I am a seasoned gamer and love playing video games but I like to think that I have some common sense as well as a family to feed. Why is it that a simple mobile game which sees you building housing and business, whilst protecting your residents from a post apocalyptic horde of zombies, has me obsessed?

I’m no spring chicken and as such I have played through many a game from an Atari 2600 through to an Xbox 360 and completed, dented and sometimes only scratched the surface (Oblivion) of various games. I later went on to design and develop games for the iPhone and iPad. I thought all of this ‘experience’ would prepare me for anything the gaming industry could throw at me but I was sorely mistaken.

A free download started me off. Many free games don’t stay on a phone for long so I didn’t expect much from ‘No Zombies Allowed’ and to be honest it didn’t deliver much. I built a house and a shop and then had to wait before I could do anything else… Wait!!! Five minutes turned to ten minutes, ten minutes soon became hours and before I knew what had happened I had 20 buildings are busy do their things. I decided to pay out for some cash using real money ($1.99) and swore to myself that is all I would spend.

Thankfully I have (so far) kept to this but this hasn’t stopped me waiting and checking every ten minutes to find out what my little community has made, sold, found or killed.

I started to notice something was wrong when I found myself stocking up and doing supply runs as I walked down the street (even with company). I would get frustrated at the sun for glaring on my screen and ruining my 100% no damage bonus and speedily find a shaded route to my destination. It reached a new low when I found myself at 3am preparing a supply run so it would be ready by 7am when I got up. In my defence, however, I have a 1 year old who doesn’t sleep through so I didn’t set an alarm, I was merely ‘up anyway’. Nevertheless, this is no excuse for such an obsession.

As if to answer my deep routed prayers to be rid of this game I was given two opportunities to finally be separated from my obsession. Firstly, I stumbled on the scoreboard
Which not only showed the top player having 999 building compared to my measly 50 but showed the amount of zombies killed at a staggering and mathematically impossible 2,147,448,679. There is no way that I could waste that amount of time killing zombies unless my life, and the lives of my loved ones depended on it. The second restbite came when I cracked the screen of my phone and had to send it away for repairs. To cut a long story short, a missing sim card and additional damages meant that six weeks later I have a brand new, restored to default, shiny iPhone.

My new phone was clear of game data. My less than angry birds were pretty fuming again having to start at level one and my little town of 70 residents were now only found in the depths of my memory.

Any sane person at this stage would say ‘oh well, it was zapping my time anyway’ and continue on with their lives as normal… I lasted 5 days before booting up the app again and earning my free dollars.

That was five days ago. Now I have 40 buildings and my smaller (but still busy) team are making and selling virtual goodies and I find myself at 11.30pm preparing my shops are supply runs ready for when I awake.

Do I like this game? Absolutely. Would I recommend it to a friend? Definitely not. I have to hand it to Boyah for creating a fantastic game that balances anticipation with action and instant gratification with a long term sense of achievement. It’s perfect for the mobile market and their regular updates are most welcome. However, I have a family to feed and a life that needs living so if anyone can help with my addition, I’m all ears (in between supply runs obviously).

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In each room there are weapon power ups such as shotguns, flame throwers, rocket launchers, and lazers. There are also lots of cash prizes to collect for you to spend if you can survive ‘The Danger Room’.

The Danger Room is a top down shooter from Debug Design. You play via two on screen joysticks to enable you to move and shoot in all directions. The initial build has 9 levels which can be fought through sequentially or be chosen via the level select screen.

The game does feel like the companies first game but there is some hints of greatness here. The game has some similarities to Smash TV as you run around the room frantically shooting the enemies which change depending on the room. The levels look pretty good but the main sprites are slightly one sided in that they are directly from above and it would nice to see their legs move or something to help bring it off the screen.

Another good point is the fact that the levels change and on each the enemies get harder and harder (we kept dying on ‘The Island’) but there are not enough levels in this initial build and ith only 9 levels you will probably complete it in a few days. However the developers have said that future updates will include addition levels, weapons and a high score table which is a must as this would definitely increase the longevity of the game.

The sounds are actually quite funny and include a deep booming robot host, standard weapon sounds and various groans and death sounds. There is no music to any of the levels which may improve the frantic nature.

On the whole, its worth 59p /$0.99 as you will get a few days of retro frantic fun and if the developer does do the updates then it could be a lot better. The controls can be a little unresponsive at times and when your character disappears under your thumbs its a pain but its a fun little jaunt

Out this Friday so keep em peeled – we hope you have an interview with the company soon.

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