Trapped: Undead Infection is a zombie-survival horror game from Com2uS.

The Game

This doesn’t look good…

You wake up to the smell of rotted flesh, it’s dark, and for some reason you have a pounding headache. Welcome to your worst nightmare: you are a scientist trapped in a huge bio-research facility, and for some reason it is swarming with zombies. You look around in your cell and you find a pistol, some ammo, and a whole lot of blood. Wait, why does a prison cell have a pistol with ammo? Better yet, why does this enormous bio-research facility have prison cells?

Welcome to Trapped: Undead Infection. You are indeed a scientist trapped in this facility, it is dark as hell, you are surrounded by zombies, and you are trying to escape alive – with a headache thrown in for good measure! You start the game off with very limited munitions, something like 15 bullets, and it takes just about 7 or 8 shots to put down a zombie. This of course means you are going to resort to using your initial melee weapon most of the time – a stun gun. The stun gun brings up one of my first big problems with the game: the melee system. You need to be in pretty close with an enemy in order to use this stun gun – I’m pretty sure they were able to lick me and determine my flavour before I could stun them – and it is a pain in the ass for the first little while. Thankfully later on your melee weapons become more powerful and have a little bit of range behind them, but it takes a little while to find that iron bar.

Definitely not good!

Trapped: Undead Infection feels a lot like one of those side-scrolling action games I used to play on my Sony Ericsson S710a, and it probably was just a port from a project on a less refined mobile gaming platform. Although this may be the case, it doesn’t detract much from the game – aside from the control scheme of course. Normally I’m not averse to using an on-screen d-pad and buttons, but it really does feel sticky and clunky when you are trying your best to escape a room with four zombies and a crab-monster-thingy and your fat thumbs accidentally hit down instead of right, causing you to pretty much run face first into a bunch of hungry zombies.

Other than those two problems, the story of Trapped: Undead Infection has so far been decent, but it feels like other zombie-survival games due to it being a scientist being trapped in a bio-research facility with zombies crawling about. They recently introduced a little girl into the mix, so I’m pretty sure if Resident Evil and F.E.A.R. had some inhuman zombie love child and stuffed it into an iPhone, it would be Trapped: Undead Infection. I’m a huge zombie fan, so Trapped definitely kept me interested!

Graphics

Ooh, nevermind.

Trapped: Undead Infection is played isometrically, and your character can move up, down, left or right, but everything is pretty much 2D. The sprites have some good detail behind them and are well shaded. The darkness of the game is one of the key selling points because should you turn on the lights in a room, guaranteed every living zombie in the room is waking up and going to try to take a bite of your soft, delicious, human flesh. As mentioned earlier, Trapped is probably a port from less capable mobile gaming platforms and the graphics reflect that, but they did a great job with the ambiance created using the darkness.

Sound

The sound of Trapped: Undead Infection is what it is supposed to be: creepy as hell. There is a pretty spooky song going on during the main menu, but once you enter the game, it is pure silence. You will hear your own footsteps, the clicks of light switches, and the moans of zombies. This isn’t a very strong point of the game, but coupled with the graphics, the ambiance created is just downright creepy.

Additional Comments

You may have wondered, after the Sound section, why is it just so creepy? Well, for starters, I played the game at just about 3am without any lights on and I kept looking around me to make sure that all the moans and groans were only coming from the game. Also, the game is genuinely creepy, from having a random body get up and start walking towards you to a random little girl appearing out of nowhere and just standing there, Trapped has its creepy moments.

I may have breezed over most of the game, but there is also a pretty great PDA system where you can select weapons, view items and clues, as well as view a map. That map has saved my butt more than a few times, and that PDA system is a must-have for any zombie-survival game.

Conclusion

I am a die-hard zombie fan. I loved Trapped: Undead Infection just because of that, but it did have its shortcomings – choppy gameplay, sticky controls, and a melee system that was very frustrating at the beginning. That said, it is a quality game that I wish they would re-make to fully take advantage of the iPhone’s capabilities, and you should really check it out. At least just to find out what that little girl is all about.

Score

MustTap Score: Silver Tap

Looks great and gives out some quality stuff!

Bottom Line
Trapped is a great zombie-survival horror game but it really does feel dated and choppy in comparison to the other games in the App Store. The ambience created from the lighting and sound are great, and zombies are always a plus, but the controls leave much to be desired.

Screenshots