Sometimes I play AR games that have such a great potential but the actually fail in delivering on their promise of their excellent core gameplay. One of those game is “zombies! ARgh!”. I put it in quotes because it’s kind of a weird name for a game that for some reason also has two exclamation marks in it. I am reviewing Version 1.0.2 of the game.
So what is ‘zombies! ARGH!’?
Zombies! ARgh! (you get it, ARgh with AR capitalized letters in the beginning)is a frantic zombie shooter. It features an AR (ARKit compatible) mode and a non-AR mode. It’s actually the first ARKit game that I came across that offer the two modes and the AR modes feels so much better than the normal one.
The normal mode is using the iPhone/iPad’s accelerometer to control the character, which feels very awkward. It’s weird because you need to rotate the device as you play. In AR it’s not an issue because of you moe your body with the screen, there is no need to rotate it.
Zombies! ARgh! uses a gameplay mechanics that I first experienced in the game powARdup. The character moves to the location where the user is pointing the middle of the screen at. The character has its own speed, so it doesn’t reach the point straight away. This creates a nice flow of movement that helps create some sort of connection between the player and the virtual character. It’s like being a puppeteer in a way. Sometimes you find yourself moving the camera too fast and the character is still outside the frame making its way to that point or it’s stuck and you can’t see it. This gameplay mechanic does need some optimizations but overall it works really well in AR.
Let’s Talk some Gameplay
As I mentioned, this is a frantic shoot’em up game. You control your character using your iPhone or iPad device. You tap and hold to shoot continuously, but keep in mind that each gun that you pick up has a limited amount of ammo. There is a circular meter at the top right side of the screen that shows you how many bullets are left. I think it’s a bad place for it because the player’s attention is in the center of the screen.
You start the game with a wooden stick which you can use to eliminate zombies, but this is the worst weapon in the game. It takes a lot of hits to kill a single zombie and as you soon find out, there are waves with dozens of zombies and you won’t be able to kill them using a wooden stick.
Dead zombies will drop coins, once you get enough coins the game will spawn weapon crates somewhere around the arena. Once you pick it up you can start shooting with it. You don’t need to aim, the game has auto aim active at all times. all you need to do is the make sure you stay away from the zombies.and keep shooting. Don’t waste your ammo, make sure you are shooting only when needed.
Furthermore, also make sure you pick up the coins that the dead zombie leave behind as those will disappear after a few seconds.
The game features a wide variety of weapons, including shotguns, flamethrowers (my favorite), rocket launchers, assault rifles, pistols and more. As you progress through the waves, you’ll also find health kits, damage boosters, and ammo carts, all are essential to help you survive longer.
Thre is also a really cool drop that looks like a cake. Once you get into it, a buddy will join the battlefield to fight alongside you for a short time. You can use him to create distractions as you move to pick up another gun or fight alongside him to quickly clear a large wave of zombies.
You need to try to survive as long as possible. When you die the game will show you how many undead creatures you killed and how many coins you collected.
The annoying part is that the game doesn’t remember your highest score and there is no global leaderboard either.
The game is super fun and addictive but severely lack content and a level up system that will keep players wanting to come back and play more of this game. It feels more like an alpha game than a complete one. It’s such a shame because I really enjoyed the core gameplay so much. As of its current version, there is nothing to work hard for, because there is no high score to beat, the level design is, all the same, there are no boss fights, achievements, different characters to play, collectibles, nothing. I do hope that the developer just rushed the game and we are going to see more features in the next updates.
Bottom line is that the game is really fun to play in AR but it lacks many features, therefore, the replay value suffers badly because of it. Players just won’t be motivated to play this game after a few runs.
Graphics and AR Experience
Just a few words about the visuals. and the AR experience. The game has very few visual elements. It would certainly be better to have more stuff around the environment to make it more visually appealing.
The game features low-poly art-style which is really nice and worked well for this type of game. I also like the look of the low-poly visual effects, like the gunfire for example.
The AR experience was good. I wasn’t able to resize the gameplay area, but its size wasn’t too big either. I was able to play the game on the small table in the living room without any problems.
The game doesn’t require the player to move around the environment, only to move its device.It’s a good game choice for those who prefer a casual AR game that doesn’t require any physical effort (some games do). You can just deploy it on the table of the living room and play it while sitting on the couch, what I did.
Conclusion
What can I say? I am very disappointed. When I played my first run I thrilled only to find out that there isn’t much more to this game than what I experienced the first round. The non-AR game mode doesn’t really add anything either, maybe a nice background to play the game at but the gameplay controls in the normal mode are annoying.
This game urgently needs more content. If it doesn’t receive updates it will just fade away and we lose what it could have been a great Augmented Reality Shoot’em up game. I just can’t recommend this version of the game. I hope that once the developer releases new updates, I can’t change my recommendation. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a fun game, and if you buy the game you’ll be supporting the developer and the game I do feel satisfied buying the game so I can share my experience with you and hopefully get the attention fo the developer to share with him how much I love the gameplay and how much i want this game to become better.