The gaming world has so many different versions of the Zombie Apocalypse that it’s getting hard to find games you really want spend time with. Death Road to Canada sadly on the iPhone may be a title that fits in with a more niche gaming demographic though.
Story
You and other survivors are on the road in search of Canada. They have no real zombie problem and since you really don’t want to be one of the undead horde, it’s time for a road trip. Players choices will greatly affect who survives and who doesn’t. This makes an unlimited amount of stories in each play through.
Gameplay
The gameplay is pretty basic. You use the left side of the screen as the joystick and along the bottom right you will notice two buttons. The first button is the action button. Use that for weapons, opening doors, or other actions. Then you have a back button which you can use if you get to far in the menus. Since this is a half text-based you will need to read. One of the cool features in this game is how the choices you make effect the game. I was given the simple task of cleaning some dog poop off of an item I needed. My character failed to do this and it caused his morale to go down.
Now given the fact that my character was overrun by zombies at the next stop didn’t help with my frustration towards the poop incident. If my guy successfully cleaned that poop he may have lived. This game has a large amount of content when you think about all the items you can collect, characters to level up, characters to meet, and modes to play. Collecting items for future use down the road is the big thing to do in this game. It was not annoying that I had to collect items and manage them when you compare it to some other games out on the market. Streaming on the iPhone is something that I rarely messed with, although a few times, I flawlessly used the app Periscope to broadcast my gameplay.
Audio
The upbeat soundtrack compared to the actual game is unexpected. You wouldn’t think that the game would have a rocking soundtrack. The problem I came across was that I actually didn’t listen to this soundtrack. It was actually something that I hardly needed to listen to since I would just play music in the background. I found it was unnecessary to even have the sound on at all. Most of the time you’ll hear little dings when a message pops up. If you actually pay attention to the game you won’t need listen to it.
Graphics
Death Road to Canada has the best looking zombie sprites I have seen in a while. The game has this grainy filter that really makes you think you’re in a cheap horror movie. Some of the items can be difficult to tell what they are on a phone however. Unless you’re playing on a tablet or a larger iPhone, you could ignore/miss important items that will be needed later in the game. The game features darker colors at times giving it that depressing feeling. That helps keep you in the moment even if you’re playing in the office.
Verdict
During my time with this game I enjoyed just about every aspect of it. One thing that I started to enjoy is playing with other people. This would be the perfect game to play with multiple real survivors. I also let some people I know try this game that play games mostly on their phones. Their reaction to this game wasn’t positive, but that was mostly due to the reading and lack of constant combat. Like I said at the start this game may just not take off with most people. I really wish that it will in the future though as I quite liked it.
