Have you ever been in a situation where you thought to yourself, “Man, I sure hope there aren’t a lot of zombies that try to stop me from reaching my destination, which is just over there on the other side of this very small, oh I don’t know… glade, or meadow, kind of patch of land with a gravel (or is that dirt) road running through it.” – only to find that there were, indeed, a LOT of zombies waiting for you, and not only were they waiting for you but they also wanted to eat your brains? Well, it happens to me ALL the time. That is, ever since I got my hands on the Palm Pre version of Zombie Invasion from Conniption Entertainment for only $0.99 in the webOS App Catalog. Let me just say, before diving into the detailed review and bonus developer interview, that this game is just darn fun. As you’ll soon learn, it’s not its depth or even its breadth that makes it such a great way to waste time, but rather its zombies and the way that you just HAVE to kill that next wave of them or play just one more game before setting it down (“29th place so far today, baby… I just KNOW I can make the top 10 if I keep trying!”). In short, it’s highly addictive.

Conniption Entertainment has its roots on the iPhone platform, and in fact Zombie Invasion for the Pre is a port of an existing iPhone game. One thing you notice right away when firing this game up on the Pre is that it’s simply leagues beyond most, if not all, of the other Pre games in terms of graphics complexity. Conniption (namely their CTO/programmer extraordinaire, Paul Seltmann) is clearly innovating on this platform with the HTML5 Canvas tag. I’m not saying this game is going to replace your need for a DS or PSP, exactly… but it’s solid proof of amazing things to come with the webOS stack, and the web in general.

OK, let’s go over the premise and basic game play. The premise is, well, you know… killing zombies. You are “some dude” in “some location”, and you’re being attacked by zombies that occasionally hemorrhage shotguns when they die. You use your fingertip to tap on the zombies (usually 3 times), and they die. When said simply like that, you might think this amounts to a pretty boring date. But alas, you quickly find yourself tapping feverishly, developing strategies for when to use your heavier weapons that come with limited ammunition, and really just having a fun time. Then there is a nice extra layer of challenge because there are daily, weekly and monthly leader boards, which if you’re anything like me are fuel for the addictive nature of the game. I regularly find myself playing just one or two (or ten) more games to see if I can crack another tier in the daily leader boards. (I play a few times a week when I’m in an idle or waiting situation… of course)

So what does the game look like? Well, let me preface that by saying first that at its surface it mostly looks like what you’d expect from a first gen webOS game. But then, if you’ve actually seen most of the “pre official App Catalog launch” games on the Pre, you would realize that this is one of the few that actually look like what you’d expect from a first gen webOS game. We expect the webOS apps to be of a certain high quality, and we expect each new one to finally be that one with the WOW factor that we crave, because we have a gorgeous device in our hands running a state of the art OS and gosh darnit, there’s just not a KILLER app yet (no offense to anyone, but I think you get my gist). When you think in those terms, this game paints a very good picture because it makes you feel like there really are quality studios working on quality apps and games, and that yes we will get more apps, and yes each wave of new apps will indeed be better than the last, and yes… there WILL be apps that everyone gets excited about and clamors for. Sure, Infinity Ward’s version of Zombie Invasion would support 128 player maps and the zombies would look like nazis (really realistic nazi ninja zombies, at that), but for an HTML Canvas tag based game running in webOS and running you a cool 99 cents, this looks very good.

So now I’d like to wrap this zombie-fied review up with a bonus mini-interview with the developer behind the game, Conniption Entertainment’s very own Paul Seltmann. I was able to catch up with Paul via Twitter, and then conducted this interview over a few email exchanges. Let’s just dive right in…

Pre101 (Ryan): Since Zombie Invasion got its start on the iPhone, can you speak a bit to the porting process (painful/easy, etc.)? What are some of the pluses and minuses of the two platforms from the game developer’s point of view?

