Review of Zombie Pirates

We have a quirky new tower defense game up for review today, Zombie Pirates. I discovered this unassuming little indie title tucked away at a corner booth at PAX this year and I’m happy to say that it has been a pleasant surprise.

While the game is very similar to that of Plants vs. Zombies (more on that later) the story is what the real draw is here. In most tower defense games the story (assuming there is one) is pretty much just that of X being besieged by Y for an indiscriminate amount of time. In ZP the story actually goes places and a fully developed (if not somewhat cheesy) story takes place. The basic plot is that a fleet of the titular zombie pirates have arisen from the depths and you as the dashing and somewhat insane Captain Smilin’ Jack O’Hurlihan must gather your fleet and reintroduce them to the bottom of the cold and briny seas. The whole thing is written with a great air humor and is styled much like the old pulp comics of the 1940′s. This kind of “high adventure” style of tale isn’t told enough these days and it’s just this kind of light-hearted romp that’s the cure for all the maudlin big sad dude with a gun stories that have overtaken gaming in recent times.

Something Zombie Pirates does very well is establish and stick with a theme, and that aforementioned “high adventure” style is well represented, not only in the story but in the visuals and music as well. The visual look of the game is very vibrant and colourful and there is a distinct 5th grader’s doodle look to everything (I mean that in a good way) as all the characters look very exaggerated. The main character is a perfect example of this as he looks like some weird mix of Blasto and Indiana Jones,(everyone who gets my Blasto reference gets mad retro love by the way). Everything just has a great hint of child like wonder to it and it’s a refreshing thing to see in this day and age. The music while not incredibly memorable is very fitting. It’s the standard “Pirates of Caribbean” type of adventure on the high seas kind of music with it changing every now and then depending on your environment, nothing special but it definitely works. On the note of environments the game does a surprisingly good job at keeping things varied while staying within it’s established setting exploring things such as piracy off the Asian coast and the terrors of the frigid northern seas. In each area you some get variation in the enemies, change in the music, and new chunk of the story. This distinct feel between levels gives a good reason to keep playing as you’ll just want to see what they cook up next.

The game also features a healthy achievement system with some nice clever little jokes hidden with it.

The gameplay in Zombie Pirates is very solid if not incredibly original.The basics of gameplay are that of summoning up ships, sending them to the appropriate square, and letting them fire upon the enemy to prevent them from getting from one side of the screen to the other (similar to the basic goal of Plants vs. Zombies). You have a variety of ships at your disposal all of which have their strengths and weaknesses and once out on the field they can be moved around at will adding a slight RTS element to the game. Don’t be fooled by this mobility though as the ability to move your ships is best used to simply switch up your formation on the fly; for the most part you should leave your ships where you summoned them and focus on building a firing line. There are a number of different types of enemies to be destroyed, some of which can only be dealt with if attacked in a specific fashion. This forces you to summon up ships wisely so you can make sure you’re never left twisting in wind with something showing up that you can’t attack.

The other aspect of the gameplay beyond the straight up strategy stuff is the proper use of pick-ups. There are three types of pick-ups with in the game; parrots, which allow you to summon up ships; grog, which heals up a ship; and powder kegs, which allow for a small-scale circle of damage which can utterly destroy smaller ships. Every ship you destroy drops one of these power-ups and proper use of them will keep you constantly supplied however the opposite is also true.

Last thing worth mentioning about Zombie Pirates is the amount of content you’re getting. Before I go into depth on it, it’s worth mentioning I was playing the collector’s edition which adds quite a bit of content to the game. With that said it’s kind of hard to find standard edition online so if you end up buying this game you’ll probably end up with the collector’s edition anyways. In the campaign there are 42 levels the majority of which add something new to the gameplay. In addition to the basic story levels there are challenge levels at the end of each world, a special set of levels with conditions called “Jack’s Nightmare”, and a mini-game in which you try to collect as much rum as possible with getting scuttled by the imperial navy (who proves to be fairly ineffectual against the zombies for some reason). A lot of that stuff is in the collector’s edition only but as I said earlier the proliferation of the collector’s edition makes that kind of a non-issue.

All in all Zombie pirates is well made, quirky, fun tower defense game with its only real problem being that Plants vs. Zombies already exists and they’re going to have to share the spotlight. While not necessarily as varied and unique as it’s contemporary it definitely has its own charm and it should on the list of anybody who enjoys this genre. For a good story, good gameplay, and good chunk of value Zombie Pirates gets a 4.5 stars out of 5. For everyone who has ever spent untold hours watching zombies get decapitated by peas or carefully made a maze of gun turrets on a green field to destroy waves of tiny running soldiers, this game is right up your alley.

Zombie Pirates can be purchased from Impulse, Direct 2 Drive, Gamersgate, and a number of other places.

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