Atom Zombie Smasher

By: Derek Yu

On: March 15th, 2011

Atom Zombie Smasher is the latest release from Brendon Chung and Blendo Games. The game plays out across a number of missions where your goal is to evacuate zombie-infested cities with a helicopter and groups of mercenaries. If you can reach your goal (determined by the number of civilians you’ve saved) before the zombies, or Zeds, reach theirs, you win.

Each month, new cities are infected and you can choose one of them to evacuate with a random set of mercenary groups, which include mobile infantry, artillery, barricades, and more. The makeup of your mercenaries plays a big part in how you do, so choose each mission wisely – conceding a difficult one will give the Zeds points and widen the gulf between you. One the other hand, beating tough missions earn you more victory points and offer more opportunities to level up your squads.

Planning and executing the perfect evacuation is a lot of fun (especially when it involves nuking the Zeds from orbit), and it feels great to make off with a gold medal victory against all odds. The cities in AZS are randomly-generated, too, so each time you play through a campaign it’s a bit different. Plus, the game has that wonderfully irreverent and stylish sensibility that’s become a hallmark of Brendon Chung’s work. Check it out on Steam – the game’s only $9 for this week (10% off).

TIGdb: Entry for Atom Zombie Smasher

Posted in Highly Recommended, Linux, Macintosh, Strategy, Windows | Tags: BlendoGames

Ezuku

Well, it's kinda been out for 2 months…

Anyway, I bought it a while ago, it's been great fun, and the mod system is nice as well. The randomly drawn teams you use is a bit annoying though, since sometimes you get stuck due to a rotten combination of teams. Probably my biggest disappointment though is that the game tends focus a lot on quick bouts of annihilating the zombies as they spawn rather than the rescues and infections, containments, etc. I guess I just find each map just too small.
Eobet

I also bought it several months ago, and I like the idea, but I'm really frustrated with the game balancing, because it's far too random, but not in a rogue-like way.

It feels like it has the polish of what you'd expect an indie title to be a couple of years ago, but if updates are released, it has great potential to become super polished.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=94805880 Devin Horsman

I thought it was one of the most interesting and fun games of the year.
Vania

I'm gonna buy it it looks great.
Jeye

I found this to be great fun, except when i accidentally started an extermination mission with only TNT, landmines and barricades…
jay

the tutorial is somewhat confusing. it tells you your goal is to rescue the civillians, but in most cases it is way more important to smash all zombies.

also, a hint would be nice to the randomized available squads in each missiion, that is not very intuitive.
Vania

I agree, it's much more important to kill all zombies. And sometimes you get awful mercenary combinations.
http://twitter.com/radiatoryang Robert Yang

My foolproof strategy during the beta was to attack only Level 1 or Level 2 outbreaks so I could conquer them, but the new multipliers make Level 4 outbreaks really really dangerous. It's worth it just to complete the rescue objective sometimes, because otherwise the per-turn profit it gives the zombies gets too much and will eventually destroy any lead you have in the victory track.
Pnx

1$ off… that's hardly the deal of the year.