Conniption Entertainment (Paul): The porting was pretty straight forward. I learned early on from our first prototype that using the HTML5 Canvas object was much faster than trying to use DOM and CSS animation. I think the biggest change between versions is the application design. The iPhone version of Zombie Invasion is completely Object Oriented and that makes sense because we’re using the Cocoa Touch API. I had to change my strategy for the WebOS version because I knew I couldn’t afford any extra overhead. So I wrote the entire game without creating a single object that wasn’t required by the MOJO API.

It can be challenging to program for the iPhone if you don’t have any Cocoa programming experience. Cocoa Touch has a steep learning curve but it also is very powerful when you get the hang of it. On the other hand the C based OpenGL library eases the barrier to entry for 3D programming if you have experience with OpenGL.

I have a background in web programming so making my first webOS program was very easy. Connecting to the high score server was as simple as copying the code from the leaderboard website on our homepage. If you know AJAX programming you can program for webOS. We have shelved a number of apps on the iPhone because of the lack of the ability to run background applications. I’m excited to revisit some of these shelved apps now that the webOS platform makes them possible.

I see the iPhone as attracting mostly advanced C and C++ programmers who may have a professional history of programming. I see the webOS platform bringing first time programmers just learning to code into the market as well as web programmers and advanced programmers. It’s got a little bit of something for everyone. I was writing video games in QuickBASIC when I was 10 years old. It’s funny to think that if the webOS platform was available then I probably would have been a professional video game programmer at age 10!

Pre101: An obvious and expected reply to #1 above will probably include the fact that right now the Pre lacks GPU support. How big of a role did that play in the process, and how will the arrival (or lack thereof) of GPU support on the Pre impact your development plans in the near to long term future?

Paul: My favorite part of being one of the first developers for this new platform is the challenge of solving new problems and coming up with unique ways to push the envelope. I think we’ve just begun to see what  kind of games can be made without the GPU on webOS. I can’t say whats going to happen with or without without GPU support yet, except that we’re going to try to do things people would expect to see only with GPU support whether or not we get it. In a way I’m excited about trying to pull off some crazy apps without the GPU but we’ll just have to see how the API develops to see what is possible.

Pre101: The zombie models and animations are very nice for a Pre game. Did you take advantage of any HTML5 features to achieve what amounts to a very nice gaming experience?

Paul: The first night I worked on Zombie Invasion for webOS I threw together a quick prototype using traditional DOM objects and CSS animation for the zombie sprites. The gameplay was simply too slow using this approach so I quickly familiarized myself with the HTML5 canvas element. It had been a few months since I had done much web programming and had only read about the Canvas element.

I always thought the canvas element would be great for JavaScript games as an alternative to Flash but I hadn’t had the chance to try it until now. After rewriting the prototype using the canvas element I saw a dramatic performance improvement. In fact the gameplay scene only has 1 line of HTML, the canvas element. Without the canvas element I don’t think Zombie Invasion would be possible on this version of webOS.

Pre101: What’s slated for the next release of this game for the Pre and when might fans be able to expect an update?

Paul: We have an update with sound and music ready to publish but problems in the current sound API cause the game to slow down significantly. We are hoping the next webOS update will solve this problem and we will be able to release this update soon after the Pixi is released.

Pre101: What other games or types of games is Conniption Entertainment planning for the Pre?

Paul: We are happy to announce that we will be bringing Shotgun Santa to webOS for the holiday season. We have more games in the works but it ’s too early to let the cat out of the bag yet.

Pre101: Are there any plans of expanding Zombie Invasion to include more powerups (health, for example), different scenes, or different mechanics?

Paul: We are planning regular updates to Zombie Invasion. You can expect to see new items soon. I know health powerups have been requested frequently so you can count on those.  There are some twists we may throw into the gameplay mechanics also, but that is currently  top secret information.

Pre101: Are there any Easter eggs in the game?

Paul: Yes there are. But let’s save those for later. Well… if you bug me enough I might give in.

Pre101: What’s your personal high score?

Paul: 221,216 on normal, surviving to day 28. I know I should be in the top ten right? I like to play early in the day so I have a better chance of making the daily top score