Zombie Tycoon

Zombie Tycoon is a real-time strategy for the Playstation Portable developed by Frima Studio and published by Sony. It was released on October 29, 2009.

Zombie Tycoon differs from most zombie games in the fact that the player is able to control and customize three squads of zombies rather than fighting them off. The game is not a tycoon game as the title suggests, with gameplay closer to being a real-time strategy game. Like Dead Head Fred, Zombie Tycoon uses the Vicious Engine

Zombie Tycoon, belonging to the PSP Mini family, is a painless 54 MB download. The first problem you'll have with it, though, arises before you've even queued up the download itself. Gamers interested in purchasing the recently released Zombie Tycoon will (at the time this article was written) find that the price is a startling $7.99. Just like a number of the other Mini applications, this price point is just too steep for such a small program. As I was able to complete the first half of Zombie Tycoon in an hour or two, I would have preferred to see this title launch at a lower price.

Gameplay
Zombie Tycoon plays like a real-time strategy game. Gameplay takes place in different cities, each level giving different objectives. Buildings are destructible, but enemies may attack from the building, throwing things such as Molotov cocktails. Special enemies such as bounty hunters may organize a resistance force and must be eliminated quickly.

The player controls three squads of zombies using a flying camera to dispense brains, which the zombies follow. Zombie squads may be equipped with several items to improve their offensive, defensive, or movement capabilities. Hospitals may be destroyed by zombies to increase their numbers, allowing up to 8 zombies for each squad. The game is lost when all zombie squads are eliminated.

When playing Zombie Tycoon, players can move the camera around with the analog nub, which also doubles as the player's cursor (the cursor is set in the middle of the screen). Players can command up to three zombie squads at once and they can issue contextual orders, based on what the cursor is pointing at. For example, if the cursor is hovering over an empty space, hitting Square, Triangle or Circle will command the corresponding zombie squad to move to that location. If the cursor is over an enemy unit, the zombie hordes will attack that unit. Pressing X will command all three squads simultaneously.