With a name like Neon Dream Z-z-z, this game starts out by catching your attention. The description furthers this by detailing you have fallen asleep and the game is about your nightmare in which all your stuffed animals turn into zombies.
With my interest raised I started the game to be greeted by a simple couple lines of text for a tutorial, which was effective enough since the game is rather simple. You control your sleeping character with one joystick touch control and aim and shoot with the other. This isn’t a new control style for me, but I did have issues with how clunky my character felt and how inaccurate the aiming was. This could have been due to me playing on my phone, but I can tell the character will most likely always move a little strange.
The tanks controls aside, the visuals and sounds for the game were very well done and interesting. The maps are rooms littered with occasional broken toy parts and enormous Lego bricks as well as furniture to block both you and the stuffed zombies. Another issue I ran into though was the bobbing movement of my character and the colors seemed to make me feel a little sick, but that is a personal issue that may not affect many other people, just be aware it is possible.
Finally, the structure of Neon Dream Z-z-z is also very simple. There are multiple levels each containing a set amount of waves you must complete before being given a key to a mouse hole door to continue to the next level. During waves you can pick up coins, ammo, and bombs. You only have so much ammo each round so picking up the packs that show up is necessary, the bombs are a quick way to take out a lot of enemies, and the coins are used to buy ammo and bombs. However, if you get stuck with low ammo and want to progress you’ll have to either run around the map you’re on until you pick up enough of something to fend off the zombies, or you’ll have to pay real money for coins to then purchase ammo to proceed.
All in all Neon Dream Z-z-z is a cute game to play around with. As I said the visuals may cause motion sickness for some but most likely not everyone. Also, it does somewhat rely on you using real money to continue, but it possible to complete for free.
