I’ve been steadily growing fonder of tower defense and strategy games as of late, a genre I previously thought I had no love for. So when we received a copy of Yet Another Zombie Defense HD for Switch, I wanted to try it out. Surprisingly, this is my first zombie defense game though…
Yet Another Zombie Defense HD is a wave-based tower defense game combined with a twin-stick shooter. The meat of the game lies in its defense mode, where between nights you get to spend cash (dropped from zombies) on barricades, traps and weaponry to fortify your defenses and try to make it through another night. I found the loop to be really rewarding, and the range of different tactics you can try out is great. It does take a while to scroll through the options as a result, but having too much variety is hardly something to complain about.
Night one starts off with an easy wave of maybe ten zombies for you to shoot down with your pistol, which thankfully has infinite ammo, so you’ll always have at least something to shoot with. Assuming you’ve survived the first night (which you should as it’s ridiculously easy) I recommend buying a chainsaw and a few barricades and building up from there. The chainsaw is great as it has infinite ammo and mows down early enemies like they’re, well, zombies to a chainsaw. Clear night two and you’ll be introduced to skill points too, which can be sunk into reload speed, movement speed, health points, health regen or pickup range. Again, plenty to choose from so you can differentiate your character build and experiment.
This option to customise your character as you progress is especially useful as Yet Another Zombie Defense HD also offers up to 4-player co-op, both locally and online (if you’ve got Nintendo Switch Online). I played a few rounds with my housemate and while I focused on tanking shots with health points and regen, he went all in on movement speed to bait the enemies while I shot them down. As far as I could tell the game didn’t change the difficulty to balance against more players sadly, so that does mean you’ll have an easier time making progress with friends than playing solo like I often do. I imagine this game would really shine with four friends in local co-op; running and gunning down zombies can only make for a good time as far as I’m concerned.
The furthest I made it by myself in defense mode was to night sixteen, where upon my defenses were entirely swarmed, the barricades fell and my character was eaten. I only lasted that long as I’d set up not one, not two, but six automatic assault rifle turrets in my fortification, which did a pretty solid job of killing everything that approached. I think it only fell in the end cause my barricades were too condensed, so the zombies could break through really quickly. Regardless, it took several hours to reach this point in an attempt and I had tonnes of fun doing it. The costs are nicely balanced so that the good stuff is expensive but not extortionate, and ammo is never too costly so you can restock your turrets between rounds.
There are two other modes to try out too, endless and deathmatch. Endless tasks you with lasting as long as you can with no defenses while zombies steadily spawn around you. They’ll drop power-ups and weapons upon death to help you out, so it isn’t unfair, and it’s fun for a few minutes if you want a break from placing barricades and just want to shoot down some undead instead. The deathmatch mode is basically the same thing except you can play with friends and try to kill each other as well as the zombies. Sadly didn’t have anyone to properly play this with, but I think it’d lend itself to a party setting pretty well.
One other thing I do really want to mention is the achievements. I know usually achievements can be kinda boring, but I really like how Yet Another Zombie Defense HD mixes it up with them. There’s all sorts of fun stuff to aim for here, such as clearing a night using just the chainsaw (great if you want to save up cash before building your fortress) or killing eight zombies with one rocket. It’s refreshing to see achievements encourage experimentation and new ways to play, and I wish more achievements in games were like this.
Honestly, for the $5 asking price you can’t really go wrong with Yet Another Zombie Defense HD. The twin-stick controls are solid, the defense building is extensive and most importantly, the game itself is just fun. It’s not the prettiest game to look at and there was the occasional lighting glitch during my play-time, but the gameplay and the main defense mode are enjoyable enough to vastly outweigh the few drawbacks I can think of. If you like wave-based shooters and want to play yet another zombie defense game, Yet Another Zombie Defense HD should be your first port of call.
A digital copy of Yet Another Zombie Defense HD for Switch was provided by the developer.
Find Yet Another Zombie Defense HD on Switch here:
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/yet-another-zombie-defense-hd-switch