Zombie Derby

Zombies have invaded nearly all areas of entertainment. Their shambling corpses have wormed their way into books, films, and countless video games - and a quick search of the Google Play store for 'zombie' returns a staggering (no pun intended) 10,834 results.

Zombies are most certainly an incredibly overused trope.

Thankfully, in Zombie Derby they're a trope that amounts to little more than some background context for utter vehicular-based point-to-point carnage.

You'd be forgiven for thinking this was a sort of side-on version of Carmageddon, but once you bite through the fleshy exterior Zombie Derby is rather different.

Instead of entering a race to mow down the undead, you just have to drive to safety through increasingly brutal stages by upgrading your car.

You have to play each stage several times to complete it, slowly gaining more ground as you earn coins from your vehicular chaos to put towards upgrades for each vehicle.

It's a slow and laborious process that certainly pads out the game's measly four stages and five vehicles on offer, but thankfully it never gets dull.

Yes, it can sometimes feel as though you're flogging a dead horse when progress seems impossible, even when you've maxed out your car's available upgrades.

But once you figure out how to make the most of your fuel, nitrous, and prowess at mowing down the undead with your roof-mounted gun you'll tear though levels rather quickly.

All in all, Zombie Derby is a polished and playable game, with well-designed controls, nice presentation, and a deceptively addictive Groundhog Day structure.

It's certainly not perfect - most annoyingly, it caps the number of coins you have so that you can't buy a more powerful vehicle until you need it - but it's a perfectly fun casual game that will keep you entertained for much longer than you might expect given its unimaginative and grind-heavy premise.