Zombies Can't Jump is a relatively new Windows Phone 8 game that pits you against hungry hordes of zombies. It's a defensive game that exploits the Zombies inability to jump by having your characters build a tower of crates and defend that position against wave after wave of zombies intent on eating your brains. While the zombies may not be able to jump, they can smash the crates and lower you to arms reach.
Graphics aren't too shabby, game play is fairly challenging and if you are into the zombie genre or just looking for a game to pass the time with, Zombies Can't Jump is worth a try.
There are two game modes with Zombies Can't Jump. You have the Story Mode and Survival Mode. The Story Mode is a multi-level where you advance from level to level, wiping out the waves of zombies. Survival Mode has two options, Heroic Stand and From Dusk til Dawn, where you simply see how long you can survive before the zombies overtake your position.
In Story Mode the first level is a tutorial that will walk you through the game's controls and objectives. You control Pappi and his daughter who sit center screen. They are armed and must build crates to stand on and remain out of the reach of the zombies.
Zombies attack from the left or right side of the screen and while the characters will open fire on the zombies automatically, you will need to tap the screen to point them in the right direction. If the zombies reach the crates they will smash them, lowering your characters to the ground. You can rebuild the crates but your character can not fire on the zombies while building the crate. You can use one character to fire upon the zombies while the other builds their crate.
As you progress through the levels of play additional weapons and defensive items become available. You also have a Survival Rage mode (activated by the angry smiley face button) where your character's weapons convert into a high powered machine gun or rocket launcher. The rage mode lasts for a few seconds but is a great way to take out larger groups of zombies. Additionally, as additional Rage Weapons become available you can assign different weapons to each character to increase you rage power.
Zombies Can't Jump plays like many tower defense games where you have to manage your players and their defenses as the threats develop. You may have to wait to rebuild a crate until you finish obliterating a wave of zombies or get one character to cover things while the other rebuilds the crate. The spike balls are great defensive barriers that can be used to keep the zombies away for short bits of time. But again, they take a few seconds to deploy. Seconds the zombies can use to knock out a crate.
All in all, I liked the animations and graphics, the sound effects and music are catchy, and game play is challenging enough to keep the game from gettting stale. Zombie genre aside, Zombies Can't Jump is a fun Windows Phone 8 game to pass the time with.
There is a free trial version available for Zombies Can't Jump with the full version running $.99. You can find Zombies Can't Jump here in the Windows Phone Store.
