Back in May, solo indie developer Ivan Panasenko aka BeardyBirdGames released a surprisingly great sci-fi horror game called Ailment (Free) to the App Store and Google Play. In it you play as a lone space soldier who wakes up on a ship with no recollection of how you got there or what’s going on. As you begin to explore the ship, it’s very obvious something has gone wrong and you eventually run into your old pals and coworkers who have been turned into zombie-like killing machines, and they are gunning straight for you! Gameplay-wise Ailment plays out like a top-down shooter with dungeon crawler-like maps, and in addition to shooting a crap-ton of zombies you’ll also need to do some light puzzling and exploration as you attempt to find the right computer terminals to unlock the proper doors that open the way forward. Mostly you’re just shooting the heck out of everything though, and Ailment is NOT shy about giving you a ton of cool weapons to do just that. Check out the trailer to get a vibe for what the game is like.
So as full of satisfying action as Ailment is, one of the more surprising aspects of it is just how interesting its storyline is. Retro-inspired top-down shooters aren’t exactly in short supply on mobile, but it’s pretty rare for any of them to offer up a story that’s worth caring about. Not so with Ailment. While it’s not going to go down in storytelling history or anything, if you generally dig cool sci-...