|
Have you played this game?You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in. |
Zombiesby ANONYMOUSEpisode 1 of monsters 1999 Horror Inform 6
|
(based on 5 ratings)
2 reviews — 4 members have played this game.
PLAY.
| Average Rating: based on 5 ratings Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 2 Write a review |
A couple tweaks to Robots gives us Zombies. Instead of manipulating the bad guys to collide with one another, now you manipulate the bad guys to collide with pits. There are two styles of gameplay, one with deep (bottomless) pits, and one with shallow pits which disappear when a zombie falls into it.
Still fun, but I like Robots better.
As other reviews mention, this is not really interactive fiction -- it's a recreation of an old game from the days when "computer graphics" was completely synonymous with "ASCII art."
The game does seem to be implemented well and was probably something of a pain to write. I didn't particularly enjoy the gameplay, so I'd normally rate it 2 stars, but I was struck by the way this piece is framed -- it made me think about the possibilities of throwing a mini-game like this into the midst of a standard IF work. (As if writing something of substance isn't hard enough!)
The only attempt at that sort of thing that I'm aware of is Infocom's Border Zone, which was somewhat controversial due to the real-time nature of the mini-game's action. In this case, the game is turn-based, which might work with the "stop-and-think" nature of IF instead of against it.
Another Z-Abuse, extremely similar to Robots--the goal is to get the ASCII characters that are chasing you (here they're Zs) to bump into other ASCII characters (Os) because Os kill Zs, it seems. Apparently, this is a port of an old BASIC game.
-- Duncan Stevens
Abuses of the IF engine by mjhayes
Although various interpreters were written to facilitate play and creation of interactive stories, it should be obvious that some people would find ways to write computer games using the various aspects of the interpreters.