Zombie Party Review

If there are two things that I’m likely to groan and moan about in this life, it’s zombies and parties. So, a game that combines the two may not seem like my cup of tea, one might think; Zombie Party has been a surprising delight however. A twin-stick shooter with a huge variety of weapons, powerups, potions, magic effects, enemies and bosses, this is solo developer Peach Pie Production’s first big release after participating in Game Jams.

Zombie Party has a lot to do with its abundance of items, with four modes making up the main gameplay. First there is Adventure mode, which is a wave-based arena that culminates in a boss fight before moving on to the next arena. I encountered four different arenas, each with its own boss and theme. The themes themselves made little difference to the actual gameplay, just the colour of the floor and selection of enemies. You see, for a game with the word “zombie” in the title there are ultimately very few actual zombies in what would seem to be its main gamemode, but rather elementals and golems and aliens.

The second gamemode is the Dungeon, which is similar to the Adventure mode but instead of waves of enemies the goal is to find the exit, similar to a dungeon crawler. The exit takes you to the next floor, and after a few floors you’ll reach a boss level before moving onto the next biome. Littered around each floor are chests that contain weapons, powerups or gold coins, which can be either used in that game to buy more weapons, ammo or health, or save them to buy things afterwards.

Play as the Grim Reaper to fix the half job he did

This is a very rogue-like element, but it is the only thing that is sustained throughout different runs. The gold is used to buy new characters - since only five are unlocked at the start - and pets, which will attack enemies and otherwise look pretty. My problem is deciding what to actually spend my money on: do I save it to pick up a new character, or do I spend it and get a much better weapon for my current run? Often I found that using my money in game soon ended up with me losing my lives soon after, probably because I put too much pressure on myself to do well and not waste my money.

The money is easily wasted too, since the game gives you so little of it. I actually now know how to rectify this, I think: each character has stats which are upgraded with temporary levels in the dungeons or adventures, and one of those is luck. I’m pretty sure that adding points into this will boost the amount of gold earned in each game. These stats are also upgraded somehow out of game, so you can go into the dungeons many levels higher, but this also costs money which I don’t have enough of. It’s a vicious cycle.

The third game mode is reliant on being high levelled before the start, as it tasks you with killing ten thousand zombies in five minutes. I’m almost certain that this isn’t actually possible, but if it is I never even got close to succeeding. The highest culling I ever managed was a little over a thousand.

This might not have been the best place to set up shop

The “Party” part of the name comes from the multiplayer: both local and online are available, and I’m entirely sure that the progression would move along much faster playing with other people. Not only would you be able to get further in the dungeons, you’d be able to pick up more powerups and not need to buy weapons or health. The fourth game mode also almost entirely relies on playing with other people in a deathmatch. If you intend to play Zombie Party alone, bear in mind that you’ll have to play for a very long time to be competitive on the leaderboards.