Joyful Stick: Zombeer
Good day my lovely deviants, and welcome yet again to Joyful Stick-our game review series. Miss our last entry? You can read it here. Today we’ve something of an oddity-big fat zombie tiddies. Yes, you read that correctly.
A Month Or So Late, But Not A Dollar Short
So, full confession-I seasonally theme my reviews for Joyful Stick.
That’s probably not a shocker to a lot of you. Like many independent voices, I have to game the algorithm like everyone else. People are far more likely to read reviews about lurid Mrs. Clause themed games in December than, say, February. Despite my constant insistence of “fuck the numbers, make what you want”? I’m only human. I clap and cackle when I see a line go up. Especially when it comes to my written works.
Unfortunately as it’s often to do, life happens. Sometimes reviews get pushed back, sometimes I forget things exist until I’m suddenly intimately aware of them anew. I’m unfortunately still human, having not ascended into a sexless, formless ball of light yet. Rest assured I’m working on that vigilantly. Until that moment arrives? Reviews happen when they happen and I refuse to acknowledge the existence of deadlines.
Which brings us to this entry, and Zombeer. I originally had an entire month planned of monster/horror adjacent reviews in October, and then the chips fell where they did. Zombeer was pushed to the side. Not forgotten so much as just out of my direct line of sight-and thus my mind. No more. After having played the game, I’ve plenty to say.
Not just about the big zombie tiddies either, I promise.
It Ain’t Summer But We’re Camping
So, let me go ahead and state this upfront:
Many people are going to say Zombeer is bad. In a sense, it is. There’s control issues. The guns can be clunky. I quite literally clipped through an early level to finish it (more on that in a minute). But the most immediate and obvious place some will level this critique at is with the writing.
Zombeer takes place during the height of a zombie outbreak. You awake at a bar with a text from your girlfriend, who blatantly tells you she’s going to cheat on you. Except oh god, the zombie outbreak is happening and now she needs your help. With a swig of the titular beverage, your character arms himself with a dildo solid enough to crush skulls and sets off into the night. Within the first fifteen minutes you get a Star Wars reference, a Mario Brothers reference, a Stephen King’s It reference and a lot more. That’s before we get to all the puns, pop culture jabs and sight gags. Zombeer, like lots of nerdy projects before it, opts to set it’s humor and tone pretty firmly in “Generalized And Safe” parody.
This is a huge turn off for most people, and frankly, I get it. Not all of the jokes are especially clever or funny. I rolled my eyes more than a few times. But I think it takes a uniquely bitter and jaded kind of asshole to be so wound up within your own hatred to write scathing reviews of content that does this. Especially for what are very obviously smaller passion projects like Zombeer. If that’s not your thing, okay-but the price of entry is literally five american dollars. That’s it. You could probably get it on sale for even less.
Given that price point and the writing, I think adjusting your expectations is incredibly important if you’re going to play this game. Zombeer isn’t trying to be Half Life Alyx or even Dusk. It’s aiming to be a dumb, silly little game where dumb, silly things happen and you have a dumb, silly little time. It’s short as well-it easily could be completed in an afternoon, perchance over a few brews of your own. Does that sound like a good time? Who’s to say, your mileage may vary. But as a fan of campy, low brow humor moreso along the lines of Army of Darkness than Leisure Suit Larry, I enjoyed the few brief hours I had with Zombeer.
The issue is, I wanted more.
The Eternal Greenlight
Zombeer as it stands right now is not a complete title.
It’s also been out since 2015.
It’s incredibly unlikely it will ever be “completed”.
Zombeer, like several of its small studio contemporaries, was a game made possible by Steam’s Greenlight policies. Not that it ever was in Greenlight, but a similar process. As such, it was released as-is and currently is the dev’s only credit on the platform. The game sold incredibly poorly, and no one involved in the title has given any level of communication since.
So, issues abound due to a lack of financial incentive. Guns are clunky, with power scaling all over the place. Ammo availability is a real issue, with your nail gun being your primary driver throughout play. Not because it’s good, but because it’s one of the few weapons you consistently have ammo for. In a title themed with whacky arms, it was a bit disappointing this wasn’t at least patched out at some point. The pacing of arming your character is weird too, as you don’t pick up another gun until almost an hour into play.
I experienced several bugs during play with some being more disastrous than others. During the first fifteen minutes, you have to lead some zombies into a crashed jet turbine. Due to detection issues with the turbine this task was incredibly difficult without getting so close that you yourself risked getting sucked in. To remedy this I attempted to clamber close and get in at the right angle-and clipped through the entire plane to the next area I had to get to. Which was great, as zombies just walked into the turbine at that point in chase, and I got the achievement all the same. I had to manually walk my character out of the void to complete the level. The collision issues persist well past this incident as well, with invisible barriers being a constant annoyance.
All of this makes Zombeer’s focus all the more apparent-in a firmly tongue-in-cheek early 2000s Hot Topic art style, nerdy references and big bouncing jiggling zombie gazongas.
Oh! Yeah, you’re probably wondering why I’m talking about this game at all for Joyful Stick.
Zombeer unabashedly sexualizes it’s zombies. It fearlessly makes every zombie girl that attacks you jiggle with every step. They’re stylized along the “sexy knock off brand” costumes you see at halloween. In some cases, you can even hear their breasts clap as they walk. There’s Zombie Cheerleaders that shake their thong-clad asses at you. There’s a zombie girl shower scene, complete with lurid comments from the lead character. It’s so openly embraced without qualm (or much disgust) that I simply had to play this title to see if it was real. Lo, it was. I’ve zero doubt that if the game ever was finished, there would have been a zombie strip club too.
Is this hot?
I mean.
Look, after multiple years of doing this, having gotten aroused at scenes I never dared thought I would have in titles, I’m absolutely the last person to pass judgement. My dick did not move. Maybe yours will. We’ll leave it at that. Are there a lot of sexualized zombie games on the market? To my knowledge, this is one of two with big-tiddied zombie women. With options so limited, you could do worse.
Conclusion
Despite Zombeer’s glaring, obvious and unavoidable issues-the game weirdly has a lot of heart. There’s nothing else really like it on the market. Comedic first person shooters are rare (the last one that comes to mind is Duke Nukem Forever). Even with it’s punchline-a-minute delivery, I found myself smirking on occasion. Yet, to recommend playing this game is difficult. It is an incomplete product that will never be finished. The community support simply isn’t there for patches or a sequel.
Yet, it’s not a triple A game. It’s not even a double A title. Zombeer wears it’s b-movie shlock heritage on it’s sleeve without qualm, and for that I applaud it. With Steam’s winter sale coming up, this is a cosy way to spend one of the few days you’ll have off. Cop it if you’re curious.
-j