Not that Zombies were ever out of fashion but the nefarious undead certainly seem to be making a meaty return to games at present. We’ve seen a huge amount of zombie games as well as games that have zombies in recent years and as we go into the next generation of consoles, we’ve been thinking, ‘What would make the ultimate zombie game?’. So without further ado- we dissect what failed in the past and shamelessly steal ideas from other games to suggest what would make an amazing game in the future. its pretty much an RPG . . .
Create a survivor
Strangely, a lot of zombie games don’t let you make your own character. Surely in a survival game, you want your own character to get attached to? Anyhow, a good game would have a robust character creation system as well as out-fit and clothing system (obviously integrated into the game should you loot a clothing store!) so you can run around as yourself, or your dream zombie slayer.
We’d also go one further and allow you to create a three additional survivors as starting companions at the beginning of the game. This would come with consequences such as the need for more space, food, etc, but add security. You would be able to make your companions ‘public’ over xboxlive/psn so when you’re not online, your friends can import them into their world to level up and help on missions or defend from hordes. These companions also act as extra back-packs, allowing you to transfer loot to them, sending them home to drop it off or keeping them beside you as escort.
create a survivor like you make a sim!
Survival Map
Anyone whos played an Elder Scrolls game will know that you always progress through an introductory section of the game before you leave the cavern and are confronted with the big outside world with a ‘wow!’. In my experience, Zombie games tend to do away with massive worlds and focus on tight corridors and shopping malls. I can see why this is helpful to create tension and danger, but why not have open area outside these walls?
It also annoys me in zombie game, movies etc that the world is always trashed and otherwise wrecked. While this makes sense in densely populated areas, farmhouses and settlements that were simply abandoned needn’t be utterly wrecked. When archaeologists dug up the ruins of Pompeii, they found houses in complete order. Why? Because at the end of the world, people didn’t feel the need to overturn tables and clear shelves.
Far Cry 3 Map and outposts?
Outposts and Checkpoints
State of Decay had the right idea with a main base and peripheral outposts. Sadly the game was limited in its XBLA category and couldn’t make better use of its own ideas. We’d like to see a game where these outposts are customisable and expandable with an ability to set survivors to hold and defend them. Outposts would be limited to the number of survivors you had to maintain them or they’d fall.
Territory
Plenty of games have successfully used a territory/region system to divide up a large map. Territories should span the whole map, ranging in size depending on the concentration of buildings (large in rural areas, small in cities). Again, I’m brought back to the successful and much liked Assassin system from the A.C games. Territories should be claimable within your own game based on your scavenging percentage and outpost coverage which make areas ‘safer’ than unexplored regions. Taking a leaf straight from the A.C franchise, you should be able to send survivors on scavenging runs to other regions (outside your game world) to bring resources from afar, thus also earning exp. In a real world situation, the more ground you could claim, the better you’d be. You just might need to defend it!
More than just Zombies
Zombie games usually rely solely on the zombies as the enemy and throw in ‘special’ ones to mix it up. We think that a good survival game should have zombies, but also other friendly and non-friendly survivors. The player should encounter other survivors in the game and always approach with caution, aware if they’ll attack or greet you. You can help or hinder people, befriend or betray them. It should be up to you. I’m not necessarily suggesting we should see mythical creatures and dinosaurs, although The Stomping Lands is certainly trying something new and exciting.
The area surrounding Chenobyl is one of the best wild life reserves in the northern hemisphere because there are no longer any people living there and the wild animals have simply moved back in. We’d like to see this incorporated into the game with timid and aggressive wild animals. These can be hunted for food and resources.
Dead Rising 3 looks like a laugh, and not what we want
Experience, reputation, and skill system
Most people won’t have much idea about to do in a zombie apocalypse and would start off pretty useless. Naturally, as they killed and scavenged, they would become more savvy.
Yes, there should be a level and exp system based on what you do. This should be tied into skill trees that improve your surviving, scavenging, crafting and combat skills. As you level up you’d be better at fighting hand-to-hand and using weapons. As you scavenge and sneak around at night, you get better at stealth and are able to steal from other survivor camps or scavenge in secret. Why not work on your survival skills and be able to identify friend or foe from a distance? Or spot useful places to search from a view point?
As you help and/or backstab other survivors and friends, you’re alignment changes on a morality system that affects your trade and recruitment successes. Want to be a nefarious, grab-it-all and build a force of ambushing criminals? Or do you want to be the light in the darkness that survivors flock to for help? It should be up to you.
Economy system and currency
It doesn’t need to be super deep, but we were thinking about the economy and trade system in Assassin’s Creed 3. As Connor, you can run around the world, hunting animals for resources to sell and helping various settlers with side missions. These settlers, once helped enough joined Connor’s ‘settlement’ as lumberjacks, miners, cooks, etc and built a robust craft and trade system for the rest of the game. The player could then use the ledger in his home to create, sell, and transport ideas across the world for gold. Sometimes the AI controlled wagons would be attacked in the Frontier and the player could choose to help or hope it makes it.
