Yes, the name of the game is Yet Another Zombie Defense and it is just that. But there are no towers here, no fancy powerups and no team play. It’s just you against the zombie hordes, may someone have mercy on your soul. Better save that last bullet for yourself if you don’t want to go undead. Now that would actually be a cool option. When you’re about to be overrun by the zombie horde, just kill yourself. Morbid, but interesting.

Alright, YAZD has you as a single survivor huddled around the weak light of a single street lamp with the zombies coming from all directions. Your task is simply to survive until the light of dawn or at least long enough to take out all the incoming zombies. Do that end you have your trusty pistol. Sounds rough right?

As you go you can pick up things like cash to use in the shop to get more powerful weapons, ammo and even auto turrets. But the things that will probably be your best friends are the barricades that you can buy (in wood or metal) to hold off the zombies long enough so that you can get around to shooting them down.

I took to building a square centered on the lamp’s light and trying to maintain it as long as possible. But if you want to get out there and grab some cash and other stuff you’ll have to leave yourself a hole. Luckily, the zombies are STU-PID and go after the barricades instead of after you. So that means you can generally leave a single diagonal open for you to run in and out of.

That is, of course, until the zombies catch your scent and start coming after you. Then you’ll be running around in circles like mad trying to shoot them down or get them to unblock your path so that you can get back into your fort.

Graphics are certainly not a focus on this game as it’s generally so dark you can’t even see the  zombies coming from the edge of the screen. On top of that there’s not much to the game except that single lamp, the barricades you and the zombies. And yet, it’s still very challenging and can pull you in. You’re scored on how many zombies you blast, how long you survive and how much loot you collect. While it is another of these single-track gameplay games where you only have exactly one thing to do, it’s still fairly entertaining.

At times this is like the video game equivalent of running with the bulls because you have to head out into the crowd and try not to get gored while collecting resources and preventing them from doing too much damage to your barricades (because they are expensive to replace). It’s fast-paced and at times fun especially when you’ve got a rocket launcher blasting zombies to bits and see the bodies fly. If you’re afraid of the dark, you can even turn it down to get a larger area of view. But really, that almost seems like cheating.