Many of us here at Kotaku are fans of Telltale’s episodic Walking Dead game. It’s been one of the most welcome surprises of the year — a zombie game that’s less about killing zombies and more about dealing with living in a world without laws or hope.
Though the game was announced for Apple devices as well as consoles and PC, it only launched on the App store today. The iOS version is called Walking Dead: The Game, presumably to distinguish it from the app that lets you read the original Walking Dead comic series. But for this article, I’ll just call it The Walking Dead. Hope that’s not confusing.
I downloaded it and fired up the first episode, “A New Day.” The (excellent) second episode, “Starved For Help,” will be available soon. The game costs $US4.99, which gets you the first episode and the option to buy the next four episodes for $US14.99. That means you’ll get all five chapters for $US19.98, which is actually cheaper than the price on consoles and PC.
The game is mostly unchanged from its TV-based counterparts. That makes sense, given that The Walking Dead has very simple controls. You’ll move the protagonist Lee around my dragging your finger, tap to interact with things, and engage in the occasional frantic quicktime swipe, tap or swoop.
The game looked sharp on my iPad 2 — sharp enough that it requires an iPad 2, iPhone 4, or a new iPad to run. (It won’t run on older iOS devices). What cinematic qualities it loses running on a smaller screen it makes up for in portability and “readability,” if that makes sense. This is a great game to play in bed at night, playing it as you’d read a book. It won’t give you great dreams, but it’s a heck of a yarn so far.
Past that, it’s the same great game we’ve been talking about so much for the last couple of months. The third episode of the game will be coming to PC and consoles in August, and one hopes that it will be released around a similar time on the app store. Regardless, iOS gamers can rejoice — one of the year’s most pleasant surprises has made the leap to mobile devices unscathed.
Walking Dead: The Game [$4.99, App Store]
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