Rebuild is a fairly goofy but fun strategy game that has you defending—and slowly expanding—an embattled encampment that's surrounded by zombie hordes.

Hands down the best thing about Rebuild is that they give each of your survivors a name, which pulls off the unlikely feat of creating an emotional attachment to some bits in your browser cache. Are you sure you want to send "Wiggles" Mitchell on a mission to scavenge the mall with Chastity Meyers? Maybe you should send along "Jalapeno" Clarke, too, just to be safe. Who can forget training Chloe "Oilcan" French to be a scientist, so she wouldn't have have to risk her life on the front line anymore? Something changed that day.

You reclaim territory block by block, sending out scouts to scavenge for food, leaders to recruit survivors, and soldiers to smash zombie skulls. Scientists and builders stay inside your perimeter, while (respectively) researching zombieism cures and converting convenience stores into bars to keep your growing populace happy. (You need farms for food, but it's churches and bars that keep your people happy. That and finding stray kittens.)

This is your camp. Things arent going well at the mall.
  • This is your camp. Things aren't going well at the mall.

Replay value is surprising for a free Flash game: you can win the game a few different ways, and it's got five difficulty levels and three save slots. Fuck Monday, go kill zombies. If not for yourself, do it for the late Hugo Mishkin.

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.