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.

Honestly, I’m not really sure what the best way to make the game more interesting is. Obviously, it needs to be harder for me to really enjoy it. (I’m not claiming that everyone would want it to be harder, but I think I need the constant fear of death to make it come alive.) I think I’d limit the amount of antidote you can carry to fifty, make the traps deadlier, keep the bats as they are and, well, I’m just not sure what to do about the zombies. Right now they’re a bit of a nuisance, but that’s all. I think I might make them much deadlier and force the player to lure zombies into traps to proceed. Right now you can lead the zombies onto spikes, but they’re often too far away and it’s much, much easier just to run into the zombie and fight them off than make them follow you to a play where you can escape from them.

It’s tricky, but it’d be worth doing because there’s a great game in here, but it’s just lacking a bit of spark and pop and fizz.

I’m up to day thirty-three in my current game and I just don’t feel like I’m in any real danger. Of course, now I’ve said all that I’ll probably die the moment I start playing again and then find it impossible to get past day ten again, but I don’t know. Hopefully an update can tweak it a bit, maybe by further limiting how much antidote you can carry, or something.

Well, maybe not, but Zombie Dash is good enough that I’m able to forgive it the zombie theming.

You’re trapped in a randomly-generated maze full of traps, treasure and zombies. Your only goal is to find the key and get to the exit. Once you do, you get to spend the cash you’ve found on items to help you get through the next level. This goes on, getting gradually harder, until you inevitably die. Then you start again. It’s pretty simple, but it’s very well put together. You use a virtual trackball to move, which seems very strange at first, but which starts to show its worth as you get used to it. If you get hit by a trap or a zombie there’s a quick touch-screen mini game to play, which you need to complete quickly so you don’t lose too much health. There are antidotes to use to regain your health, a spray you can use to make you smell like a zombie and so present a less attractive target and, er, moss burgers, which let you move faster.

Games can go on for a while, so it’s nice that you can exit at any time and restart from exactly where you left off. At the moment I’m on day ten or thereabouts (each level is a game day) and I’m hoping to get a decent score for the online leaderboard. (I was second on the global list with a score of seven days shortly after the game was released, but I’ve no doubt I’m much further down now.)

Worth a look, definitely.