Zombotron is a side-scrolling shooter game with a few unique twists. Also zombies, all the zombies in the world, as in all the zombies from The Walking Dead, Z Nation, and Black Summer together! Zombotron is based on an old flash game and is developed by Ant.Karlov and published by the Californian Armor Games Studios. In Zombotron, you’re stranded on a planet that’s only populated by zombies, kill zombies, kill bosses and scavenge for ammo, because you might run out at any second, and we all know what that means…!
- Resource management: Zombotron has a few unique twists on the side-scrolling shooter genre, and this is one of them. Your character is stranded on a death world, it would be rather weird if you had all the ammo you needed. But you don’t, you’ll have to save your bullets, you’ll have to aim for headshots and you’ll need to scavenge corpses and explore the map if you run out of rounds. It’s hard to pump your enemies full of lead if you don’t have any!
This gives the game an extra challenge and keeps things interesting for longer, you can’t just make your way through the levels without paying attention. - Environmental kills: Shooting a platform to drop it down on a zombie’s head is a pretty fun thing to do. Standing on that platform and shooting another zombie in the face while you’re falling onto the first one is even better! You can really have some fun with the environment in Zombotron, finding new and creative ways to kill is a great pastime!
- Secrets!: Most side-scrolling games are pretty linear, but Zombotron uses quite a bit of verticality which allows the game to have some hidden rooms. In these hidden rooms you’ll find new items, like better guns or armor. Which you’ll need since I died way too many times in the first hour. I still died after that as well, but the new gear helped at least.
- The gunplay: The gunplay is pretty good, you can aim in any direction and headshots are encouraged, since you want to save ammo. Aiming at the heads results in a wonderful explosion of gore, it’ll save you bullets and you won’t have to reload at the worst possible times. Reloading while a zombie is clawing at your face isn’t the best of ideas…
- LOOT!: I love looting, getting a new and shiny piece of gear is half the reason why I play MMOs and it’s like 70% of the reason why I’m addicted to the Borderlands franchise. In Zombotron you’ll find quite a wide variety of guns and armor for you to wear.
- The difficulty: And once again I put the difficulty in the mixed section, I’m noticing a pattern! The resource management is great, but it also makes an already difficult game that much more deadly. The zombies kill you in a few hits, there aren’t a lot of healing items around and you have to manage your ammo. You’ll die pretty often and while there are checkpoints, there aren’t all that many of them.
- The bosses: The bosses are basically just really tanky mobs. You have to hit them a ton of times while avoiding their hits and the mobs around them. I like bosses but the ones in Zombotron were rather boring.
- RPG elements: There is a level up mechanic, but that is limited to just putting points 3 stats, strength, dexterity and vitality. I enjoy the thought behind the level up system but it’s rather poorly executed.
- Stale: After a few hours, the game just started to become rather stale and boring. Sure, the level structure has quite a bit of variety, but the mobs are basically all the same. Some have a mask on, which means you can’t easily one-shot them, some look just a tad bit different but in the end, it’s just more of the same. The levels all look pretty similar, they use the same color scheme most of the time and they often feel the same as the previous one.
- The physics engine: The physics engine is a double-edged sword. It makes those great environmental kills possible but that same feature causes you to get stuck quite often. I still love the environmental kills but there are quite a few bugs that pop up because of it.
CONCLUSION
Score: 68%
Zombotron is a fun game, most of the time at least, and you’ll enjoy yourself for a few hours at least. It’s certainly not a bad game, but it has a number of flaws that keep it from actually being a good game. I’d love to see more variety in mobs in the first few hours, I’d love for the leveling to be a little bit more in depth and I’d absolutely adore it if another color scheme was used every once in a while.
Developer: Ant.Karlov Publisher: Armor Games Studios
Played on: PC / Steam
