Getting excited over the potential a videogame poses doesn’t happen that often these days. Franchises are born every day, and few manage to make it past the initial chapters without fizzling out. But we’ve felt a buzz building around Teenage Zombies ever since we ran our interview with the developers at InLight, and now the review copy has arrived, it’s a pleasure to report the hype is well and truly justified.

What’s most immediately captivating is the style. Far too many games are either schizophrenic in their approach to storytelling, or adopt the attitude that games don’t require a proper narrative, and jump boots first into gameplay. Teenage Zombies embraces a camp, comic book, horror-comedy styling with genuine zeal, and adheres to its chosen genre throughout.

But what does this do to enhance the gameplay, you might ask? Primarily, it builds the atmosphere and gives immediate purpose to the ensuing action, so right from the start the game feels like a complete entertainment experience. As subtle and easily overlooked as this concept is in the videogame industry, it’s also the secret ingredient that unlocks the possibility for an ordinary game to become a great game. The extra attention makes Teenage Zombies a contemporary Earthworm Jim for the disenchanted DS generation; and does it with enough wry charisma to keep gamers glued to the dual screens from beginning to end.

Alien Brain Thingys are attacking Earth, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them. Unfortunately for Big Brain and his hordes of hilarious, nefarious grey matter brigades, humanity has long been plagued by a subculture of the undead; and they like nothing more than scoffing down on succulent brain meat. The arrival of the brains is enough to bring three teenage zombies from the ground in search of gory nutrition, and while saving humanity is far from their concerns, these three undead heroes are the last line of defence for the people of Earth.

A casual tutorial serves to introduce the main characters and their individual abilities one at a time. Lori “Lefty” Lopez is a one armed ex-basketball queen with a long reach and powerful left hook; Zack “Half-Pip” Boyd is half a skateboarder (the top half) who can squeeze into small spaces and pick up speed on the downhill sections; and Finnigan “Fins” Magee is a mutant monster who can climb walls with the tentacles growing out of his back. The combined attributes of the reanimated trio are the tools of this thoroughly engrossing platformer, and add an excellent twist to the puzzle solving action.

The majority of the game is controlled using the buttons, rather than stylus, though switching between characters and activating special moves can be done by a quick and welcome finger jab to the touchscreen. Everything else feels to be perfectly and immediately accessible; so flicking between characters and leaping into their unique capacity quickly becomes second nature, and a command of the diverse environments is always at hand.

The levels are cleverly built to pose physical conundrums without ever feeling like you’re trapped inside a maze or goaded through checkpoints, and a significant degree of arcade action ensures the gameplay retains an impeccable and absorbing pace. There’s even the obligatory trip to the mall that all undead creatures are expected to take. Various mini-games come into play, which tend to switch over to the stylus control, such as a zombie take on the classic Dig-Dug (and other deliciously classic coin-op homages) and a half-pipe skateboarding trick show. While these don’t entirely follow the rest of Teenage Zombie’s gameplay style, and wouldn’t stand up to much scrutiny as games in their own right, they still provide a welcome and amusing interlude to the fundamental platformer gameplay and ensure the remainder of the zombie meat stays fresh and tangy.

Of all the mini-games, however, there’s one in particular that does meet the stylised comic book antics permeating the rest of the game. Pieces of dismembered corpse are collected on your travels, and when enough have been gathered together, a warped form of beetle-drive takes place as you attempt to rebuild one of your undead brethren. Using the stylus, the limp corpse is dragged about the screen - using some superb “rag-doll” physics - as arms, legs and head are reattached. Once surgically reconstituted, your “unhealth” meter is restored.

Graphically, this particular mini-game is representative of the entire package, which revels in its illustration of the comic book antics in every respect. The shambling zombies, the pulsating brains, the diverse environments – nothing appears to have been too small a detail to infuse with the game’s overall abundance of style. Likewise, the voice acting and audio is perfectly suited; permeated with comic lilt and deliberately outrageous.

At its most basic level, Teenage zombies is a damn fine platform game, but when the severed limbs of its wonderfully mangled corpse are stitched together, the comically gory amalgam of this uproarious Frankenstein-fest surmount to so much more. The cross and change of banter between the overly precious Alien Brain Thingys and the unintentional heroics of the decomposing champions deliver a thorough and absorbing entertainment experience.

It’s this fundamental attention to all-round amusement that provides the real depth to Teenage Zombies, and hints at the inspired character’s potential for a genuinely popular franchise. The cartoons, the t-shirts, the lunchboxes, the legions of obsessive fans – they’re all visible shadows against the blood stained moonlight that casts a wonderfully pallid and impious light on the best game to claw its way out of the videogame graveyard for a long time.