign victory target.

Though gameplay is fairly repetitive the addition of custom campaign options make the strategy and tactical aspects that much more varied. Scientists can be found wondering the city area and can be rescued. Each one can then be "spent" to acquire research upgrades towards 8 specific areas of interest including: faster xp gains for units, faster strategic weapons, resilient scientist, more destructive weapons etc). You can have access to strategic and tactical weapons that can clear zeds from an entire district thus reseting the danger level there. Just be aware of the monster-zeds! lol

For me this was a surprise gem of a game. While graphics are just basic sprites, it really can grab you if you let it. It one of the most intelligently designed games Ive ever played and almost perfectly balanced. While the musical score and audio is fairly basic, they do a wonderful job of immersing you in unfolding events. Best of all its a very polished game. Even if some Mac users are having problems with playing it.

If you are after a basic but enjoyable zombie apocalypse survival simulator then you should pick up a copy when the price is right for you!

Atom Zombie Smasher may leave a strange first impression, but I came over it and gave this game a second chance - I don't regret it!

I kinda fell in love with top view city perspective - I enjoyed rescuing people and kicking zombies out of my land with variety of weapons and units from infantry to orbital cannons.

This game is must have for every zombie enthusiast.

A challenging minimalistic strategy in which you recue bunch of little cube peoples before cube zombies infect them. It can be frustrating and I'm not too keen on the music, but it is quirky and I am happy it has an OST at least.

It kinda mixed tower defense mechanics, but instead of protecting the base, you are just slowing down the incoming mobs so that you can escape with as many survivors as possible.

I like the scoreboard mechanic, it has a board game feel to it and you compete against the AI which you will more than likely be behind for a long while at first.

Even though I don't usually like these kinds of games, this weird RTS-strategy combination worked pretty good for me. It's easy to lose, which should be obvious - after all it's a zombie apocalypse, right? I admit I had to play on easy mode to even beat the game. Challenging and fun for a few hours.

Okay, Captain Obvious time - This game involves zombies, the smashing and atomising thereof. The title is as literal as it comes, perhaps second only to NZA 2 (read my review on -that- for more details) in terms of "It does what it says on the tin". Atom Zombie smasher is a variant on those old-school top down "Zombie outbreak simulator" programs that would show lots of little dots rushing around, some were coloured as civilians, and others as zombies, over time you'd watch the infection spread throughout the city, often leaving a small clump of survivors holed up in a dead end praying to survive just another few moments.

This is the logical conclusion of that program, it's a game and a campaign structured around the outbreak simulator program, with you tasked as the last remaining commander of the available defence forces, attempting to save as many lives (and smash as many zombies) as you can. To this end you're provided with a default escape helicopter, and gradually introduced to the toolbox of mercenaries that accompany you over the course of the campaign.

The game runs two distinct "beats", the first is the strategic map, a somewhat procedurally generated vision of a large city with lots of sub districts. This map operates on something of a turn based mode, so at the beginning of a given month, the zombie AI places outbreak counters on various districts, you then select a district to fight in, and depending on the outcome the district is either still infested, cleared out, or reclaimed and made safe for humanity. So far so normal, it's important to note however that whilst you only get ONE district to fight each month, the outbreak AI gets two, and eventually three counters to use, you're fighting a losing battle overall.

However, on the upside, you -do- get some tools at various points, in the strategic map the two major events are access to a prototype cannon (Elephantbird) that allows you to utterly eradicate a district in the tactical mode (more on this shortly), and llama bombs, which essentially decontaminate a bunch of districts in one pass, buying you much needed breathing room. Outside of this, you'll be assigned a squad of mercenaries (randomly selected from the available pool), and you'll get to choose a district to "go tactical" on.

This is where the outbreak simulator program is most visible, in the tactical mode you're presented with a moderately simple top down view, with civilians represented in a sortof beige yellow, zeds in purple, and your forces taking up various other colours. Left unchecked, the map will play out much like the software in question, and eventually all the survivors will be gobbled up, but you've tools to prevent this!

Before the tactical map kicks off, you designate your initial landing point for your rescue chopper (equipped with foghorn that automatically attracts nearby civilians), and you set up your various mercenaries. These range from single shot items like minefields, to ongoing and mobile defences such as infantry and snipers. Effective use and the setting up of choke-points can, if done right, result in you demolishing all the zombies before nightfall and scoring a hefty bonus (indeed, these bonuses, and saving lots of survivors is your path to victory).

The game really livens up once you've got explosives, with the map turning from an often pristine cityscape into a big brown muddy pit. Zombies exploding in clouds of green as your artillery rains down, remote dynamite detonations at key junctions reducing swarms of zombies into kibble, and your infantry protecting choke points and keeping the zeds away from the ever dwindling number of survivors. Once there are no more survivors to rescue, the scores are tallied up and you're returned to the strategic map. Learning how to adapt your tactics to an ever growing outbreak, and racing to the victory of humanity before the zeds inevitably take over forms the core of the campaign.

For a simple pick up and play title, it offers an excellent level of depth, combined with an offbeat and catchy soundtrack. The graphics are not much to look at, but they do the job functionally well (think of a 3D version of that outbreak simulator and you're pretty much there). It's very easy on the system requirements and provided you don't suffer any hiccups at launch, you'll have little complaint from the game. As a cheap impulse buy, it's hard to find fault and as such, comes very much recommended.