Ten games, one tag, five verbs
Ten of the zombie-tagged games here are worth separating out, because the tag tells you almost nothing about how they play. Five of them live in the obby category - Monster School 2, Obby & Dead River, Stickman Zombie vs Stickman Hero, Zombie Survival Shooter and Obby vs Zombies - and five live in survival: Pinball VS Zombie, Plant Merge: Zombie War, The Zombie House, Beat The Zombies and Draw To Smash Zombie. That split is a better guide than the tag, but it is still too coarse. Sorted by the verb you actually perform, the cluster breaks into five groups.
Shooters where you hold ground
The Zombie House is the wave-defence shooter of the group, at 1920x1080. You move with WASD and shoot by clicking in a direction - not at a target, in a direction - which means your aim is a vector rather than a lock, and strafing while firing is the whole skill. Kills drop coins and ability pickups, and coins go into upgrading both the player and the house, so there are two upgrade tracks competing for the same currency. Each level strengthens the zombies, so the run is a race between your spend rate and their scaling. On mobile it becomes a twin-stick: left joystick to move, right to aim and shoot.
Beat The Zombies is the portrait-format cousin at 720x1280, framed as a vertical action RPG through a plant-zombie world. Its input is deliberately thin - swipe left or right to move - and the depth comes from chests. You break them for random weapons and skills, so build variance is decided mid-run rather than chosen up front. If a zombie reaches you the stage restarts, but you keep rewards from the failed attempt, which makes it the most forgiving game in the cluster to grind.
Platformers and runners where you keep moving
Zombie Survival Shooter runs at 1280x760 and is tagged parkour and running for good reason: stopping is the failure state. Zombies come from every direction and the core decision is gate selection - you shoot digital doors to pick up more helpers or a faster attack rate, and choosing the right door is a live arithmetic problem while you are already dodging. It is a runner wearing a shooter’s clothes.
Stickman Zombie vs Stickman Hero is a side-on platformer at 1920x1080 built around a role flip. You first run from the zombie boss as a stickman hero, killing zombies and resurrecting allies to reach the level end; later you play as the boss and try to infect the stickmen instead. Controls change with the role - WASD to move, left mouse to shoot as the hero, F to infect or hit as the zombie - so the same level geometry gets read twice from opposite goals.
The line-drawing outlier
Draw To Smash Zombie has no movement at all. At 1080x1920 it is a drawing logic puzzle: you sketch the object that solves the level and the physics does the rest, with mouse click or tap as the only input. It belongs to the same family as pen-and-physics puzzles rather than to anything else in this list, and it is the one to reach for when you want a zombie theme with zero reflex demand.
Defence builds
Three more sit on the placement end - Obby vs Zombies at 1024x768 with maze construction, Plant Merge: Zombie War at 800x600 with a merge board feeding the defence, and Pinball VS Zombie at 800x600 where plants act as bumpers for ricocheting balls. They share the tag but almost none of the inputs; all three are mouse-driven.
The horror neighbour that is not tagged zombie
Survive The Night is worth knowing about here precisely because it is not in the zombie cluster - its tags are horror, escape and survival, and the monsters are not undead. It runs at 1280x720 and offers Normal Mode or Horror Mode, where Normal gives more hints, fewer rooms and standard monsters. If what you liked about the zombie games was dread rather than crowds, this is the correct next step, and the mode selector lets you calibrate how much of it you want.
A sensible order
Start with Zombie Survival Shooter for the cleanest loop, move to The Zombie House once you want upgrade decisions, take Beat The Zombies when you want to grind without losing progress, then try Stickman Zombie vs Stickman Hero for the role flip. Save Draw To Smash Zombie for when you are tired of reacting. Browse the rest at /category/survival/ and /category/obby/.
