now playing: "i saw her standing there"

When a game's tagline consists of the words "love," "zombies," and "pancakes," you should already know it's going to be featured on Transcending Pixels. And furthermore, when the title of said game looks like an unfinished poem, namely i saw her standing there (Krang Games, 2012), you have to know my weakness for the spew of literary consciousness trapped in these few words. I'm kind of a mad scientist when it comes to English. I have to bold the title at least the first time so that you guys will be rest assured that I'm not the only crazy person who likes eliminating capital letters entirely as well. (From now on I'll just call it Zombie Pancakes, because that sounds like an adorable hipster acoustic garage band. Or a code name for some top-secret ARG venture. Nice and random, like I Love Bees, but secretly dripping with awesomesauce when you open it up.)

In a few very odd-ish ways, I thought of MaTX's One and One Story so many moments throughout my playthrough of Zombie Pancakes. Two separated lovers, following each other at times. Platforms. A story unveiled, thought by thought, as levels are completed. But that's where the similarities end. Whereas One and One Story looks and plays like the imaginatively rich, ornate pop-up books of my childhood nostalgia, Zombie Pancakes more closely resembles a Shel Silverstein poem in its utter ludicrosity. It's about a boy and his girlfriend who just conveniently happens to be a zombie! Wonderful! The drama and tension is automatically built in!

The storytelling itself is childish; simplistic statements like "the other zombies were mean" only endear me more to the stick figure protagonist. His plight is sweetly sad to begin with: he loves a girl, but she's a zombie. Fortunately, his love is of the Princess Bride variety, courageous and determined and always "as you wish." He's smart enough to not get too near her and become a zombie himself, but with his superior jumping prowess and a very nice gun, he can lead her into a cage place of safety from the other zombies and from himself. But for how long can this estranged love last?

And just like that one favorite book of mine that I grew to memorize, the replay value for Zombie Pancakes sticks high up above the crowd of most casual games, even the other ones I've reviewed here. You play through the storyline once, and then you're free to revisit the hardest levels armed with more zombies, even more zombies, infinite guns, awesome guns, nigh-invincibility, and bloated stick-figure heads all around for extra cute factor.

Not-too-challenging gameplay interlaced with a simple story and almost-ukelele music makes Zombie Pancakes very sweet. Yummy. Brainzzzz. While we have yet to see a zombie game with a ukelele OST, this is the first I've seen that features pancakes, even if only in the anecdotal sense. People like me who are always trying to go over the top and make something genius need games like these: games that could have been just another zombie game, except for the whole pancakes deal.

TL;DR Moment: If you mix enough cliches together, you'll get something awesome.