iPhone Review: Zombie Pizza

Publisher/Developer: Appy Entertainment
Genre: Puzzle
Price: $0.99
Verdict: Not a bad diversion for the price, fun for kids.
Pros: Great visuals, animations and sound, initially engaging.
Cons: Lack of depth, and why does a fifth of the playing field occur off screen?

Someone found a way to mash up a pizza-making puzzle game with zombies, which I think now qualifies the zombie genre library as completed.  Nothing more for anyone to add, all done here.

Unlock your levels.

This game suffers from the same predicament as an earlier game I reviewed, Ramp Champ: fashion before function.   The game looks and sounds great but ultimately just doesn’t have any depth and replayability.  The basic idea here is that there is a particular zombie sect that is looking for pizza, not brains, and you have been trained as part of a crack pizza commando unit to deliver these pies to the undead in order to keep them at bay.  Each level is comprised of three indicators: a zombie rage bar that fills as the undead don’t get fed, a cash indicator, what you make for what you bake, and a timer showing dusk til dawn.  Your goal is to make enough of the qualifying pizzas by flicking or swiping ingredients off the ever moving conveyor belt onto a blank pie, and flicking the pie into the zombie pickup window.  You can rack up the points for making predetermined patterns (like all of one type, half and half, etc.) that are worth more than others.  You have until the sun comes up or the zombies come busting through the front door of the pizzeria.  Since this is Zombie Pizza, naturally the ingredients are hearts, bones, brains, and eyes – and each pie fits 4 items.  Random body bits are dropped onto the belt and as they wiggle and throb, you use your finger to flick or drag them onto the pizza.  The animation and sound effects employed here are really top notch, just hearing someone play the game makes you want to see what’s going on.

Missed that quinella box, but got the trifecta!

Normally in a game like this, you would expect a ‘Simon Says’ like matching mechanic, where a dynamic set of items are displayed and you have to match them.  However, here you have to reference a help screen to see what pizza concoctions will garner you what points and just remember them.  A dynamic menu would have provided more depth, but if this memorization mechanic works for you then you can count the additional brain exercise as a gameplay bonus.  One game design choice that is odd to me is shown in the screenshot above.  It looks like I cropped it right?  Well I didn’t.  For some odd reason, the developer decided that the most important portion of game play real estate should be lopped off.  Most people have some sort of silicon or plastic case on their iPhone so the lower right corner is almost impossible to get to with a device cover, let alone without one.  When the game design asks you to wait until the last minute to build your pie (as this is when there will be the largest variety of items to choose from), the ingredients shouldn’t fall off the screen and be unreachable.

Mario does double duty Zombie Pizza’s copy writer.

As I said, the game looks great and the limited animation is employed well, with the groaning zombies and running conveyor belt.  The sound is especially well done and meshes perfectly with the game’s overall look and feel.  Options include saving individual users’ profiles and enabling or disabling sound, music, and vibration.  There game sports 5 “weeks” and each one has 7 levels to play (except the last), each one with a different cash requirement to medal the level.  For completionists, the replay value will come in trying to get gold on every level, but the non varying gameplay and lack of dynamic pizza menus may bore you before you ever get that far.

That being said, I feel this game really seems targeted to a younger age demographic and is probably not what you are looking for if you are not in that age group and seek depth or a challenge.  Zombie Pizza is really more Pizza than Zombie.