Game description
Fairy Tale Land faces its greatest crisis yet! A plague has swept through the population, turning former upstanding citizens into blood-crazed zombies.
Fortunately, the world's greatest adventurer and weapons collector, Little Red 'Ready To Rock' Riding Hood is still unaffected and is determined to uncover the source of the disease. She teams up with Momotarō, the boy who emerged from a peach in the Japanese folk tale, and the two set out on their quest. Red has her trusty machine gun and Momotarō has his ninja stars. They'll take down anything, living or dead, that gets in their way.
Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ is an arcade-style vertical shooter for one player. The action is viewed from a high angle, with visuals taking up both screens of the DS. The game world is presented in 3D, as are bosses and various other enemies. However, the main character and standard zombies are 2D sprites.
The player's character (either Red or Momotarō, neither of whom has any obvious advantage over the other) is situated at the bottom of the lower screen and waves of zombies march toward her/him. The character automatically moves forward through the world, but the player can control left/right movement along a 2D plane, enabling them to move out of the way of obstacles, projectiles and zombies.
Touching the stylus to any point on the screen causes the character to shoot in that direction, and shots can be fired along the entire length of the play area (i.e. to targets at the top of the DS's upper screen).
The standard machine gun has infinite ammo, but must be reloaded, which simply means taking the stylus off the screen for a second. Along the way, there are other weapons to pick up - a shotgun, laser rifle and flamethrower (hence the 'BBQ' of the title). These special weapons have limited ammo, so must be conserved.
Players also start with a grenade launcher, which can be launched by double-tapping an area on the screen. Ammo is strictly limited, but can be replenished.
There are 21 levels, split over seven chapters. Each chapter is set in a different location based on a fairy tale or classic story and consists of two regular levels (fighting through hordes of zombies, as well as some mini-bosses) followed by a boss fight.
The boss fights are one of the game's main selling points, with varied and lengthy encounters against twisted, undead versions of Pinocchio, The Three Little Pigs, Santa Claus and others.
By completing the game on higher difficulty levels, new gameplay modes can be unlocked, including Boss Attack (defeat every boss in sequence) and Survival (timed battle against waves of zombies).