To look at a screenshot of Zombie Smash HD might be to presume it's yet another tower defence game in which you must defend your house against yet another onslaught of zombies.
Zombie Smash HD
For: iPad
From: Gamedoctors
iTunes rating: 9+ (infrequent/mild profanity or crude humour, infrequent/mild horror/fear themes, infrequent/mild cartoon or fantasy violence)
But Smash spares itself from the rehash tag by letting you go very literally hands on with that defence.
As zombies encroach on the house, you can use your fingers to pick them up, lob them backwards, fling them across the screen and, true to the title, smash them into the ground.
Various weapons and pick-ups - demolition wrecking balls, meteor showers, a coach's whistle that stops everyone in their tracks - are available for a temporary assist, but to succeed at Smash is to be quick with the hands and master the art of using multiple fingers to simultaneously fling multiple zombies.
In the later stages, it's far more an action than strategy game.
Smash includes a 31-day campaign mode, a shorter bonus campaign with remixed rules, an endless mode and a sandbox mode, and it dangles Game Centre leaderboards and achievements for extra motivation.
But it's the colourful cartoony presentation that really makes the whole thing sing.
Gamedoctors calls Smash a survival comedy, and between the goofy zombie designs and the slapstick that erupts when pick-ups and your fingers work in tandem, it's an apt description.
