There's a chill in the air in the land of the Keflings, and things certainly seem to have changed since the last time we checked in. An easy to pick up and play city building/resource management game, with a killer (muhahaha) sense of humour, A World of Keflings is easily one of the Everybody Plays team's favourite Xbox 360 games - and thanks to its regular add-ons, it's a game that keeps on giving. Following on from the previous downloadable expansions, the sci-fi themed It Came From Outer Space, where aliens from the planet Yurbut (oh dear) landed, and the incredibly pink, yet not all that girly Sugar, Spice and Not So Nice, things take on something of a more undead twist in The Curse of the Zombiesaurus, a ghostly new add-on that lands on the Xbox Live Marketplace just in time for Halloween.
As with the previous downloadable packs, the main push of the game here remains the same as it ever was. Playing as a giant avatar amongst a world of little people, Gulliver's Travels style, it's up to you to help the cast of kooky characters build a kingdom they can be proud of. Pick up one of the little people, and plonk them down on top of a tree, or a rock, and they'll go about harvesting it. Once you've amassed enough of certain types of resources, you can construct the various components of a building, letting you create a kingdom the Keflings can be proud of.
It was a graveyard smash...
At least in terms of colourfulness, though, The Curse of the Zombiesaurus takes the game in a rather different direction. Gone are the bright colours and happy faces, replaced instead by a dark, spooky land that looks disturbingly like a graveyard. Possibly because it is a graveyard. With everything given a suitably creepy makeover, the helpful Keflings, who run about the town are now replaced by spooklings, while the entire land is shaped rather like a creepy skull... Your common or garden trees and rocks have been replaced by the more morbid graves and spooky trees, with you digging up bones from the former and "dead wood" from the latter, while the peaceful brooks are replaced by pools of unfortunate souls, swimming on almost eternally. Pretty creepy.
Luckily, though, the cast of kooky characters are still as bizarre as ever, helping give the proceedings an injection of humour. The story here revolves around Count Kefula, a vampire-cum-mad-scientist, whose latest odd invention, a giant, zombie-dinosaur has gone on a wrecking spree through his town, levelling it to the ground. More worried about the fate of his latest experiment than his poor zombie citizens, who now find themselves out of house and home, you're roped in to help put things back together, with the help of a wise-cracking witch, one of the Count's earlier creations, the Horseless Headman, and the ginger, Scottish groundskeeper Wilhelm (that's Wilhelm, not Willie, as he's keen to point out), who also happens to have a nasty tendency to turn into a werewolf under a full moon. As you do.
Ah ah ah! Velcome to Kefsylvania!
The gameplay here follows the same familiar, yet rewarding path as the previous games. Setting your Keflings to work harvesting the various resources available to you, and pointed in the right direction by the odd as ever story, you build an increasingly impressive series of buildings, following blueprints that become available as you progress through the game. It's a question of moving resources around, getting your spooklings to harvest the things you're most in need of (giving them the odd, literal boot up the backside should they start slacking), and converting basic resources to something a bit fancier in order to construct fancier parts. Luckily, it's a lot simpler than it sounds. Each blueprint simply contains a list of the various tile parts you need in order to put the building together. Select the blueprint, and visit one of your production buildings, and everything you need will be highlighted for you - whether it's a spiral staircase, a secret passage, a belfry, or a comfy coffin. Choose to build the pieces, and plonk the tiles in the order shown in the blueprint, et voila, you'll have your building.
The further you get through the game, the more complex things get, with the ability to refine your various resources into more useful versions (bones can be turned into funny bones by feeding them to a giant cackling skull) and even your spooklings, who can be given a brain by dropping them into the Catatonic University, and then go on to man one of your fancier construction buildings. Luckily, the whole expansion, like the main game, is playable in two player co-op, either online, or on the same console in split-screen, letting you share the workload with your friends. But in fact, it's also this that's possibly the add-on's biggest undoing.
The game even marks where you need to put the potential pieces.
You see, with two people playing together, and the increased efficiency that comes with it, it's possible to finish this entire add-on in less than two hours. And that's a shame. Having gone through all the effort of constructing another land, a whole load of new buildings, resources and characters, you'll be enjoying yourself so much, the game'll be over before you know. Having put all the leg work in on the tricky bits, we can't quite understand why the developers haven't simply added more quests to do. Requiring little more than some witty writing, giving us bucketloads of quests to complete would have added some much needed bulk, and given us all the more reason to stay trapped in their undead world.
That said, with its bargainiferous 320 Microsoft Point price (roughly £2.70 in real money), The Curse of the Zombiesaurus is still worth a flutter. While the characters may not be as funny as in the recent sweetie themed add-on, and although it all seems to be over that little bit too quickly, there are far worse things you could be doing this Halloween night. So why not stay inside in the warm, put your feet up, and curl up with a good game?
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
