Build tons of turrets and stand your ground as zombie hordes attack wave by wave. Random populations of zombies are ever present as well. Day turns to night, and bullets turn to grenades, pistols turn to sub machine guns and assault rifles as battle turns to war against the undead.

Graphic style reminds us of the old days in gaming and likely plays a key role in allowing so much action to go on-screen at once in this open world survival with building elements. Detailed settings as well like Game Pad Deadzone and Frames Per Second Indicator come in handy for veterans of the PC Gaming world to get the most out of this current version 0.1.4.1 which is available on Early Access as of yesterday.

This game presents some core principles that we all love as gamers: retro graphics, nonstop action, and shooting zombies. I built a dozen turrets, survived 4 days of the zombie apocalypse, and did my part by earning 6,106 kills including sending President Thomas Jefferson back to the grave (may his soul rest in peace). Over 9,000 Zombies is ridiculously cool once players get into a groove and start building up some sort of base. It was a bit strange to see at full resolution and operate controls-wise as far as how to actually build but once figured out this flowed mid-battle pretty smooth.

Unfortunately, enemy zombies sometimes spawned right under players making it hard to stop and let your turrets do the work but somewhat adding to the nonstop emphasis on survival. Tossing grenades ahead of you and making sure to equip the latest gun are huge tools to your survival. In addition to building a variety of turrets including ooooo, ooo, ooo, oooo, oooo players get pick-ups like Health, Rapid Fire, and Scrap Metal to make your turrets out of. every so often from downed zombies. One improvement that could be made to the game would be an increased ability to see when players are taking damage as well as which direction this is happening from. Focus of a high magnitude is required to get anywhere in Over 9,000 Zombies – and after playing for such a decent amount of time it is unfortunate for a session to end so abruptly and without much warning.

In conclusion, Over 9,000 Zombies! is another excellent, gameplay-centric title for the Steam Early Access platform which feels awesome and fun on a controller and allows for a truly roguelike / survival action title made in 2D evolve into a complete shoot-em-up experience revolving around exterminating the undead while listening to a great soundtrack and trying not to blink.

Developer: Loren Lemcke

Publisher: Mastertronic

Release Date: July 2, 2014

Platform: Steam Early Access

Preview Copy Info: A digital copy of this game was provided to RealGamerNewz by the publisher for the purpose of this Review.