Grow Zombies is a mobile game by PixelStar Games released in 2017. There's a lab where you hatch zombies from eggs and merge them to make potentially better zombies. Once you're satisfied with the army, you can send it to hunt humans, robots, mutants, aliens, and other creatures. As reward, you receive a lot of different currencies like coins, skulls, and Z-virus that can be spent on upgrades. There are 200 normal hunts and 20 mutant/alien hunts to complete.
This game provides examples of:
- Ad Reward: You can watch ads for a variety of free boosts, including gems, Z-virus, tickets, and doubling quest/hunt rewards. Buying the ad-free pass lets you claim them with just one press.
- All or Nothing: During regular hunts, you don't need to kill the boss to get rewards as you've killed some enemies beforehand. In Mutant or Alien Hunting though, you have to kill the boss, as there are no rewards for just killing the enemies.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: There are packages with gems, Z-virus, and purple skulls that can be bought for real money (technically each one is supposed to be only bought once, but that's not the case) and allow you to get a bunch of good upgrades.
- Boss Warning Siren: There's a red warning banner shown before each boss hunt.
- Critical Hit: Each zombie has a chance to deal a critical hit, with both the probability and the damage multiplier being upgradeable.
- Disc-One Nuke: During the early game, tier 1 zombies easily get outclassed by ones at a higher tier. However, since level up costs for low tier zombies scale extremely slowly, you can max them out once you strat earning enough money and have a huge boost to team power which is more effective than merging zombies. It stops once they reach level 100 and the enemies' power gets boosted, but they should still be able to rip most of the early game to shreds and provide a boost to damage dealt by future zombies.
- Factor Breakdown: Selecting a zombie in the Upgrades menu shows its base stats (white) as well as those that come from premium items (blue), buildings (yellow), and plus levels (purple). The total extra stat percentages can be checked in the Details menu.
- Flunky Boss: All boss raids have some enemies to distract the zombies and thin them out before moving to the boss.
- Gameplay Automation: There's a toggle for autospawning zombies, allowing you to focus on shooting enemies.
- Item Crafting: There's a tab in the Collection that lets you exchange a certain number of materials from a group for boosts, with the former received for killing enemies or dismantling duplicate secret books.
- Mighty Glacier: HP-type zombies have high HP and a fine damage output, but their movement speed is low.
- Monster Compendium: There's a collection where you can see all enemies and how many times they've been killed throughout gameplay. Once you reach a certain quota, you can claim a stat boost.
- Premium Currency: The easiest way to get gems is to just purchase them with real money, though there are some ways to get them like ads, quests, or even passive generation while the game is on with the Blue Orb. They can be used for Ancient Ruins buildings that provide major stat boosts, Mineral Research for huge DPS increases/utilities, or secret books for even more stat boosts.
- Random Drop: Some enemies drop materials that give boosts once you've collected enough when killed.
- Randomly Generated Quests: You always have a quest with a requirement like merging zombies, defeating enemies, reaching a certain zombie level, etc. Completing it grants 10 gems.
- Retraux: Despite being a smartphone game, most graphics are pixel art and the music sounds like it's from the early 1990s.
- Xenomorph Xerox: The tenth boss is an alien that resembles a xenomorph with its teeth and head shape, only it's red.
