Unfortunately, a trip into the Nintendo Switch’s online store is a chore to wade through endless piles of trash to try and find the occasional good game. The store is so flooded with utter crap at $10 or less that most of us would surely be at the point where we don’t even look at games that are at that price point. Every so often, you’ll take a punt, though. Zeboyd Games was recommending Living Dead House on BlueSky, so I gave it a shot and… yeah, this is anything but shovelware.
The game recalls the glorious era of single-screen platformers, my favourite arcade games of all. You play as a dude who is trapped inside a house that has zombies coming through the windows and doors, and you need to scramble to survive for a minute or two until dawn.
Survival comes down to moving up and down ladders, using elevators, and doorways, to outmanoeuvre the zombies. Additionally, power-ups periodically pop up. These can be either defensive in nature – hammer and nails to blockade a window or door for a time, or a bear trap to instantly kill a zombie walking through it. Offensive weapons – gun, flamethrower, axe – meanwhile allow you to take the fight directly to the zombies.
In the normal Arcade mode, when the timer ticks out, day breaks and all the zombies that have invaded the house die. You get a second’s respite before being dropped into a new house with a different layout, and the nightmare begins anew. There’s also a survival mode that doesn’t have a daybreak and is a pure points challenge to see how long you can survive.
Living Dead House isn’t particularly easy. Layouts allow you to become boxed in very easily, and movement, while responsive, is slow, meaning that you need to try and plan ahead rather than rely on twitch skills. That might put people looking for real arcade thrills off, though I personally found it very moreish and the skill curve definitely rewarded (with higher scores) commitment to fully understanding the level layouts, the way the zombies move around, and how to effectively commit your limited resources.
Funnily enough, the game most reminded me of Excaliba, a 1985 game for Commodore 64 that may well have been the first video game that I truly loved. That game didn’t give you a way of defending yourself, but it did require you to traverse the levels in a very similar way to Living Dead House. Throw in the excellent CRT filter over the even more excellent pixel grindhouse theme (It’s very obvious that a combination of Night of the Living Dead and Evil Dead inspired this one) and chiptune soundtrack, and I was whisked right back to the days I’d be begging mum to let me play for just a half hour more.
Incidentally, if someone – anyone – would like to pick up the rights to Excaliba and re-release it (Hamster Console Archives I’m looking at you), I’ll worship at your feet. I have been itching to give that game a replay for the longest time now.
There’s not much else to Living Dead House. As a single-screen platformer, it’s exceedingly simple in the best possible way. It’s the kind of game that you’ll pick up for 10 minutes, and find yourself playing for an hour once you see the high score leaderboard pop up. That leaderboard is local play only, and perhaps the one and only missed opportunity in an otherwise excellent game, but it’s still fun to try and beat your own best score.
A great effort, overall. Don’t let this one disappear in the swill of shovelware on the Switch’s online store.
