Zombiebucket is a new arcade game for iOS from developer ONE MORE LEVEL, and it really puts your reflexes, hand-eye coordination, and puzzle skills to the test. The game requires you to create a line that matches up similarly colored zombie tiles on a board to get rid of them, and we’re about to show you how to do that as efficiently as possible. Let’s get started!
Special tiles explained
Learning what each special tile does is really important to being successful in Zombiebucket. All of these tiles appear at random with random colors, and the first three shown above, are ones that can appear from Level 1. The laser tile will shoot a large beam across the board that removes all zombies in it’s path, and the direction seems to be based on the trail of zombies you’ve connected. The bomb tile simply creates a circular explosion that destroys nearby tiles. The electric tile shoots out several strands of electricity that eliminates random tiles on the board. Whenever you use these, make sure you connect as many zombies as you can in that chain, to create an even bigger reaction and score a ton of points.
The wildcard tile allows you to essentially change the color zombie you are matching up in the middle of a chain, meaning you could match up five purple zombies, jump to the white zombie, and then match up five red zombies. The gray zombie tile can only be removed by one of the first three special tiles taking it out as a casualty, such as blowing up a bomb tile that is right next to a gray tile. The split zombie tile is similar to the wildcard, but only allows you to change to one other color, or keep your original color.
Avoid a specific color
I’d encourage that you try to figure out a play-style that works really well for you, but if you’re struggling, feel free to try my usual strategy. Start the game out by selecting one specific zombie color, and avoid chaining any of those zombies for as long as possible — then, once you’ve got a board that is 80% the same color, unleash a massive combo. After the first big combo, wait for a special tile (laser, bomb, electric) to fall into the bucket, and then choose the color of that tile to be the one you don’t match so that your next big chain also has an explosion, laser, or bomb.
This strategy works really well for the first few levels, but it eventually gets really hard to manage all of the tiles that fall passively into the bucket without chaining 5-6 tiles at a time, and by doing this you usually end up chaining 2-4 at once 90% of the time.
Take your time, to an extent
It often feels like you need to match up zombies as fast as you can to keep up with the pace of falling zombies, however, this can really backfire if you end up doing a lot of 2/3 tile chains. Since every move you make results in three additionally zombies falling into the bucket, it actually works against you to chain 2 or 3 at a time, with the exception being when you are chaining 2 or 3 to create a big chain in your next move. Because of this, you should always take a second or two to scan the board if you’re ever thinking of making a small chain move.
Think of it this way: you make three moves chaining two tiles each, which clears six tiles, but also adds nine tiles + any passive tiles during that time. If you take a couple extra seconds to see there’s a line of four somewhere and another line of three elsewhere, you’ll take out 7 tiles while adding 7 or 8Â more. You still end up breaking even at best, but it’s much better than adding another 4-6 tiles than what you started with. After several hours of playing, I’ve noticed this scenario happens multiple times each game, so really pay attention to this.
Log-in daily for free brains
Struggling to score enough brains for the next upgrade? Or perhaps you want more to buy color bombs or refresh your lives? Make sure you open the app at least once a day to keep your daily rewards improving. You get free brains just for opening the app, and the amount of brains increases every consecutive day — so don’t forget!
Save brains as much as you can
You’ll probably be tempted to upgrade your first bucket, however, I’d recommend saving brains until you can buy a better bucket instead — as the upgrades don’t carry over at all. I’d also recommend not buying any lives or color bombs until you’ve got one of the two best buckets. Once you’ve played enough to where you can buy a titanium bucket, you’re ready to start investing in color bombs and trying to break the high score records, but prior to that it seems a little wasteful to use them when you haven’t had much practice with the game. I did it the opposite, and upgraded my buckets when I got them, and am now kicking myself for that.
When to use color bombs
Color bombs are a special item that you can use at any point in the game, so long as you have purchased them from the shop. You use the color bomb, and then select a certain colored zombie, and it will take out every one of the color on the board instantly. Like I mentioned above, I’d recommend not even bothering with these until you’ve been playing the game for a little while, but once you feel experienced enough you should start investing some brains here. My one rule of thumb for these is to only use them when my bucket is one zombie away from starting to overflow — that way, you know you’re going to chain a bunch of zombies, and it’ll likely be the thing that saves you from losing.
Thanks for reading!
Hopefully you learned a thing or two that’ll assist you in increasing that high score a tad bit more. Feel free to leave a comment below with any questions you may have, and also, we’d love to hear any tips or tricks you have for playing Zombiebucket as well!
