Deadly 30

Who says that the side-scrolling shooter days are over? Many indie developers, as well as even a few recognized publishers are now into making side-scrolling titles; filled with the same amount of fun and excitement as before. Having said so, Meridian4 releases their latest side-scrolling shooter, ‘Deadly 30’. It’s a survival, 2D side-scrolling shooter, part tower defense set in the World War II era, where you will have to survive a zombie epidemic in the jungle.

As the name suggests, your mission is to survive 30 nights. Don’t merely judge its level structuring only as shooting holdouts; the game does require you to implore tactics and proper use of resources. As default you’ll be playing as the American, though you will encounter other playable characters such as the Russian and German officer later on. You can move freely both left or right, jump and duck using the arrow or WASD keys. The mouse pointer is used for directing your character, as well as targeting zombies. Shooting a zombie on its legs won’t completely cripple it; shooting on the head seemed more effective. Your character will carry a machine gun by default along with a blade for melee. It’s always wise to carry and conserve plenty of bullets; otherwise using the blade to kill zombies might give you infections since it’s at close range.

Inside the safe house; waiting for the hell.

A character will keep leveling up after killing X amount of zombies, and with each level, there will be plenty of goodies to unlock; not to mention the achievements. There are armor upgrades available, which lets your characters resist infection for a longer period, and upgrading boots will boost their movement speed. The higher level a character reaches, the stronger the enemies become. So it is important to keep your AI allies alive by supporting them as much as you can (upgrades and healing them). Deadly 30 gradually gets rougher each passing night, and you won’t stand a chance unless you have actual co-op buddies by your side. Surviving wave after wave of zombie attacks is exceedingly difficult by yourself unless there’s additional support.

Deadly 30 will surely test your survival skills not only by fighting against the zombie horde, but also how you manage and gather resources.  For a side-scrolling shooter it has some free-roaming elements. During the day, you can explore different surroundings and scavenge for resources along the way. Finding scrap metal and other materials plays a major role in upgrades for your safe house (more on that later). There are quite a few different surroundings in which you can travel. The default surrounding is the Black Forest, where your safe house is. Traveling either left or right, you’ll find more surroundings such as Corn Fields and Snow World. Though the combat is more intense during the night, this doesn’t mean you should let your guard down during the day; preparation is always crucial. The deadlier an environment the more abundant it is for resource gathering. Also, keep in mind that you only have a limited amount of time to explore during the day. There is a day/night cycle in the game, and measures how much you move towards other places.

Shop that feeds!

You can consider Deadly 30 as part-tower defense, since you practically spend the night defending your safe house. Fortunately, you can improve the fort by placing several types of fences: Metal, electric, stone or gold. The better the fences, the longer they hold the zombies off. While the zombies are trying to break through the fences, shooting them from the rooftop makes it trouble-free. There are other items such as defensive barricade, in which you can place around in numbers. All these defensive items can be bought by exchanging scrap metals to a shop inside your house. Still, these barricades won’t hold the zombies off for long, so you must constantly upgrade and fix them.

As finding materials for your fort is the main focus, there are several types of guns to be found as well. Each time your character levels up, guns such as MP-40, Golden AK-47, Winchester 1894, Alien Laser Gun (yes, really.), and others can be unlocked. In some stages of Deadly 30 automated machine guns are also a must have. Judging by the various types of weapons you can pretty much guess that the zombies come in various shapes and sizes. Green zombies known as the Blight is the most common and easiest type to kill. With each passing level, stronger zombies such as the Blue Blight and Rotting Blight will show up. Besides zombies, there are also infected dogs called Corrupted Whelp, a hellhound called Teufelshunde, and an annoying infected crow known as the Carrion Crow. If these still don’t do it for you, more zombie types show up, such as the Engorged Blight and Red Bloat. Some of these enemies sport tougher armor and more health, so it’s absolutely necessary to find as much scrap metal and weapons as you can if you want to last all 30 levels.

Finding partner. Thankfully a female.

Creepy sound effects in Deadly 30 are spine-tingling, blending perfectly with its bleak and atmospheric black-and-white surroundings. Added with random voice-over by the characters, this game is even more presentable to give characters a bit of personality. Sadly, Deadly 30 lacks in few different areas. Even though visually the game is fairly likable, you can only get the most effective quality in a windowed view, resulting in you playing in a limited screen. Stretching out the resolution doesn’t solve the problem; in fact, it ends up degrading the visual quality.

The problem with the window view is during intense situations, you may accidentally click outside the game screen, which automatically pauses the game. In situations where you are countering a Red Goliath or Red Bloat, you won’t be too pleased about this interruption. Perhaps this was necessary to give the game a retro-style look, but it should’ve been carried out better. Deadly 30 also won’t let you save whenever you want.  As a game that increases in difficulty, it should provide more save points. However, I can understand that Meridian4 likely wanted to make something that’s not overly challenging, but enough to keep you on your toes. After playing it for several hours, I must agree that they are successful on keeping that balance. No doubt Deadly 30 is a fun game to play, and if you want to test your skills against the zombies, try it out and see how long you can hold.

Sarwar Ron, NoobFeed
Twitter | +SarwarRon