Undead Bowling

Sometimes, the most basic of premises can be the most enjoyable. Stripping ideas down to their fundamentals can often highlight just how bloated some genres have become.

Undead Bowling, for example, is surprisingly entertaining despite the fact that you're simply throwing a ball down an alley and killing the same zombies over and over again.

But the game verges on the wrong side of basic, offering content that's fun for a short while but ends up too short on both quality and quantity.

As zombies amble towards you, the objective is to lob a bowling ball down the alleyway and knock them all out before they can reach your sweet, sweet brains.

The premise is simple and fun. You can control the ball as it rolls, and can even make sharp turns along the alley, making this less a bowling game than an action game. The more zombies you knock down in one go, the more points you'll bag.

There's plenty of style packed into this experience. Zombies splatter all over your ball, and an announcer shouts out whenever you earn yourself a particularly great score or combo.

And if you can perform a great roll and line the gambling slots up at the top, you'll be transported to a special bonus round in which gold zombies are offered up, and it all gets just a little bit silly.

This is the underlying concept of Undead Bowling - it's a good laugh, with snappy controls and action that feels meaty.

But, while Undead Bowling plays well and has plenty of style, it's just far too lacking in content for its own good.

There's only a handful of different zombie types to tackle, and only three different modes. None of these is wildly different from the others, so after several rounds you'll already feel like you've seen it all.

At this point the game becomes highly repetitive, and your enjoyment ebbs rapidly. In real bowling games, there's at least an element of skill involved - in this one it's next to impossible to lose.

Undead Bowling is enjoyable for a short while, but its simplicity soon undermines the game's otherwise sparkling sense of humour, style, and fun.