Publisher Gambitious Digital Entertainment recently unveiled its latest game known as Zombie Night Terror with a new game play trailer. Currently under development by the French studio NoClip, this horror themed puzzle action game pits you knee-deep in a viral zombie outbreak. The only catch is that you are not here to to offer any salvation to the humans – your true goal is to help the zombie horde survive and spread the pandemic to extinguish humanity.
This is not the first time that ZNT has been shopped around. It had been shown off at SXSW 2015 and even won an award for Best Fantastic Game at the Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival’s Indie Game Contest in 2015. There are other trailers for the title that show the game’s overall look, but this latest video gives a better glimpse at its mechanical execution along with its interface.
There is quite a bit to take away from this trailer, as it does a solid job of conveying what exactly Zombie Night Terror trying to achieve. In terms of its overall framework, it is a 2D sprite based side scrolling puzzler in which you have to oversee the well being of your infected subjects with an emphasis on micromanagement and multitasking in order to ensure their survival. For anyone who remembers the glory days of Psygnosis and humble beginnings of DMA Design (now known as Rockstar North), this game looks to be a delightfully dark and twisted love note to the computer game classic Lemmings albeit with a refreshing twist.
Just like the anthropomorphic lemmings, these zombies are not terribly bright and simply saunter back and forth without you having full direct agency over their movement. However, you can imbue members of your horde with an array of mutations that change their properties and give them certain abilities. Some traits help aid in the ways of traversing the environment and others are meant to attack or defend against the human survivors who are not as helpless as you may think. While it appears that some survivors are vulnerable “Happy Meals” for the zombies, others are better equipped to defend themselves and can potentially decimate your undead horde with ease. The game play, as shown in the trailer, looks quite promising.
Zombie Night Terror’s visual style is interesting, as it goes for a completely desaturated look emphasizing value over color from the outset. Taking a cue from films like Sin City and other games like Hatred, it is only with particular objects and highlighted elements that color is a factor. In this case, blood and toxic waste really pop because of this stylistic choice. The low pixel count sprites representing the characters both alive and undead have an uncanny fluidity because of how they animate.
The sound work in the trailer works for what it is, but the music is a different story. It has a new retro wave vibe circa the 1980s like it is straight out of an episode of Miami Vice, which somehow fits into the conveyed formula. All of these touches certainly give this title some character.
Zombie Night Terror is currently slated for Spring 2016 release for PC and MAC through Valve’s Steam service.
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