Zombies: Dead in 20 is an action shooter courtesy of Rubicon Development. If you’ve ever watched The Walking Dead and thought, “This is boring. Somebody shoot something!” then Zombies: D20 might be perfect for you.
The game start screen shows the full scope of the experience. The main character stands in the middle of the screen, under the title header. At a tap the header disappears, the screen refreshes if the character is already dead, and zombies begin closing in. Tapping the screen makes the character shoot at the nearest revolting walker shuffling toward him from the direction of the tap. As the name implies, the objective is to survive as long as possible, the average being around 20 seconds.
One shot is all it takes to survive, but all it takes is one missed shot to die. If you survive long enough, your pistol automatically turns into a shotgun at timed intervals, granting the power to take out more zombies with one shot. If you miss too often, or neglect one area of the ring of zombies constantly closing in, eventually one of the walking dead will sink its teeth into your character and he will be lost beneath a pile of rotting corpses. Game over. After this, the number of seconds you manage to survive will pop up as your score and you can decide to proclaim your pride to the world via Twitter or Facebook leaderboards, or keep your shame a zombie blood-covered secret.
Zombies: Dead in 20 is about as simple as a game can be: there are no levels, no point conversion, and no character development. It’s a rail shooter without the rails. But in this case; simple is a great thing. The graphics are appropriately dark but still clear (who wants sunny hyper-bright graphics in a zombie game, unless it’s set on a tropical island? Don’t hate me, Dead Island players, I’m one of you, too). Character models are rounded off in a cartoony way that lets you know not to take the game too seriously – it’s a top-down shooter designed to defeat you in 20 seconds, not a Shinji Mikami epic. Don’t go into this with delusions of grandeur and you won’t be disappointed.
The sound consists of gunshots and the occasional moan when a zombie gets too close. While this is annoying, I found it a handy indicator of my firing pace – if the pause between shots is too long I know I’m unlikely to survive longer than 20 seconds. I want to make the revolver sound like an automatic. Unfortunately, there’s no music to create a soundtrack for your death-by-zombie, not even 20 seconds worth.
It would also be nice if this were linked to Google leaderboards, so players could see how they fare against a broader spectrum of people who downloaded the game. As of now, there is no way to see the highest scores worldwide. What a shame. I hope Rubicon adds Google leaderboard support. As of the time I’m writing this, I’m at 50 seconds, a score officially acknowledged via Google Play Reviews as amazing by the attentive staff over at Rubicon.
Z:D20 is a fun little game, for what it is. Paying 99 cents nixes the annoying ads, but for a game unlikely to be played more than three minutes at a stretch, only those who really love popping zombie skulls are likely to spend a dollar on it. At least there’s no in-app store nagging for your hard earned cash.
Overall, there are quite a few zombie-killing games out there, but this is not the kind that relies on tense set-piece moments or cutting-edge graphics to make players jump. This is just bare-bones fun, pure and simple. So, if you’re in the mood to get out some aggression with furious finger tapping, Zombies: Dead in 20 is the game for you.
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