Imagine having your own slobbering army of oozing undead creatures. Imagine the damage you could cause, the functions you could disrupt, the amount of meetings you could get out of.
But now imagine the training that you'd have to do. Imagine the hours of your own time you'd have to put in to making sure that your bidding was done to a satisfactory level when your orders were sent out.
It's those time-consuming drills that Deadlings gives you a chance to play through. And surprisingly enough, they're pretty darn enjoyable.
Whipping your underlings into shape involves leaping over spike-filled pits, dodging lasers, and collecting as many juicy delicious brains as possible.
Flying too close to the lasers is a bad idea
You control everything with a single finger. Some Deadlings jump when you tap on the screen, others float higher when you hold a finger down. Some go to sleep until you push on the screen again, and some can scuttle along on any surface.
At the start of each level, you're given a number of creatures. You're aiming to get at least one of your Deadlings to a portal door, preferably within a time limit and after you've snaffled all of the human brains scattered around the various nooks and crannies of the testing chamber.
To start off with, you're basically playing a simple platformer. As you work through the levels, though, you'll have to use the various different properties of the monsters at your disposal to pull switches and collect all of the brains.
Fathoming out what to do with the resources you're given is part of the fun of the game, and there are some buffs and boosts that help you along the way.
You can resurrect fallen Deadlings, cut out problematic obstacles, and add extra zombies.
Zooming out on the map reveals all the places your friends will die
The levels get more expansive, too, requiring you to plan using the schematic of the play space. You'll be using multiple creatures to hold down switches, then, and sending others diving through portals to warp back to the start to be used again.
It all blends together to make a slick, interesting puzzle-platformer that takes chunks of inspiration from a handful of sources and mashes them together to create a game that's well worth sinking some of your time into.
Deadlings
An interestingly built mix of puzzling and platforming, Deadlings is intriguing enough to keep you entertained for a good while
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.