Deadlings – Preview
Follow Genre: Puzzle, platformer
Developer(s): Nimbi Studios
Publisher(s): Artifex Mundi
Platform: iPad, iPhone

Deadlings – Preview

Good: Different kinds of zombies add to the fun.
Bad: Uninspired level-design.
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Yes, another zombie-game. If anything, it’s certainly fascinating how some trends manage to withstand the cruel hands of time, because honestly, we’ve been putting up with undead scum in our games for the majority of the previous generation of consoles.

No signs of slowing down either, as even touchscreens are getting their fill of zombiefied entertainment.

Deadlings then, a quaint upcoming title that defines itself as a slower, less deadly Super Meat Boy with a hint of strategy added to the formula.

What little story Deadlings has, tells a tale about the personification of death, who decided his latest dip downwards on the global popularity ladder signifies some changes are long overdue.

So our grim reaper comes up with a plan to employ zombies for the benefit of the general populace. Read: you get to go through some crazy experiments testing the skills of the various types of undead Death can come up with.

Things start off simple enough, each level begins with an overview of all the traps and paths your zombies have to avoid and take respectively and before you know it, you’ll be guiding the first of your henchmen towards the exit.

Every zombie walks aimlessly forward, the only way to get them to turn around is to let them hit a solid wall. Along the way you have to collect brains, avoid traps and push some buttons to open up new routes.

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Levels start out rather straightforward, but quickly grow larger and more complicated to accommodate higher and more engrossing difficulty.

Similarly, your arsenal of zombies keeps expanding with more exotic variations on your typical undead brain-eater. There are, for instance, zombies that stick to walls, undead dwarves that run more quickly and zombies that can fly by grace of some hefty bowel movements.

The diversity is more than welcome, as it keeps things fresh. A more than welcome fact, considering it somewhat makes up for a less than stellar level design.

Yep, no matter how much Deadlings tries to introduce itself as a thinking man’s zombie-puzzler, so far it can’t hide from the fact that it embarked upon well-trodden paths. Placement of traps is a strictly conventional business, with spikes of doom and spinning blades placed smack in the middle of your zombies’ routes. There’s next to no originality when it comes to the levels’ design, instead providing a persistent feeling of ‘been there, done that’.

A pity, because the concept is solid, and Deadlings can be genuinely entertaining at times, but overall the game is still lacking that bit of creativity to haul it to the next level and seeing how even though this is a preview, the game has already been released on the Australian App Store, there’s no real chance anything will changes..

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VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
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