Containment: The Zombie Puzzler

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Containment: The Zombie Puzzler is a single player casual puzzle game with a horror theme. It was developed by Bootsnake Games and was released on March 2, 2012. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

"Containment: The Zombie Puzzler" is an action-puzzle game where you surround zombies with survivors of the same color to eliminate them, while avoiding infection. The game features fully animated character tiles that interact with each other and the environment, and unique storytelling through in-world text. It offers a real-time/turn-based gameplay experience in a pulse-pounding campaign and multiple survival modes.

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Play Modes

Single-Player

Containment: The Zombie Puzzler screenshot

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73%

Audience ScoreBased on 198 reviews

story15 positive mentions

replayability4 negative mentions

Containment: The Zombie Puzzler offers a unique twist on the puzzle genre with its engaging gameplay that combines zombies and strategic thinking.
The game features a variety of items and power-ups that enhance the gameplay experience, making it fun and dynamic.
The humor and light-hearted narrative between levels add charm to the game, making it enjoyable for casual play.

The game is relatively short, with many players completing it in under three hours, leading to a lack of replay value.
Some players experienced bugs and issues that hindered their ability to progress, particularly in later acts.
The gameplay can become repetitive quickly, as the core mechanics do not evolve significantly throughout the game.

story
44 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
34%
57%
9%
The game's story is generally considered basic and cliché, serving primarily as a backdrop to the puzzle gameplay rather than a compelling narrative. While some players appreciate the humor and the way the story is integrated between levels, many find it dull and poorly written, leading to a lack of engagement with the plot. Overall, the story adds a light flavor to the game but is not a significant draw for players.
- “A fun puzzle game with an interesting storytelling method.”
- “Fun mechanics, well done, nice bits of story between puzzle bits to keep it interesting.”
- “The writing in the campaign/story mode is actually pretty good for a puzzler.”
- “The 'story' (if one even goes so far as to call it that) is just text you can read while the camera slowly moves from level to level and bloats the length noticeably if you play it all at once, not to mention the text itself is something you could come up with if you took a course in 'how to make a barebones zombie plot'.”
- “Story is boring, generic and weak, so basically there is nothing to play for.”
- “The levels are tied together in a 'story mode' format, and to be frank, the story is pretty rubbish, and terribly amateurly written.”
gameplay
42 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
26%
67%
7%
The gameplay in "Containment: the Zombie Puzzler" features a unique twist on traditional puzzle mechanics, focusing on surrounding zombies with matching survivors. While the initial engagement is promising, many players find the mechanics repetitive and lacking depth, leading to a tedious experience that fails to sustain interest beyond a few hours. Despite some fun elements and variations, the overall execution is marred by dated design and a lack of polish, resulting in a casual puzzler that may entertain briefly but lacks lasting appeal.
- “Containment is a great casual puzzler with solid gameplay, enough variation to keep it interesting and no glitches or problems in my almost 15 hours of gameplay.”
- “The gameplay is easy to learn but can definitely keep you on your heels.”
- “While the core puzzle mechanics in Containment: The Zombie Puzzler are engaging initially, they quickly become repetitive and lack the necessary complexity to keep players engaged in the long run.”
- “The gameplay itself is very basic, just switch different colored tiles (survivors) around a group of zombies to eliminate them.”
- “Stale gameplay, repetitive, challengeless.”
graphics
28 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
43%
46%
11%
The graphics of "Containment: The Zombie Puzzler" are characterized by a simple, minimalist art style that some players find charming, though many note that they are dated and unimpressive. While the visuals are functional and include decent detail in character models and zombie types, they lack the polish of modern games, often evoking nostalgia for early 2000s aesthetics. Overall, the graphics serve the gameplay adequately, but they do not stand out as a highlight of the experience.
- “The aesthetics are nice, the different zombie types and character models have a decent amount of detail.”
- “Really good mechanics, an awesome graphics style and even the campaign mode is actually really entertaining!”
- “Good graphics, great sound, and a puzzle concept that grows on you the more you play.”
- “The graphics are dated, but the aesthetic packaging is good.”
- “The graphics remind me of the video game dark times in the early 2000s.”
- “The graphics aren't exactly state of the art.”
music
12 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33%
42%
25%
The music in the game receives mixed reviews, with some players appreciating its atmospheric qualities and fitting integration into the gameplay, particularly during tense moments. However, others criticize the lack of variety and creativity, noting that the soundtrack can feel repetitive and basic. Overall, while some find the music enhances the experience, others prefer to mute it in favor of their own selections.
- “The music builds as the zombies take over.”
