There aren't too many games on the iPhone that try to to take on the horror genre with a macabre sensibility to it. Many games like Zombieville, and The Creeps! are are colorful than scary. So if you been hunting for a game that takes the undead seriously, look no further. Undead Live is here.
Undead Live is quite simply a social RPG game. These types of games right now are on on the iPhone, though this is the first time I seen a game that features vampires, undead lords and sacrificial virgins. What makes these game social are features that encourage you to interact with other players. Whether you have recruit friends for a quest, or battle other enemies to win loot, the game is constantly reminding you to reach out to more people. At times, it does feel like the game is constantly hassling you to "recruit! recruit! recruit!", but that seems to be the appeal of the game with people it seems.
For the most part, these social RPG games play the same. You have to constantly level up, do quests, upgrade your gear, and of course, recruit. So rather than focus on the similarities, I thought I’d cover what makes this game more unique.
Right off the bat, the horror theme is evident. The eerie intro music, the screaming sound effects when you are defeated, and the graphics all do a good job of conveying the creeps. The game is set in some undefined medieval era, so you have such quests like Enslave a Village, and weapons like a Spiked Flail, which is a nice touch. There are some disturbing and yet ironically hilarious quests as well. It looks like they update the quest list every now and then, and some aren’t available anymore. My top 5 favorite:
Impale a Non-Believer
Corrupt a Virgin
Torch an Orphanage
Devour Clergyman
Carve Dark Symbol in Flesh
Most of the new features to this game are designed to encourage you to play more often. As an example, there are unique quests that require you to invest some money to activate. You then have to come back later to complete the quest and earn an extra helping of experience and money. But if you don’t make it back to the game, you end up losing your investment. The other cool feature I haven’t seen before are Artifacts. You can earn these powerful items by completing certain criteria, and collecting items. This feature provides an additional macro level reward for all that button mashing grinding you do to level up.
My biggest problem with the game is that many of the commands, icons, and menu items deviate too far from standard naming conventions, making it hard to know what they do. So instead of having your own mob (like in Mafia Wars), you now have a COVEN. Instead of being able to recruit people, you have to BITE them. To do quests, you have to have BLOOD. And when you earn money, it’s called ROYALTY. After playing for a while I still get confused with which icon does what.
Despite a number of new features, and solid polish in design, the game still pretty much plays like any other game in this genre. So if you have already played a few of these types of games, there may not be enough new here to pull you in. There is a free version of Undead Live, which is pretty much the full game, so I'll leave it up to you to decide if you want to upgrade to the enhanced versions which give you addition points to help you level up faster. It’s definitely worth a look if you like this sort of RPG light gameplay.
TIP: Recruit. Undead Live is best enjoyed when you reruit new friends, which is a challenge on your iPhone because there aren’t as many users you can easily ping, unlike another platform like Facebook. Here’s the solution. Check out the website: www.undeadforum.com and you can find other people there who are sharing their friend code. Or you can check out the comments posted up for the game on the App Store, as people are using that space for posting up their info. That's a fast and easy way to add more friends than you can imagine.
