The name Zombie Accountant is a name so humorous it practically begs for a game complete with ironic chuckles. Going Loud Studios has decided to finally give this title the game it deserves, creating a game for the Xbox LIVE Indie Marketplace where you play as a brain eating character during tax season. The result is a game which, although functional, doesn’t feel nearly as inspired as many other games on the marketplace.
Gameplay in Zombie Accountant is pretty simple: you run to the right, passing through tax reports to gain points, score enough points and you get promoted. Bosses obstruct your way and must ducked by pressing the x button. Should you hit three bosses in a row the game is over and you’re fired. The concept is as simple as sounds and isn’t particularly engaging, making the game feel more like a iPhone app (which it is) than a legitimate Indie Marketplace title.
The only real flaw with the boss avoiding is the collision detection which sometimes has problems recognizing that you’ve passed through one of the bosses. This means that even though you’ll appear to have cleared a barrier, you’ll lose one of your allotted mistakes because of the natural running motion of the protagonist. It doesn’t grate; however, it definitely creates a few WTF moments that pull you out of the moment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy2rzH4PyFY
Upper management isn’t the only obstacle standing in your path though, as you will also be blocked by file cabinets. Jumping over these will cause you to increase your speed and multiplier, making the game to go faster and each tax return to be worth more points. The constantly increasing speed does force you to react quickly to what’s approaching but it never really sucks you in and makes you want to continue playing.
What is a little disconcerting is that the game doesn’t graphically handle the increasing speed well. Once your zombie starts to speed up, Zombie Accountant appears to increase the speed with which the background moves without changing your zombie’s running speed. This creates a dizziness inducing atmosphere where it is difficult to focus on your brainless avatar without getting a case of vertigo. The feeling continues after you turn the game off and makes everything stationary look like a strange optical illusion. This could have been something that was unique to my TV, but it definitely made playing the game for extended periods physically difficult.
Other than these graphical problems, which admittedly were rather difficult to deal with, there isn’t anything else specifically wrong with Zombie Accountant. The controls work well enough and the visual style is unique, which makes it at the very least playable. However, there really just isn’t anything compelling. More than anything else, Going Loud Studio’s first title feels more like it was designed as a way to kill time via the Windows Phone 7 platform (which it is also avaialble for), a fact that makes it one to forgoe in favor of some of the better executed and more original titles on the Indie Marketplace.
[Zombie Accountant]-80 Microsoft Points