- “With each map, the only soundtrack you get is a pulsing heart, which heightens the sense of 'must kill them all before I have too few survivors!'.”
- “The setting is well-realized, the text is well-written, the music fits nicely and you will be in for a few clever twists.”
- “There's no music and few sound effects.”
- “You stop caring about the story in the first 5 minutes; gameplay is still the same, atmosphere is none, music as well... why would you waste your time with this?”
- “Starting to look dated, not terribly creative, no music, and limited assets for sound effects.”
replayability
8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
13%
37%
50%
Overall, "Containment: The Zombie Puzzler" offers limited replayability, primarily due to a lack of compelling achievements, unlockables, and depth. While the game provides a brief and enjoyable puzzle-solving experience, its repetitive nature and short campaign duration of around three hours hinder long-term engagement. Some players noted multiple route splits, but these do not significantly enhance the game's replay value.
- “The main campaign lasts around three hours, but there are multiple route splits that ensure some replayability.”
- “The absence of compelling achievements or unlockables diminished the replay value significantly.”
- “In conclusion, Containment: The Zombie Puzzler offers a brief burst of puzzle-solving fun but falls short in terms of content, replay value, and overall depth.”
- “Not much replay value due to its eventual repetitiveness.”
humor
5 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game's humor is characterized by witty one-liners from characters and a charming, albeit unpolished, aesthetic that includes intentionally bad voice acting. Players appreciate the blend of humor with engaging puzzle design, noting that the comedic elements enhance the overall experience, especially in moments of failure. Overall, the humor is seen as a unique and enjoyable aspect of the game.
- “The campaign was a good length and the characters all had some funny one-liners.”
- “Extremely fun puzzler with a good sense of humor.”
- “Containment is a blend of great puzzle design with a sprinkle of charm, humor, and bad voice acting that fits the unpolished aesthetic.”
atmosphere
5 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
40%
20%
40%
The atmosphere of the game receives mixed reviews; while some players appreciate the well-crafted zombie-apocalypse setting and atmospheric music, others find it lacking and uninspiring. The campaign's narration is noted for enhancing the experience, but some feel that the gameplay does not effectively support the intended atmosphere. Overall, the game's atmosphere is seen as a strong point by some, while others dismiss it as forgettable.
- “Game music: if I remember correctly, this was actually really good, atmospheric zombie music.”
- “I also have to mention the campaign's narration - it's visible on the road as you move from board to board - it's really well written, gives quite an atmosphere :)”
- “You stop caring about the story in the first 5 minutes; gameplay is still the same, atmosphere is none, music as well... why would you waste your time with this?”
- “But: while you can certainly replace the zombies and survivors with gems or fruits or whatnot and you’d have the same puzzle aspect, the zombie-apocalypse atmosphere the designers created for 'Containment' can very well stand equal to other 'serious' zombie fiction.”
grinding
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players note that while the game involves some grinding, particularly for achievements related to zombie kills, it is not overly burdensome during regular play. The gameplay can become tedious, but the overall grinding experience is manageable, especially for those not focused on completionist goals.
- “The story isn't the best (though better than you might expect from an indie puzzle game) and gameplay does get tedious pretty fast.”
- “For any achievement hunters, many of the achievements for this game are easy to get; however, there is quite a bit of grinding for the zombie kills (5000 and 10000) ones.”
- “With how much I've played this game just normally trying to beat everything and not even grinding, I have killed 3,207 zombies.”
stability
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game's stability is mixed, with some players reporting significant bugs and crashes, while others experienced minimal issues during extended gameplay. Overall, while the gameplay is enjoyable, the presence of bugs detracts from the overall stability of the experience.
- “It's heavily buggy given the number of crashes I experienced, but when I was actually playing, I enjoyed the simplicity of the game.”
- “A little buggy at times as well.”
- “Containment is a great casual puzzler with solid gameplay, enough variation to keep it interesting, and no glitches or problems in my almost 15 hours of gameplay.”

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20h Median play time

25h Average play time

15-40h Spent by most gamers

*Based on 3 analyzed playthroughs

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Containment: The Zombie Puzzler is a casual puzzle game with horror theme.

Containment: The Zombie Puzzler is available on PC, Mac OS, Phone, iPad and others.

On average players spend around 25 hours playing Containment: The Zombie Puzzler.

Containment: The Zombie Puzzler was released on March 2, 2012.

Containment: The Zombie Puzzler was developed by Bootsnake Games.

Containment: The Zombie Puzzler has received mostly positive reviews from players. Most players liked this game for its story but disliked it for its replayability.

Containment: The Zombie Puzzler is a single player game.

Similar games include PuzzleQuest: Challenge of the Warlords, Dead Age, Tumblestone, Wizorb, 10000000 and others.

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