Zombie Zunday - Yet Another Zombie Defense (2014)

In honour of the new Zombie Zunday tradition SighFye has started, I decided to play a game I bought several months ago on steam. Yet another Zombie Defense first grabbed my attention for having a multiplayer top-down shooter defence style of gameplay, but the more I played it, the more I liked the singleplayer survival experience for the challenge it provides.

I've always been a fan of zombie games that pit you against constant waves of enemies and charges you with the task of surviving as long as possible. Dead Rising on the Xbox 360 was the first game I found that did it well, but you had to complete the main story once in order to unlock the survival mode first. This game ups the anty a little bit by emptying the playing field completely. It's just you and a single lamp post, against the zombie horde, in the middle of an empty expanse of darkness.

Anyone got a flashlight? :/

During the night, you are tasked with defending yourself against the undead. Once a wave of zombies is completed, the game transitions to daytime and you have an unlimited amount of time to purchase weapons & ammo and fortify your base by adding barricades or turrets. Once you have purchased everything you require to survive another night defending against the undead, you select next level to continue.

Back off, undead scum!

I thought this was an odd design choice at first because it removes the difficulty of having a limited amount of time for both defending and fortifying. Later in the game, something occurred to me that made some sense of that particular feature.  The fortifications seem to carry over damage from round to round if left in place between rounds. However if you remove all the erected fortifications and rebuild them, from the ground up, they are replaced at full health, allowing you to effectively repair your fortifications and also letting you spend a decent amount of time deciding on the best strategy in laying out your base to provide the best defence.

Put the electric fences on the outside! :D

 Since Yet Another Zombie Defense does not have a definitive end, as such, I decided before I started playing that unlocking the "Endless Night" mode by making it past the seventh night would qualify as "finishing" the game for the purposes of the blog.

With the recent additions of player upgrades and better turrets, I was able to survive until the 17th night. Unfortunately at the end of the 16th night, the zombies had become strong enough to overwhelm my barricades before my turrets could eradicate them and ultimately I wore down all of my remaining ammo. Going into the 17th night, I was unable to purchase enough ammo for either the SMG turrets or my Shotgun to last long enough to finish off the zombies.

Lasted a lot longer than the last time I tried to play this game.

I briefly tried the multi-player mode, but it was disappointing. Both players share ammo and currency with the turrets, so I frequently had players join and then spend all the money I had saved up for a blaster on fortifications immediately. I feel like either seperating the money and ammo counts for each player or making both players decide on purchases would be a nice addition.

I feel that money is quite sparse throughout the singleplayer survival experience too as it's extremely easy to run out of money and the amount of money gained each round and the amount of damage done by weapons you carry over doesn't balance well with the increase in zombie difficulty per round. This could be a design flaw, or done on purpose to make sure the game can end without the player continuing indefinitely, but either way it seems a little unbalanced at the moment.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed Yet Another Zombie Defense as a survival game and, as long as you were playing with friends, I could see the multi-player mode being fun too. Since it's currently on sale for 49 cents each or 79 cents for a two-pack, I would highly recommend to grab it quickly before the sale runs out in about 26 hours.

Steam Library Games Completed: 2/369