Ailment: dead standoff is a single-stick shooter with a retro pixel-art take, plus an interesting story as an extra bonus. Of course, if you see the word “dead” in the title, it better include zombies, and it does.

You play as Jonathan Reeves, an amnesiac waking up from cryosleep, on a space transporter ship called Frontier-16. He doesn’t remember anything, but somehow he already has a shotgun locked and loaded… Not too long after, zombies come for him – The ship is infected.

I’ve encountered not only mindless shamblers, but there are also weapon wielding zombies it seems. Some have guns of their own, shields, even missile launchers that you all have to avoid in order to survive. Thankfully most of the dangers I’ve encountered so far are projectile-based giving you a chance to react. Still enough to give you a hell of a challenge especially in narrow hallways and rooms.

The combat is a single-stick shooter style, you just use one stick for movement, one for shooting/interaction and most of the targeting is done automatically. I’m saying this as a positive — it is honestly a “brain dead” game where you don’t have to really pay attention to play it. There are different weapons that you can pick up like machine guns and laser guns, and they can break after a while except the shotgun as your basic weapon.

The levels are mostly linear and dungeon crawler-esque, clearing room to room, hallway to hallway. With very minor back and forth-ing puzzle element involving finding out which numbered door a specific terminal opens. Luckily you don’t have to remember these numbers thanks to the very helpful mini-map system to guide you in navigation.

The story is engaging and interesting, especially the premise, but it doesn’t interfere with the gameplay too much and mostly serves as background flavor to advance the gameplay from level to level. Overall, The combat is fun as a mindless arcade shooter to pass the time all while still providing a serviceable narrative experience on the side as a bonus.

Full Review will be posted soon here on Taptap! Stay tuned!

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