Alien Zombie Megadeath

It's an arcade-style shoot-em-up game.

You can run around and hop up and down on these platforms, and the goal is to shoot the aliens. Sorry, the alien zombies. It's pretty straightforward. When you kill the aliens--sorry, alien zombies--they explode into crystal things which you grab to increase your score and your multiplier, and occasionally giant crystals and powerups spawn around the level for you to grab.

The idea is to get as high a score as possible and earn medals and such. There's some tension because you want to be close enough to the aliens...alien zombies...to grab the crystals when they die, but not so close that they, y'know, kill you.

There's also the occasional variant level. Sometimes bombs spawn around the level, and you have to carry them to a certain section of the stage to disarm them before they explode. Some levels have a jet pack for you to pick up and you get to fly around the stage blasting everything--think Yoshi's final smash in Smash Bros. Brawl. Some levels have baby astronauts who bounce around, and the alien zombies try to eat their brains and you have to save them. And of course there are boss stages.

Also, you can play as Santa Claus? >_>

It's kind of fun to blast aliens...uh, alien zombies, yes, right...but the gameplay here isn't all that deep. It has the feel of a casual iPhone game that you'd play to pass the time on the bus ride home, or a dinky flash game you'd mess around with for a little while when you're bored. It's very good by those standards, but not normally what I'm looking for in my PC games.

There's a local multiplayer mode for 2-player co-op survival, but I'll probably never end up playing it. There's also some achievements, but meh.

So anyway, I guess it's okay. A cute casual shoot-em-up for when you want to play a cute casual game. Nothing terribly offensive here; nothing spectacular either. *shrug*

• Alien Zombie Megadeath
• Astro Tripper
• The Baconing
• Beat Hazard
• Defense Grid: The Awakening
• Explodemon
• FlatOut
• Future Wars
• Gear Grinder
  
• Greed: Black Border
• Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes
• Hack, Slash, Loot
• Madballs in...Babo: Invasion
• Plain Sight
• Sol Survivor
• Trapped Dead
• Twin Sector

That's ten down, seven to go. The next Indie Royale bundle is in the pipeline too, and Indie Gala is coming out with another, and who knows what else. I've got to keep this value train rolling!

The Quest For Value: Indie Royale April Fools Bundle

Oh man, I haven't finished my last Quest For Value and there's another bundle out. No matter! The quest continues. It's the Indie Royale April Fools Bundle, available at http://www.indieroyale.com.

I'll run this concurrently with my other Quest For Value. Each game gets at least an hour of play...for value. Because I love value.

Defense Grid: The Awakening is a tower defense game. Hey, I already own this one! I got it from the Potato Sack back when Portal 2 came out. It's a pretty good tower defense game, as tower defense games go. I've already logged 9 hours in it and written a full review of the game. As such, I will exempt this from my Quest for Value, since I have clearly gotten Value out of it already. Ideally I can trade away the Steam key for another game and get extra value that way!

Hack, Slash, Loot is a turn-based dungeon-crawler with retro graphics. From the description given, it sounds like a Roguelike. Okay, I've played those before. The Binding of Isaac and Dungeons of Dredmor were both about as awesome as they come. If this is another game of that caliber, I will be pleased. If it's more of an RPG with random encounters and whatnot, eh, that's okay too. Well, I dunno, we'll have to see.

Alien Zombie Megadeath has a pretty loaded title there. They're not just aliens, they're alien zombies. And it's not just death, it's megadeath. Sounds like the title of a cheesy B-movie that you might see on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Well, apparently it's a platformer shoot-em-up. A lot of variance in that genre. Maybe it's something like Contra or Sunset Riders? Who knows.

Explodemon touts itself as a throwback to SNES-era platformers with added physics-based puzzle elements and lots of bangs and booms. I don't really know what to expect here either. Platform games vary a lot in quality. Hopefully this is a good one. Sad that it's not on Steam, but what can you do.

Astro Tripper appears to be a horizontally-scrolling shoot-em-up. Sure, that's always a classic genre. You've got your guns, your bad guys who shoot at you, your boss monsters or whatever. They're pretty much all the same, more or less, and from what I can tell this doesn't look like it's going to stray far from the formula. Not necessarily a bad thing, since the formula is fine (I liked Jamestown), but hopefully it doesn't feel like I've already played it for ten hours after only five minutes.



Let's review my progress so far.

• Alien Zombie Megadeath
• Astro Tripper
• Defense Grid: The Awakening
• Explodemon
• FlatOut
• Future Wars
• Greed: Black Border
• Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes
• Hack, Slash, Loot
• Trapped Dead
• Twin Sector

That's four down, seven to go. I must have MORE VALUE! Om nom nom nom