"Beat 'em or burn 'em. They go up pretty easy." - Sheriff McClelland

Has this happened to you? You pay a visit to Flynn’s Arcade with plans to play some old favorites and perhaps a new machine or two. But instead of donuts, raccoons, and vampiric aerosols, you find nothing but zombies. You have not entered Flynn’s Arcade, you’ve entered the Living Dead House.

I think I can best describe this game as Night of the Living Dead meets Burger Time. You’re in a house overrun with zombies, and your task is to survive until dawn. That’s right; you don’t reach the next level by clearing out all of the enemies, you just need to stay alive for a set period of time. Of course, the easiest way to do that is by clearing out at least most of the enemies.

In the grand ’80s arcade tradition, Living Dead House drops you straight into the action. Zombies slowly bust their way into your home, and if they touch you, you’re dead. Weapons magically appear throughout the house, but they’re of very limited use. Shotguns have just one shell. Axes are good for just one chop. Why just one? Maybe it gets stuck in the zombie. Ironically, the weapon you can use more than once is a bear trap (without having to reset it). Horror movie logic, I guess.

The further you advance, the more powerful weapons you acquire. Some are built right into the house, in fact, such as the faulty wiring that can be used to electrify a large area of zombies.

The house also provides numerous ways to avoid your enemies. It has more staircases than the Winchester Mystery House. Some levels feature elevator warps or a large, central lift. Certain floors allow you to run off one side to reappear on the other.

Still, the quarters are tight, and it’s easy to find yourself trapped. This is where strategy comes into play. Yes, you can immediately kill a zombie with that chainsaw you have, but you could then find yourself trapped in a corner with no weapon available. Remember, your goal is to survive until time runs out, not to kill the zombies, so it’s smart to just play tag until you have no other choice. I did, however, find it useful to set up the bear trap under a window used for zombie entry. It’s a good way to keep a couple from ever getting inside.

I really like the arcade action of Living Dead House, and it’s made better by a few key development decisions. First, neither you nor the zombies run that quickly. This makes it easier to access the stairs or seek your escape route. Second, the difficulty ramps up nicely. New weapons, tougher enemies (zombies have figured out dynamite?), and more complicated floor plans keep things interesting. Third, you can play in local co-op. Surviving zombie infestations is always more fun with a friend…until that friend grabs the weapon you were desperately trying to reach.

There are leaderboards to chase, arcade and survival modes to try out. The former tasks you with surviving 20 levels, but you get three continues after a game-over. Living Dead House also comes with the visual features you’d expect from Flynn’s Arcade. Play with a CRT filter on to achieve an authentic ’80s look. If you’d prefer an authentic ’50s horror look, turn on black-and-white mode, too.

Despite all of this, the action does start to feel a bit redundant after a while. That’s part and parcel for ’80s arcade games, of course, which were designed to kick you off after just a couple of minutes so the next kid with a quarter could hop on. Living Dead House recreates this approach a bit too well, so I was never willing to play long enough to complete those 20 levels.

But no matter! I play games like this before/after hopping into bigger titles or to just kill a few minutes here and there. In that regard, Living Dead House may be my favorite Flynn’s Arcade machine since Donut Dodo. If you have any classic arcade games in your Switch rotation—be it through Arcade Archives, those Taito Milestones, or what have you—add Living Dead House to the mix…and do your best to not be dead by dawn.