Zombie Admin: Working for a Living, With the Living Dead

The zombie genre is one of the most popular forms of entertainment. Like any other genre, it has the occasional flow where it becomes insanely popular, and then it instantly gets left to the wayside, becoming a rotting dead corpse. Certain shows and movies like The Walking Dead and World War Z have received video game tie-in releases that have become successful in their own right, making the genre relevant again. But sometimes, there comes a game that might sound good on paper but ends up feeling like wasted time when all is said and done. Sadly, Zombie Admin represents an example of the latter type of experience.

Developed by two-person studio Hastily Assembled Games, the game is a top-down shooter in the vein of Ape Out and Hotline Miami, where you follow the main character from a top-down point of view while having the screen scroll around as you move around through said level.

Zombie Admin's premise starts with the apocalypse taking effect, the world falling into ruins as various people become zombies. You play as a simple office worker who has to keep going about his job even though your coworkers are already dead and your superiors are evaluating your performance. This humorous concept reminds me very much of films like Office Space, where the main villains more or less are just business executives trying to gain profits without caring for the hard-working individuals trying to earn their wages through menial jobs.

The level design is very simplistic in nature as you move through the various procedurally-generated hallways, office cubicles, and break rooms while trying to complete basic tasks for your bosses. You'll be fixing the copy machine, clearing malicious websites off of computers, setting up meetings with clients, and more, all with the goal of filling up the meter in your HUD before reaching the elevator that will take you up to the next floor. Your ultimate goal is to reach the rooftop and get onto a helicopter to escape the invading zombie horde.

As you run around completing all of the available tasks on each floor, you will slowly lose health, which you can regain by drinking coffee. As you drink the coffee, your "bathroom meter" decreases and you slow down, until you use the toilet to regain your speed. The game's scoring system judges your performance, where completing certain bonuses like not drinking coffee or not having to use the restroom will give you a better high score.

You do have to complete only eight floors to get to the end, so you can easily beat the game in a single sitting in about an hour. However, I wish the game offered up other environments to go through, like a warehouse or a factory setting to change up the gameplay formula. Various weapons are lying around the levels to be found, the usual shotguns, pistols, and assault rifles, and with them, the difficulty level of the gameplay ramps up as you ascend toward the roof.

The game features various types of zombies like heavy brutes, zombies that throw acidic projectiles that can hurt you, and zombies that are swift on their feet, providing a decent challenge for the player. There's a bit of replay value with the usual ascending difficulty levels, and the inclusion of local two-player co-op is commendable. But while I enjoyed the experience, I feel like it was over way too quickly even for a game that is less than ten dollars.

Overall, while you might get a fun kick out of murdering zombies within a comical setting and plot, I feel like there are other games out there that do a better job catering to zombie fans.

Zombie Admin is available now on Steam and Itch.io.  

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