Zombies on a Plane

I want to love this on paper. A wave survival shooter where you can pilot the plane itself, shaking zombies off the wings with barrel rolls, or grab a flamethrower and push through cramped cabin aisles as a passenger - that pitch writes its own fun. The trouble is that almost nothing in the actual execution holds up to that promise, and spending time with it feels more like an archaeology dig into what the game could have been than any kind of satisfying session. The two core modes each carry their own specific failure. In the flight mode, where you wrestle a jumbo jet through maneuvers to dislodge zombies clinging to the engines and rudder, the camera decouples from the plane during rolls and spins, leaving you genuinely unsure where the aircraft is pointed. The arcade controls are sluggish in a way that stops feeling like intentional "heavy jet" simulation almost immediately. A combo-reward system tries to inject momentum, and there are brief moments - catching a wall of undead tumbling off a wing - where the premise flickers to life. But the interior FPS mode fares worse: zombie clipping through geometry is rampant, weapons feel underpowered across the board outside of the flamethrower, and the Survive the Horde and Defend the Cockpit modes dissolve into the same loop within a wave or two. Crawling zombie types clip inside larger enemies; jumping anywhere near the wing edge sends your character off the plane entirely; weapon switching can lock up and force a restart. A post-launch "Resurrection Edition" update did real work - it added a first-class upper deck and cargo hold connected by elevator, retightened the plane-shaking controls, pushed zombie AI to follow the player between floors, and patched out the worst geometry clipping. That update deserves acknowledgment. The community history also carries a melancholy footnote: Shangri-La Game Studios was ultimately a single UK developer, Reiss Wort, who brought in outside help and eventually dissolved the studio around 2021. The ambition was real. The resources were not. Where does that leave you as a buyer today? With under 150 Steam reviews sitting at a mixed 43% positive, and reviewer consensus landing around a 4/10 across critics, the honest signal is clear. If your tolerance for rough, unpolished ideas runs high and the core gimmick genuinely appeals - and for a specific type of player, the flight-mode shakeoff loop really does carry a goofy B-movie appeal for maybe an hour - this can be absorbed at deep discount without deep regret. At anything above a throwaway impulse price, the bugs and shallow content well outpace the novelty. The title describes exactly what you get. Nothing more.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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