Zombie Exodus is the modern day Choose Your Own Adventure
by Toni McQuilken
Feb 8, 2012 3:14 PM –
Install
Zombie Exodus. Build your character and fight your way out of a zombie-filled city to save your sister in this interactive horror fiction story. Gather supplies and weapons while avoiding the military, bandits, and living dead. Your choices alone control the story.
Price: Free, $1.99 In-app Purchase
Tested on: Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
Content Rating: Medium Maturity
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Choose Your Own Adventure novels for the mobile age.
- Well-written story line.
- Choices actually have an impact.
- New episodes released to continue the story.
Cons
- To remove the ads, you have to buy the upgrade in-game, so it’s not linked to your account, but to that specific device.
Features:
I have to admit, I was a huge fan of Choose Your Own Adventure type novels when I was growing up, and this takes that format and brings it to the mobile age. This is a true text-based app – you read the story, and at the end of each snippet, you make a choice from several options. It then takes you to the next part of the story, with your choices having real consequences. I have yet to make it through to the end of the second part – part three is hopefully going to be released soon – without dying. And when you die, you can’t just flip back a few pages and try something else; you go back to the beginning and try again, meaning you can try new options all along the way, changing the story and how it progresses every time you read it.
There are no graphics, no soundtrack, no animations here. It is, for all intents and purposes, a book. Not even the interactive books you think of these days, with pictures and interactive elements. It is just straight text, with text-based options, which will change your character’s stats and the story line as you go along. As a big reader, this is actually a plus for me, since I can focus on the story without distractions and just enjoy seeing where it takes me.
The story itself is actually very well-written – enough so that as soon as I’m done exhausting all the options on this one, I’m going to go check out the other stories the company has available on Android. It’s a good novel combined with a good little text-based game, and the combination is enough to make for a compelling app.
The game itself is free to download, but it does have a strip of ads at the bottom of the page. To get rid of those ads, you can purchase an in-game upgrade of $1.99. I like that they have the option, but since it is in-game, that means it’s tied to that specific device, rather than your Google account, which means you can’t move the ad-free version from device to device, but have to pay the upgrade each time you want to go ad-free on a new phone or tablet. As a person who uses multiple devices all the time, that’s a bit of a frustration, but to be honest, the ads at the bottom aren’t too distracting, so not upgrading isn’t going to make a big difference in your user experience. It’s almost more of upgrading as a donation to support the developer than anything else, which, when you look at it that way, is not a bad prospect to keep the games and story continuations coming.
-
-
Zombie Exodus Intro
-
-
Zombie Exodus Stats
-
-
Zombe Exodus Died
-
-
Zombie Exodus Upgrade
Fun Factor:
This depends entirely on how much of a reader you are. For avid readers like myself, this game is a goldmine of fun. It combines two of my favorite things – reading and playing a game, in the same app. And the fact that different choices can completely change the direction of the story makes you want to go back and re-read it again to try and see what all the different plot lines are.
Addictive:
Since there are a huge amount of possibilities here, I’d say the addiction level is pretty high. I spent an hour reading through it the first time, and as soon as I died, I couldn’t wait to try it again. The huge amount of choices and how that effects the game really keeps you guessing, even after you’ve read through a few times.
Graphics:
As I mentioned above, there are no graphics. This is a text-based game in every sense of the word, and it doesn’t even try to pretend otherwise. It was a risky decision on the part of the developer, but one that I think has paid off, since all the effort was put into a good story line with solid choices that all have different consequences.
Accelerometer, Vibration & Sound:
Again, the effort here was all put into the story and choices, with no soundtrack or effects to distract you from it.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
Android Game,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
Choice of Games,
Choose Your Own Adventure,
Text-Based Game,
Zombie Exodus
Categorised in: Brain & Puzzle, Casual
Submit apps for review,
promote apps, get more installs with better
app videos.