Zombie is Planting

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

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Review:

Zombie is Planting, released on Nintendo Switch in 2021, is a side-scrolling Management Simulation where players command a horde of zombies to tend to a farm. Because why not, I guess.

Your main interaction here is telling zombies to do a specific action on a particular screen, such as telling a zombie to go two screens to the left and start picking up things off the ground, or telling a zombie to harvest everything that grows on-screen. You can also spend money to send out an expedition to find more zombies or more crops to grow. And when a zombie gets too tired to keep working, you can select one and hold a button to make them recover more quickly, in a manner not dissimilar to an Idle game.

The main problem here comes from the fact that your zombies are dumb, and often don’t follow commands properly – tell them to harvest and once all the crops are harvested they’ll stand there dumbfounded instead of putting it away. Try to tell them to do something else and they’ll just drop all the food they just picked up, letting it rot on the ground (which can happen quickly). I don’t know if this stupidity was done deliberately because, you know, zombies. But regardless of why it was done, the inability to properly command these zombies really kills any interest in the game – the moment your main input into a game becomes a mere suggestion, why are you even playing?

The presentation here is okay, featuring colorful, cartoony 2D characters and backgrounds, backed by upbeat acoustic music that fits the game’s lighthearted theme. There’s nothing here particularly noteworthy, but it works okay, I suppose.

Ultimately, the way this game all hinges on controlling zombies who often don’t listen to you really makes this a huge dud. I don’t know if this would have been an especially good game if your minions weren’t completely brainless, but as-is it is absolutely not worth getting.

tl;dr – Zombie is Planting is a side-scrolling Management Simulation that falls apart due to the way the zombies you command to farm for you often don’t listen to you, and act in dumb, counter-productive ways. This is an exercise in frustration, and simply not a fun game.

Grade: D

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