First Look: Zombie Panic in Wonderland Plus!

I know what you’re probably thinking. “What is it with zombies on iOS? We’ve already shot them upsliced them into little pieces, played Minesweeper with them in the way, even voice commanded them! There’s nothing more that can be done with zombies!” Okay, I totally get why you’d say that. But hear me out on this. Maybe there’s room for just one more zombie game on iOS — one that’s being ported from a fellow gesture-driven platform, turns fairy tales topsy turvy, and where you can experience that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you flay zombie hordes with the wide arc of a flamethrower. Spanish developer Akaoni recently broke the news on Facebook that they’re bringing such a game to iOS in the form of Zombie Panic in Wonderland Plus this Christmas!

What the “Plus” means exactly is anyone’s guess at the moment, but the developer indicates it’s a markedly enhanced port of Akaoni’s debut WiiWare title, Zombie Panic in Wonderland. The game’s premise is straight up off-the-wall bonkers, with a zombie apocalypse breaking out in a world that borrows from Japanese lore, The Wizard of Oz, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in equal measure. Thus, folk heroes Momotaro, Dorothy, and Snow White get to break out their machine guns and other heavy weaponry — a perfect addition to the wider canvass of ideas executed on iOS, if I do say so myself.

What’s gotten me incredibly excited for this one is that it follows a third person shooter formula we haven’t seen much since the likes of Cabal and Wild Guns. This style trades the free range exploration found in Shadowgun, Resident Evil 4, etc., for an utterly frenetic experience that keeps the player dodging all over the place as enemies move in and lob their own attacks at the hero or heroine. Stuck in foreground, the player can only strafe from side to side, and usually has a melee option when enemies manage to close in. By all appearances, Zombie Panic in Wonderland really upped the ante on environmental destruction, and let the player cycle through a variety of weapons on the fly.

It’s difficult to predict how the WiiMote-and-Nunchuk controls will transfer to iOS exactly, and the picture Akaoni released is short on clues. Interestingly, though, the beta pic does show a level I haven’t seen in any playthrough footage taken from the WiiWare release. You can bet your antique copy of Alice in Wonderland that we’re keeping our ears to the ground for more news on this exciting project, and you can too by checking out Akaoni’s website, Facebook page and Twitter account. There’s also a dev blog devoted specifically to the Plus effort.