Zombie Attack at the Beach
Beach of the Dead-Zombie Fight is an action game by the developer Shin Naka, a travel blogger that decided to make a zombie fighting game while stuck at home during the pandemic. It is a side-scroller that features one thing… killing zombies, and that’s it. No loot, no upgrades, no storyline, and one playable character. You play as the developer himself, Shin Naka, who takes a trip to the beach but must fight against an assault of zombies instead. The game is based on Naka’s own world travels except with zombies added.
Underbaked Gameplay
Your only goal in each level is to fight and survive a handful of zombies and make it to a helicopter so that your character can do a Fortnite dance once you reach it. The control scheme is mediocre at best, with the movement being left and right with six attack buttons, none of which do much of anything.
By far the most effective move is the “upper” attack, where the player spins around backward and smashes his hammer downward. This attack works on both standing and downed enemies. There are also mid and lower hammer strikes that aren’t as effective and very hit-or-miss as to whether they would connect no matter how close you were to the zombies.
As for the leg attacks, they were utterly useless and ineffective. The high attack is a flying sidekick that rarely connects and usually ends up with you sliding down a zombie and immediately being bitten. The mid and low kicks aren’t much better, with the low kick being a spinning leg sweep attack ala “Mortal Kombat” that sometimes knocks the zombies down, but that’s it. It would have been effective if you could have chain-attacked a leg sweep with the downward hammer strike… but you can’t.
Those Crazy Zombies
Once a zombie bites you, it’s nearly impossible to get away from them and attack once again. Most frustrating is the unresponsiveness of the buttons when you press them. The only interesting thing about it is that if a zombie bites you, you don’t die. Instead, you turn into a zombie and continue attacking in your zombie form. I’m not sure why the zombies continue to attack you once you turn, but they do. Your goal is still to reach the helicopter as a zombie, and once you reach it… you still dance, no changes. So there are really no consequences unless you just don’t want to finish as a zombie.
I don’t like to give this low of a score, but it states plainly in the description that the developer is a travel blogger and only made this game because he could not travel during the pandemic. Clearly, this isn’t the developer’s first career choice, and the game reflects that. To not be entirely negative, it does have a few intriguing ideas that could make it a potentially good game. However, the game needs refinement and more polish to be something great.
