iPhone

I liked Zombie Dash when I first played it, but it was far too easy. I got up to day 50 or thereabouts, I think, before deleting the game from my iPhone. There have been a few updates since then, though, so I went back today and had a look.

The most obvious change is the addition of Crystal, a score/achievement tracking thing similar to OpenFeint, Plus+ and the rest. One day, hopefully, Apple will step in and make one of them a standard – I like OpenFeint, personally; it’s the most-used and has come on leaps and bounds since its rough early days – but until then we’re stuck will all these different systems competing against one another.

After registering with Crystal I started a new game. At first, there were no obvious difference, but I soon noticed that the tombs were much more random than before and the game difficulty seems to increase more quickly. Good changes, both of them.

The really big thing, though, is that now you can spend $100 on a checkpoint at the end of any day, which means you can start from that day again after you die. You got so much money in the first version of the game that it was almost meaningless – you could keep all your supplies topped up at their maximum level without even thinking about it. Now, though, you’ve got to make a real choice. It’s all very well spending your cash on burgers and antidote, but then you won’t have any left for a checkpoint.

He's going to be a bugger to sneak past, that one.

This one change has made a world of difference. For starters, I only intended to play up until day ten, but ended up playing until day fifteen, because I was saving up for a checkpoint. I was dashing through the days with less than maximum health, too, because I was saving up, making the game a little more tense.

Of course, this may turn out to be meaningless if it’s as hard to die as it used to be, but I’m hopeful that I’ll get to the stage where I’m struggling to afford a new checkpoint while fighting for my life. What was once a high score game (where the score was the die you died on) ruined by a low level of difficulty will now turn into an ongoing quest, where I’m constantly trying to push a little further.

At least, I hope that’s what’s going to happen. Looking at the leaderboards, though, I’m a bit worried. The top score is 4,447, which I assume is the number of days lasted. If so, it suggests that the difficulty may max out at some point and it’ll become another exercise in persistence, rather than skill.

Still, I need to investigate further, and what’s certain is that this release is an improvement on the game I played a few months ago. There’s more variety, the achievements (sorry, trophies) look interesting, there are Crystal challenges that I need to investigate and the checkpoint system is a very welcome change.

It’s really just personal preference that means I’d rather each game was much shorter.