Zombie Football Carnage is another game in the long list of indie games by Milkstone Studios. The developer that brought us the very impressive Motor Heat is back on form with one of their later titles which has you surviving waves of zombie-esque enemies with nothing more than a football and a batch of power-ups. The idea of the game is basically to provide short bursts of gameplay which links to a worldwide ranking system which you can throw challenges to your friends list via an auto-scripted message. The game is visual dynamite once again pushing the XNA hardware to it’s upper limits and for only 80 Microsoft Points this game almost looks too visually good for such a price tag.

You have the standard long range attack with the football, a dash attack which enables you to evade enemies as well as cause mayhem on them, a static charge attack and two different weaponary pick up attacks which by and large are offensive pick up items as opposed to health packs which are available sparingly. The onslaught is pretty much on from the off – don’t expect to survive many waves before dying, this game is built purposely so that you play in short spurts and that the reward factor for lasting longer waves feels that much more satisfying. Some of the weapon pickups include stink bombs, normal bombs, circular disc saws and believe it or not tesla coils to bring your enemies down or bring paralysis to them so you can make the kill with the ball.

Zombie Football Carnage also yields a shop which you can upgrade your character, upgrades include your health bar, dash speed, weapon pick up damage and so on and so forth. As the average coin pick up per game to death ration is rather small you’ll have to find yourself playing on average three lives worth of ZFC before you’ll have enough money to upgrade. By upgrading your stats you have a better chance of making a dent on that worldwide leaderboard which is where the game can be pretty addictive. The sound on the game once again has a high level of presentation as do the arenas of where the battles take place. Each enemy spawn has their own weakness and pro points and forces you to change the strategy throughout your play.

Overall Zombie Football Carnage is a very sturdy and very slick looking take on the twitch survival Smash TV hybrid – visually it’s as good as Castle Crashers and ironically the game itself is much better than the mini-games found in said The Behemoth game. It’s another strong performance by Milkstone Studios