Quick Review: I, Zombie

A zombie game, except you are the zombie! And you must use whatever grey matter you’ve got left in order to infect everyone.

Aim for the living! The unarmed ones first.

I, Zombie is a creation of Awesome Games Studio and was released on December 9th, 2014. I already gave you a solid idea of the concept: It’s a puzzle game. You’re Patient Zero, the first zombie, and you do what any good zombie does – turn others into zombies. But you’ve got to be strategic about it… After all, it doesn’t take long for these humans to wise up and arm themselves with those pesky guns.

Ah yes, guns - the zombie's worst enemy.

Avoid the shooty-shooty-bang-bang.

On each level, you start as the lone zombie and must infect every other human. Take cover in order to hide from the shooters, which usually follow a set route and attack whenever they see zombies. And since you’re the boss of the infected, you can order them around; ask them to remain in place, follow you around, or attack the nearest human on sight. Zombies do heal from bullet wounds; however, the lower their current HP gets, the slower they’ll walk. Keep them in one place away from danger, and the zombies will heal HP, regaining the lost speed. That goes for your main zombie too; in fact, you must usually sneak your way around, alone or with your group of zombies, and infect everyone without too many casualties on your end.

"I'm hidden! Look for me!"

Each level awards up to three stars for completion – one for beating the level, two for completing it with a few losses, three stars if you completed the level without a single zombie getting killed by these pesky gun-toting humans. And some of these are pretty tough. For added content, there’s the winter-themed levels, in which your zombie(s) can hide behind snowmen and mounds of snow. A few levels also involve the zombification of a single scientist who’s working on a cure – but you need to sneak around the shooters in order to reach that guy.

"...Too much pew-pew! Too much pew-pew!"
Why do I picture zombies talking like toddlers?

The game is actually fairly short, only 31 levels (counting Level 00, the tutorial). Its brevity is a bit annoying – well, unless you aim for three stars on every level, in which case, good luck to you. Some of these will require a very tight balance between the commands you can give the other zombies and the sneaking element. However! There’s a section welcoming fan-made levels. The quality there can vary wildly, but it can be interesting to see what other players have come up with.

It’s a good game. I like it, I recommend it. Like I say, it feels a bit short, but it’s not too much of an issue. You can usually get it on Steam for about 2$.