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Halloween is tomorrow and I don’t care.
Being a horror fan, I should care. Right now I have High Seas Cthulhu waiting to be read, Revenge of The Living Dead Girls waiting to be watched, and games from H.P. Lovecraft: The Commonplace Book Project waiting to be played. Maybe dressing up like a pirate on Saturday got Halloween out of my system, I dunno.
Anyway, I was thinking about horror games the other day and how the zombie game I want to play hasn’t been designed yet. Here’s my proposal, let me know what you think.
The game begins at a military outpost which has managed to survive the early days of zombie apocalypse. There are a few character types: a squad commander, a medic, an engineer, a quartermaster, a mechanic, and grunts. The early stages of the game are typical RTS. Zombies attack the outpost in waves, between which you have time to repair and expand the fortifications.
There’s resource management — you can draw on wood and metal stockpiles to build defensive barriers or allocate them for new buildings or weapons and armor. The base was supplied with MREs so food isn’t an issue, at first, but eventually you’ll want to search out additional food sources or move to agriculture.
The outpost will expand as refugees, who can be trained as grunts, farmers, builders, etc, show up. They will also come with news from the outside, supplies, and expertise. At this level, new character classes come into play: scientists, doctors, etc.
This second stage of the game is dedicated towards finding equilibrium within outpost and conducting research. You’ll want to make sure you can feed all your survivors, maintain morale, and continue to fight off increasing numbers of zombies. Specialist classes will open lines of research. Doctors can increase troop hit points and fight zombie infection. Scientists can find ways of doing more damage to zombies. Weapons specialists can invent new weapons. And so on.
Once you’ve hit equilibrium, it will become easier to send out scouting parties to explore the world map. I’m envisioning something like Fallout‘s world map with random encounters (feral animals, zombies, biker gangs) and new locations. You’ll be able to explore abandoned cities, interact with other survivor communities (either raiding them or conducting trade negotiations), and at some point you’ll find the cause of the outbreak. Which leads to the end game — stopping the plague, which either means destroying a meteorite, shutting down a secret lab, or closing the Book of the Dead (based on random algorithms procedurally generated to maximize replay).
Can this game get made?
I doubt it. It’s too much of a hybrid and obviously too much to explain in one sitting.
Anthony:
Sounds awesome.
Terry:
Thanks. One of the things that annoys me about survival horror games is how little emphasis is placed on survival. I mean, survival should mean coming up with long-term strategies, not just mixing blue herbs with red ones.