Suburb of the Living Dead (literally)

Suburb of the Living Dead has a very promising start, with a clever intro that flashes newspaper front pages chronicling a zombie outbreak. Two humans--Shaun and Liz--have fled to the suburbs. Your mission: Help them reach safe haven.

After the intro, things get a bit more frustrating. You have an aerial view of a house, garden, and garage, and you control Shaun and Liz with a series of keystrokes. The area is, of course, infested with zombies, which the game controls. You'll want to press F10 to read the rather complicated game instructions and review a list of keystrokes needed to control the characters; a cheat sheet is available by pressing F1. Game play is exceedingly slow due to the nature of the game: You move each character one or two squares at a time, then press Return to give the zombies their chance. Suburb of the Living Dead is based on a board game, Zombie Plague, which surely explains its clunky design.

Still, Suburb of the Living Dead is free, and very challenging. If you enjoy playing turn-based strategy games, definitely give this one a try. It downloads quickly and runs directly from the .exe file; no installation is necessary.

--Kim Saccio-Kent