Metal Dead (2011)

I'm quite looking forward to this, a low-budget indie thing which iirc seemed quite Dan & Ben ish and was well-liked by the community.

This is pretty fun so far! It's very BTDT: scratchy black outline art (not as good as ours, a bit more MS Paint, though still charming); black-on-red stylised opening titles; zombies; two bantering Spaced-ish best mates. Also, it's made in AGS and went for the same control scheme/UI set-up. Not that I think they ripped us off or anything, it's just got the same vibe and presumably shared influences.
A few little annoyances: it doesn't have a fullscreen option, and they made the odd choice to put black bars at the top and bottom of the 4:3 screen, so it's postage-stamped on my telly; it has enforced achievement pop-ups, which I find a little irritating on principal but at least it's all within the game's artstyle rather than a Steam overlay; early on it has you pick up your friend's decapitated zombie head, which becomes a permanent UI fixture for you to talk to and get advice from at any point, which is a nice Dan-style-sidekick idea, except the game explicitly labels him "Hint System" which suddenly makes it feel very clunky and unwelcome.
It's weird going back to this retro level of adventure game as well - no VO or even hotspot labels. But that stuff's fine as long as the writing and design is good, and I'm having fun here - I've chuckled a few times and paused but not got stuck on a few puzzles. The presentation's nice as well, with DooM '93 pastiche heavy metal and a fun Shaun Of The Dead style opening where you're in a car barrelling down the empty motorway as your friend mows down the occasional zombie just to watch them splatter over your windscreen. 

Finished - this was great! For the first half I had it pegged as light fun, a mild recommendation, but it keeps escalating (literally, with a neat 'keep getting access to higher floors in the skyscraper' structure) and including so many fun and exciting moments that by the end I was loving it and gutted that the more ambitious sequel seems to have puttered out ten years ago. Very funny, lots of cool low-fi action, a funny/helpful response for everything. Recommend picking it up if you ever have the itch for a few hours of BTDT style fun (it's £4 but regularly goes on sale at 66% off).

Rating: fun and exciting little low-budget treat.