BitMonster’s Lili was one of a handful of games that Apple used in its keynote to show off the power and increased screen size of the iPhone 5. Lili featured whimsical characters, vibrant visuals, and gorgeous island environments. They’ve shifted gears big time with the newly released Gunner Z, an edgy zombie game where you mow down the baddies from customized armored assault trucks. Another big change is that Gunner Z is free to play.

At its core, Gunner Z is very similar to an infinite runner like Jetpack Joyride. It hones in on one gameplay mechanic and does it really well. You then get coins for your efforts which can be traded in for various upgrades to make your runs even better. Better runs earn more coins, which buy better gear, and the process repeats itself.

Given, Gunner Z levels aren’t actually infinite and it isn’t actually a runner. Instead, levels are designed with specific environments, waves of enemies, bosses, and an end point. Hordes of zombies will constantly draw closer and, when they get close enough, they’ll attack by exploding their undead bodies all over your truck. Survive to the end though, and you’ll be rewarded with experience and ZMoney for your kills as well as a small bit of premium BX for completing the level.

You’re not alone in your fight against zombies. You have your driver and your mechanic backing you up so you can focus entirely on gunning. The shooting is presented through an edgy black-and-white night vision camera. Zombies and the vehicles they drive (that’s right) glow brilliantly white against the dark black streets. It’s a simple effect, but it’s really cool and makes it easy to see your targets even from a distance. There’s plenty of simple but cool HUD effects too, such as blue arrows indicating new waves and red arrows indicating zombies that are getting close enough to do damage. The colored HUD elements really pop against the black-and-white field of view.

Thanks to your driver, it’s an on-rails shooter. The gun’s mount is highly maneuverable, able to spin 360 degrees and look both straight up and straight down. The crosshair is always in the center of the screen, which you pan around by dragging your finger around the screen. A vertical slider on the right side of the screen also lets you adjust your gun’s height between 0 and 25 feet above your truck — a cool feature for increasing your vision range or taking out undead on the rooftops.

All that currency you reel in is for buying new trucks and upgrading your existing ones. Each truck can have a unique name, paintjob, weapons, and upgrades. Vehicles can have their armor, weapons, and cameras upgraded in a ton of different ways. Each upgrade takes real time to complete, so that’s where the multiple vehicles come in. Your mechanic can be working on one upgrade per vehicle, making it possible to try different upgrade paths with each truck you invest in. There really are a lot of upgrades, armor, each weapon, and your camera each have at least three different traits that can be upgraded, and each trait can be upgraded five times. It adds up to a whole lot of carrot chasing and very powerful vehicles in the end-game. Interestingly, camera upgrades add new elements to your HUD like the ability to pinch to zoom or to detect zombies from greater ranges. Multiple vehicles are also important because if one of your trucks falls to the horde, it will take 30 minutes of repair before it’s road-ready again.

Even though the levels are hand-crafted instead of randomly generated, they can get a little repetitive. That said, the game is always intense and it’s fun to be on the edge of your seat, barely finishing off a wave of zombies before the next wave is ready to start blowing up the other side of your vehicle. New zombie types are introduced at regular intervals and must be taken out with different strategies. You can only equip two weapons per truck, and each weapon has different pros and cons. Some are great at taking out fast moving zombies but poor at destroying enemy vehicles. Boss fights are great for providing even more variety of things to shoot at.

Gunner Z wasn’t originally going to be free-to-play, so those elements were added in the middle of the game’s development. Fortunately, the game is balanced so that it feels (mostly) fair and the free-to-play stuff doesn’t feel terribly tacked-on. I’m not a fan of timers that make it so I can’t play the game (that is, if I manage to blow up all my trucks at once), but the upgrade timers are totally reasonable. There are a lot of things you can buy through in-app purchase, nearly all of which make the game easier. Of course, none of these things are needed, but it always brings into question how fairly the game is balanced. Things like coin doublers, ammo doublers, fast reloaders, and packages of currency are obviously useful for speeding up your progress in the game. Most of these seemed excessively expensive to me — the coin doubler, for instance, is $4.99. Fortunately, even without any of these bonuses, I never felt like I had to work to hard to afford the next vehicle upgrade.

The biggest problem I’ve had with the game is it’s stability. When I first installed it, it would crash on launch. Quitting other apps and restarting my device both didn’t help. The game finally worked after I reinstalled it and restarted my device again. Once I finally got to the main menu, I was again prevented from playing. This time, a spinner indicated the game was “waiting for iCloud”. After a couple minutes of that, I selected the option to delete my save profile, even though I didn’t really have one to delete. Restarting the app finally got me to a point where I could play the game. The reviews on the App Store indicate that many other players have been encountering similar issues with crashing. I won’t buy that the issue is the game being too intensive — I can run other intensive games with hardly a hiccup on my 4S, Infinity Blade III included. I’m hopeful that BitMonster will update the game with some performance improvements. For now, at least the game is free so you’re not out of the money if you can’t get it to work.

The zombie theme grows ever tired, so it’s always nice to see a unique spin on it. The high-tech camera visuals are really cool and make the somewhat futuristic 2024 setting more believable. It also serves as a much easier way to identify zombies — white on black is much easier to see than browns and grays on top of more browns and grays — especially on a phone-sized screen. The game’s not going to blow your socks off, but not every game has to. It’s nice to look at and fun to play. Progressing through the levels and upgrading your vehicles are great hooks to keep you playing the game for a long time. I really like that many of the vehicle upgrades translate directly into more features you can use on the streets. Gunner Z is a solid shooter, especially for one that’s free.

Download Guner Z from the App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gunner-z/id639403601?mt=8