We’d like to see a similar mechanic employed in a post-apocalyptic survival game. You should be able to recruit and train survivors then buy and sell with other survival groups, sending resources (and people) to and from. Food, water, ammo, etc could be traded for knowledge, exp etc. Trade parties would travel (on foot or in vehicles if roads allowed) which could be attacked by looters or hordes, and similarly defended. You can also ambush other survivors supply runs for quick gain (and reputation loss)
We’d like to see this taken online, sending resources to the edge of the map and into a friend’s game.
In a practical sense, resources such as food, water and ammo become the currency by which knowledge and experience is shared or horded.
How to Survive
Food and Water
It sounds silly, but so many zombie games take surviving so seriously that they forget the basics. Survival is more than just bashing heads till the end of the game; its food, water and shelter. This is a big deal in the up coming game, How to Survive, but its only an XBLA title that has yet to really show us the details.
Our ultimate zombie game would incorporate these in a subtle but enjoyable way. Taking Minecraft as a perfect example, starting a survival game, the first thing you need to do before nightfall is build a home and get some food. Our game would have a similar mechanic, but one that allows you to play the game without the need to constantly eat and drink. You could set up a safe-house in any location you had cleared and set up defences. This could be as simple as a storage room with a locked door to a whole compound defended by gates, fences and allies.
Food and water would be quantity specific meaning that you can go longer periods of time the more you eat at once. It wouldn’t also be a live or die mechanic (unless on Hard difficulty) and would purely effect your characters performance, essentially buffing or nerfing stats.
Food and water would be plentiful (especially if you set up vegetable plots and have a base near water) and would become the currency for trade.
Make a House a Home
Games like State of Decay and Dead Rising have employed the safe house/base idea well but we’d like to see it go further. In a zombie apocalypse you’d make the best of the situation at hand and certainly there should be buildings and compounds you can hold up in, but why can’t you just hole up in a public toilets? You’d be able to clear any building, large or small and as long as you set up barricades/planks on the entrances, you can sleep, eat, resupply and rest there.
You can sleep as well as ‘kill time’ by fast forwarding time by taking a ‘Skyrim style’ wait. Gary Newman is hard at work building a game currently called Rust, which looks promising when its finished on the PC, but sadly we know very little about it other than what was reported by PCgamer. It incorporates building your own settlements in a Minecraft fashion, but pulls together the need to make clothes for warmth and food for hunger as well.
What about Rust? You’ve probably never heard of it
Tower Defence
“Zombie Horde slaying defend yourself till the utter end defence mode” may as well be the title for another mindless tower-defence zombie game that fails to inspire. Why can’t we have a zombie survival game with dynamic zombie sieges which turns your outpost or home into a tower-defence style game. It usually boils down to barricades and ammunition, but Call of Duty has successfully implemented their Zombie mode time and again. Why isn’t that sort of game play in a fully fledged survival game?
With the success of Horde mode in Gears of War, inspiration for good mechanics isn’t hard to find!
Hordes and Infestations
Its not original I know, but the presence of hordes and infestations around the map would be set as rolling quests with excellent rewards, exp bumps and large amounts of danger. Zombies are also not very intelligent and should be used as weapons using noise. Setting off an explosion in your rival’s camp to initiate a horde attack for example.
Weapon creation and modding
With the wide range of house hold items that could be used as weapons, it somewhat annoys me that most Zombie games delve too deep into the realms of fantasy and think that adding batteries to things electrifies them. Yes, there should be weapon crafting, but it should be sensible and logical. Dead Rising is is the classic example of crazy crafting. You see a bat and nails and combining them makes sense. Picking up a leaf rake you don’t immediately think “A car battery would make this an electric weapon!”, you probably think the cane should have the end sharpened. Sure, Dead Rising is tongue in cheek, but you get the point.
State of Decay had the right idea with a range of blunt, sharp, flammable and explosive weapons but it was just the start. Guns should also vary and be customisable based on yours and your companions skill sets. While ammo should always be on the player’s mind, they should also be thinking more about whether its sensible to fire or not. Getting that killing shot on the deer in the school yard will provide precious food, but will it summon a horde your direction? Will defending your outpost with a sniper-rifle be the wisest move?
Dying Light looks awesome, then throws in battery power machetes
Fundamentally speaking, all the right ideas are out there and as I’ve shown with only a handful of indie/kickstarter projects, there are people making these things. Sadly however, it seems like until we get a huge Indie success story like Minecraft, few of the big publishers will take much notice. The question remains, why are the PC games out there getting it right and console survival games just so rubbish? With Indie games and self publishing now possible on PS4 and Xbox One, lets hope someone can build what we want!
Sources: bloodydisgusting, video gamer
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