Developer: Bootsnake Games
Publisher: Bootsnake Games
Rrp: £3.96 (Humblebundle) £3.99 (Steam)
Released: 2nd March 2012
Available on: Humblebundle and Steam
Played Using: Mouse
Approximate game length: 4 hours
Dawn of the Match Threes, Shawn of the Match Threes, Land of the Match Threes. At one point match three movies were all over the place and what comes to movies always comes to video games eventually, usually sooner than later. Wait? Oh, its Zombies, not match threes, that makes much more sense.
I suppose it was inevitable that the cultural phenomenon of zombies would collide with the ever prevalent match three game. Although those are two circles on a Venn diagram that never thought would intersect.
In this game you work your way through a series of puzzles that all use the match three mechanic. However this game is a bit different, rather than matching three or more survivors (yeah in this game you match up survivors) you have to surround the zombies with those matching survivors. Once you do they kill the zombies and more survivors appear filling the gaps left by the killed zombies… well usually, sometimes there’s something blocking the way for other survivors to appear.
However if you take too long zombies begin to attack the survivors and will turn them into more zombies, this can escalate quite quickly if you’re not careful.
When you kill a zombie sometimes a powerup will drop the type of which depends on the type of survivor used. You can hold up to a maximum of three at once and they can be incredibly helpful, however, they also affect your survivors as well so you have to be careful in using them.
The story mode of this game gives a schlocky b-movie plot, and when I say b-movie I mean it, at one point you have to contend against a zombie dinosaur. The voice acting matches the b-movie feel which makes me think that the developers intended it to be seen in such a light.
As is expected the zombies, situations and puzzles get tougher as you go, but its a gradual difficulty curve where you’re taught everything you need to know before just being flung into the thick of it. That isn’t to say that you can’t fail the tutorials though.
To be honest that’s pretty much it, but I think that this is proof that a game doesn’t need to be massively complicated to be entertaining. It also doesn’t outstay its welcome lasting only about three to four hours, what I would call a fun little time killer.
