Zombie

"Zombie" is built using the GoblinHaunt game engine.

You don't know where they came from but you know where you want them to go. Back to the hell that spawned them! Today hasn't been a good day. You woke to find the city over-run with zombies! You've got a shotgun, some shells, and the fate of humanity resting in your hands. Everyone who is still alive is holed up somewhere in the city and the zombies are looking for them. And you are looking for the zombies! Fortunately there's a local news helicopter in the air able to give you some idea of where those damnable zombies are. There appear to be three different types of zombies. Regular zombie masters, which seem to be the cause of all this trouble; zombie victims, which are hapless humans turned undead; and zombie trackers, the pit bulls of the zombie world. Zombies surround themselves with zombie victims so you have to watch out for that and the zombie trackers seem to be out looking for you so you'd best keep moving. Fortunately you don't have to take them all out, just the zombie masters, not that that's going to be in any way an easy job.

"Zombie" is a game of horror, deduction, and a fair amount of luck. You move through a zombie-infested city trying to avoid the zombie hordes while blasting away at the zombie masters with a shotgun. Zombie is a fully featured game with Instructions, Stats, Settings, Story, and About screens. It is configurable, allowing you to set your name, the size of the city (10-25 blocks), how many moves you get per turn (1-4), how many shotgun shells they get for attacking zombies (1-9), how far the shotgun blast travels (1-9 squares), how many zombies have to be hunted down (1-3), how many zombie victims there are (1-3), how many zombie trackers will be roaming the city, looking for you (1-3), and a special Hard Mode setting. Stats and Settings are both stored in persistent memory as well as the state of the last in-progress game. This allows a game to be interrupted at any time and resumed later at your convenience.

Zombie is played in a gridded city. The zombies are placed in a random corner of the city and make their way to some other random corner where the last of humanity lies, awaiting their fate. You start out in the middle of an opposite edge of the city and move North, South, West, and East. The zombies move up to three moves per turn. They are not the most organized of travelers and their movement is somewhat random. Zombie victims always stay within one square of their masters. Zombie warbands start near the masters but their goal is to hunt you down!

After you have moved, you will see what is in the immediate vicinity. You may then blast away or keep moving. You can shoot in any of the 8 directions: North, South, West, East, Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, or Southeast.

A game turn follows these steps:
1) News report (maybe, depends on radio interference).
2) You and the zombies all move.
3) You look around.
4) You may fire the shotgun.
5) Repeat.

Top

Here are some screenshots from the Nokia Series 40 version of Zombie.

Splash Screen

Game Animation

Top

After the initial splash screen you are presented with the main menu:

Use the movement menu to move North, South, East, or West. If you Stay Put then you give up all movement for that turn. If you decide to attack the zombies, use the menu to shoot North, South, West, East, Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, or Southeast. If you get all the zombie masters you win! If not, well, try again, but be careful that you get the zombies before they get you!

There are a number of game settings to give Zombie maximum customizability. These game options are:

Setting	Description	Default
Player Name	This is the default name for Stats.	"Player"
Sounds	Turn sounds off if they get to be too annoying or when it is necessary to be quiet and not disturb anyone.	On
City Size	10-25. How large of a city do you wish to hunt through?	10
Player Moves	1-4. For a tough game, move only 1 square per turn. Moving 4 squares per turn will get you to the zombies faster, but be careful that you don't trip over them!	2
# Shotgun Shells	1-9. How many attempts do you want for getting all the zombies? The shotgun is very powerful and will blow away any and all zombies in the direction it is fired.	9
Shotgun Range	1-9. How many squares does a shotgun blast cover?	2
# Zombies	1-3. How many zombie masters do you want to hunt down? You have to kill them all in order to win the game!	3
# Zombie Victims	1-3. How many zombie victims do you want? They will be assigned one per zombie master. If there are more victims than masters then some masters will have more than one victim escorting them. If there are more masters then some won't have any victims with them.	3
# Zombie Trackers	1-3. How many zombie trackers do you want chasing you through the city?	3
Hard Mode	Turning Hard Mode on turns off the coordinates so that all you know is the relative direction of the zombies to your current position. Compared to just surviving in a city full of zombies, Hard Mode isn't all that difficult. It's actually easier without those numbers all getting in the way.	Off

Commands:

Clear Stats

Erase all the game stats.

Top

• Play with the game options until you find game settings that make for a fun game that you enjoy playing. Zombie is like a maxed out version of GoblinHaunt.
• My preferred method is to take two moves early on to get to the centre of the city then only take one move per turn there-after to slowly approach the zombies and blast 'em when they are within range!
• Sometimes running away helps too!
• As hard as the game can be, it can be won. My current standings are 7 wins in 71 games with a kill ratio of 2.18 from 48 Zombies, 44 Zombie victims, and 63 Zombie trackers. I was up to 2.96 after a couple of successful games earlier but since then it's just been dropping like a rock.

Top

Art by Adam Howard.

Top