I suppose I owe my wife a solid for discovering Infectionator. There I was, plugging my day away at my DS when she called me over to show me her latest find at Addicting Games. The screen initially just showed a mob of aimless, 8-bit sprites. Then, with the click of a button, hell erupted. Almost immediately a score of the sprites were converted into zombies who then scurried about the screen attacking and infecting the remaining population. The icing one the cake was when, sensing that she needed reinforcements, my wife deployed a zombified Michael Jackson who performed an abbreviated version of Thriller and then proceeded to maul a nearby crowd.

Infectionator is one of the most unique zombie games I’ve played in years. Rather then sitting you in the tried and tested role of an undead exterminator, you’re the brains behind the zombie-pocalypse. You play a scientist bent on taking over the world. The game follows you as you work from city to country to continent, transforming the living into the walking undead.

When the game begins, your resources are limited. You can deploy your virus only once and your zombies will expire mere seconds after you deploy them. Even bringing down one of the small hut villages that serve as one of the earliest stages is a challenge. That said, it doesn’t take long to upgrade your virus so that your zombies last longer, can do and take more damage, and so that the virus itself can be deployed several times in a single level.

While initially, Infectionator may resemble a prettier version of the many zombie simulators floating about the web, it’s far more interactive. The humans that serve as fodder for your plague don’t just sit back and take it. They’re going to fight back, and true to their slow and stupid form your zombies don’t stand much of a chance if left to their own devices. So you need to supervise; reintroduce your virus when the infection starts to wane, drop grenades on clustered groups of defenders and deploy special characters that you can infect and collect as the game progresses.

Through all of this you also need to work in some cash collection. Everything you kill or destroy drops some form of currency which can be used to buy upgrades. Gathering this is a simple process of holding your cursor over the money for a second or two. That said, when things get really hectic Infectionator often becomes a balancing act between keeping your virus going in your current level and saving up money so that you can grow more powerful and advance.

Infectionator never leaves you doing nothing. Your attention is always engaged, and while the mechanics are simple to grasp on their own, they add up to a deep and often strategic experience. Always fun, and endowed with some slick retro visuals that demonstrate some real effort on the part of the developer, Infectionator is well worth playing several times. It’s overall just a slick title, endowed with tons of kooky characters and a ton of fun.

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