Zombie Bridge

Zombie Bridge is a free bridge defense game you can play in your browser with no download. A long bridge runs out over the sea at dusk, split down the middle by a median. Your squad stands behind a sandbag barricade at the near end, and the horde comes down the bridge toward you. The skull number at the top of the screen tells you how many are left. The horde comes in waves: a first group, a quiet moment while the next one gathers at the far end of the bridge, then a final push. The night is won when the number reaches zero and lost if the sandbags break.

You only slide. Drag left or right, or hold A and D, and the squad moves across the deck while it fires on its own. Every soldier fires straight up the lane in front of him, so slide in front of the pack you want to stop; zombies in the other lane walk on untouched. Gates roll down the bridge toward you. A blue +N gate adds soldiers, a red minus gate takes them away, and a multiplier gate times the squad by two or three. Shooting a gate raises its number, so a red gate you hit long enough turns blue. Barrels carry a gold figurine; break one and the soldier inside joins you.

The two lanes ask for different things. The horde and most red gates come down the right lane; blue gates and barrels often roll down the left. From the Ice Ladder nights on, the left lane also holds one big object with a number on it: an ice block with a soldier frozen inside, a mech locked in ice, a vault safe full of scrap or a kaiju wading beside the bridge that slams your barricade. The kaiju rears up before every slam; slide under it and pour fire on it and the slam staggers and misses. Later nights shove rows of wrecked crates down the deck with the horde hiding behind them, and a wreck that reaches the sandbags rams them, so shoot a row apart or blow the span under it. On Hero Run nights hero cards ride down in crates: shoot one open and that specialist fights beside you for the night, while a demon boss sheds fast runners with every bar of health it loses. Standing in the left lane pays, but the horde does not wait while you are there.

The bridge itself is your weapon. One span of the deck is marked red, and it shows what stands on it: a skull with the number of zombies, a BRUTE chip when a brute is on it, and a yellow LOSE +N when a gate or barrel would fall with it. Charges fill the pips on the red BLOW button. Press Space or tap BLOW and the marked span drops into the sea with everything on it; then the next span in line is marked. Blow now and you drop the few that are on it; wait and a bigger pack or a brute may walk on, but the horde gets closer to the sandbags. Brutes and the final-round boss shrug off most bullets, so the span is the answer to them, and the kaiju wades up and down beside the bridge: blow the marked span when it stands beside it. An empty span is a wasted charge.

Every night pays scrap, the one currency. Each of the first nights teaches one decision: take the blue gates and dodge the red, pick the bigger of two gates, hold the blow until the surge fills the span, drop the brute with the span, and save the blow for the brute instead of spending it on the pack. The end card gives up to three stars, one for holding the bridge, one for keeping half the sandbags and one for the night's decision, which also pays bonus scrap; if you missed it, the card says what would have worked. At the bridgehead you spend it on Barricade HP, a bigger Squad at dusk, Rifle damage, faster Charges and Salvage for more scrap. Further up the bridge you recruit specialists with it: Flamer burns packs, Demo adds a span charge and recharges faster, and Frost slows what it hits and holds the kaiju's slam back. Each one levels up with scrap, and you choose who rides with the squad each night, one at first and two once you hold the first Hero Run night. The next goal and its price always show on the end card. The first nights are gentle: in the first three minutes the barricade will not fall. After the hand-made nights in the city, fog, night and desert, the bridge keeps going with a seeded mix of everything you have met.