My Pet Zombie

While recently watching an episode of Pushing Daisies I found myself musing, if I had a friend who was brought back to life, a zombie if you will, I would totally buy her cute clothes, hang out in swanky clubs, bake pies with her, and play games! Well, the team at Riptide Games read my mind and my new pet zombie, Chompy, and I are rocking the house.

In My Pet Zombie, the walking dead are not just mindlessly meandering about feasting on human flesh. How passé. The player selects the gender of the zombie, gives the zombie a name and then the game begins. The player earns points by playing with the zombie. There are minigames to earn bones and bites and at anytime you can tickle and poke your zombie or make it dance and do tricks! Trade in the bites and bones for all kinds of cool goodies! Dress the zombie in swanky diggs and get a new do. Zombie need a new nose? Yup, bones and bites can buy that too.

I was surprised how much I have been sucked into this game. The characters are surprisingly cute in an odd and gross sort of way. The pithy comments are hilarious, the controls are embarrassingly easy and even though I am vehemently against buying points (in this case bones) when you can earn them, the creators have come up with a great loophole for this. If the player wants more bones to buy, lets say, a new set of eyeballs and some high tops but only has enough for one or the other and not enough time or desire to play a round of Zombie Director, then the player can sit through some videos of upcoming apps! Boom! Bones! The player can get bones for rating the game and for downloading new games through the My Zombie app.

The biggest hang up for me would be the minigame selection. The there are two minigames available in My Pet Zombie. Zombie Director is fun and a great way to earn points, but Zombie Talkback falls flat. Just recording and playing back in the zombie voice is cute, but then what else do you do with it? Earning new games with level-ups or perhaps being able to "buy" games with bones and bites would definitely increase the replayability. I would personally love to manage multiple zombies after the current last level or a pet for my pet zombie.

Leather jacket, pumped up kicks, blingy blang, green skin, sunken nose, yellow and clotted eyes, yeah, that is Chompy, my pet zombie and she is hecka cool. Easy gameplay, a little addicting, not too gross or gory, My Pet Zombie is fun and pretty cute. For a zombie.

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