Survival From The Dead
AUTHOR: Phinney
We’ve been talking a lot about zombie behavior recently. Think of it like observing zombies in the wild – Discovery Undead or Mutual of Zombieland, if you know what I mean. When they’re not trying to eat you, what will they be doing? This sparks discussions rife with images of both horror and comedy. A stranger trapped in a car surrounded by zombies. A zombie trapped in a car with no clue how to get out. We definitely want a mix of both elements in our game, but at heart, we are trying to create a serious zombie survival experience.
For every zombified hipster still staring down at his iPhone or stumbling shambler bumping into a wall and looking around in confusion before doing it again, we’ll need a lot of zeds on the prowl, showing their rage and their insatiable hunger. We need to be true to the one defining principle of zombie survival lore:
Zombies are freakin’ scary.
The terror starts at first sight. We’re used to seeing zombies in movies and games, but think about it. In person, an animated corpse would trigger our most primal instinctive responses of revulsion and fear — we’re hard wired to be afraid of physical disease, to be repulsed by rotting flesh, to mistrust unpredictable behavior, and of course, to dread the very thought of death. It’s only natural that we’d be freaked out by death incarnate shambling (or sprinting) towards us in an ever-growing horde.
Zombies will never let you rest
And when they do find you, there will be no discussion or negotiation. There’s nothing you can say to a zombie to keep it from attacking you, and there’s no noise or body language you can use to scare it off. Zombies care more about killing you than they do about their own preservation. So even though they may look a lot like us, they’re a sort of blank mirror. The very things that make us human — our emotions, stance, inflection, body movements, expressions, and the thousands of other little things that communicate our thoughts are gone. When facing a zombie, we face a reflection of ourselves that embodies everything that isn’t human.
Zombies do not simply seek to kill you. They want to consume you. If you fight a zombie, you’d better destroy it, find a way to escape, or pray to god someone will rescue you before it is too late. Defeat can only end in two ways: you’re torn apart and eaten alive, or you’re infected and turn into a zombie yourself. Not pretty. You must learn to cope with being hunted if you want to live. Humans aren’t used to having predators — especially ones that look like us or worse, used to be our friends and loved ones.
That’s where things get truly difficult. To survive, we may be forced to sacrifice some of our own humanity. Maybe this means you’ll find yourself in a situation where you need to make the choice between leaving a friend behind to die or dying yourself. Maybe it means not sharing food and water with people desperately in need because you know you’ll need it yourself. Maybe it means turning away an injured stranger because you’re afraid they will turn. Or maybe this means having to face your recently turned mother, father, spouse, or child. Even when the right answer is clear, the choice may not be easy. There, perhaps, lies the ultimate horror.
On top of all that, I think one of the reasons zombies resonate with us is that there is a kind of realism to them. The dangers and horrors of a fictional zombie apocalypse are deeply similar to the real hazards we face when order breaks down from natural disasters, extended power outages, riots, disease outbreaks, and other catastrophes. When we find ourselves trapped together in urban areas with no real sources of food and water, the interdependent network of comforts, technologies and conveniences we’ve come to rely on disappears. We don’t know our neighbors (or our neighbors’ neighbors) well enough to truly trust them. We are uncertain about the safety of the chemicals, radiation and biological agents that surround us. And we know that governments and giant corporations may have agendas that may not be in our interest, but we’re powerless to do anything about it. It’s all the horrors of modern society, brought to life by the walking dead.
As we’re building our world, these are some of the feelings we want to capture. There will be hope too, and humor, and moments of triumph, but we want to start by giving you a challenge worth overcoming. We never want to lose sight of what the game’s all about — surviving the zombie apocalypse.
As always, we love to hear your opinions. What scares you about a zombie apocalypse? What excites you about it? What moments and feelings are you hoping we’ll capture? Post a comment and let us know.
Phinney
Keep it simple, Being alone makes everything 100x more terrifying.
Dead Space is a prime example of how scary it can be when it is only you and you have to make all decisions on your own.
No conversing,discussing, planning. One man wolf pack.
being alone is a good idea id like to see situations when it has to be a one man mission, but the game is better off being multiplayer based plus watching zombies feasting on a corpse from a distance is scary plus zombie moaning has to be scary like in RE2 it was the scariest zombie game ever you guys gotta recapture that feeling
mix RE2 with Undead nightmare and youll have a great fun scary game
ya i love that game too i felt the same way when playing that game but the game that can always scare the crap out of me is fallout 3 that game is not trying to scare you 100% of the time i had about 100 to 200 time geting scared me and my friends play fullout 3 going from house to house trying to pick out to see anything b4 it see us man that was fun if this game is anything like that im going to love it
Yeah I wasn’t referring to this game moving towards a solo effect I was just stating my answer to the question what would scare me.
I can see great potential in missions forcing players to split up. They are sent on different objectives maybe just into teams of 2 and as you are doing one task all you can hear is the screams of your friends in the microphone, and all you can do is carry on.
Class3 will be a solo/co-op game. Class4 is an mmo-type game. So in Class4 we will have to interact with others.
Fully aware friend
Would there even be missions or tasks to complete, with AI characters? and also would the zombies be fast or slow, hard to kill and sparse or easy to kill and dense.
I recall when I first played RE4 on GC. For the first time ever I was kinda scared to actually walk around the town to see what other people might attack or pop out at me. The only problem is, after awhile basically a half hour or so that feeling wore off to where I felt like I was playing a regular action/ adventure game. I really want Class 3 and 4 to keep that scary mood that I never feel desensitized to the intense feeling of seeing a zombie because I’ve encountered them numerous times
. I think the feeling of this game not knowing what a zombie will do, some games Dead Island and L4D have the specific zombie types. While it’s great for a balance in terms of coop and such, for a game like Class, the freight might stick if you couldn’t pin point a certain zombie look with a certain class. I want to wonder, will this zombie walk right by me? Chase me running? or will it slowly walk towards me? It should remain a mystery till you encounter the threat first hand.
All in all, it’s more so how often do you want people to run into zombies and when, L4D is a great arcade style Z game, but killing too many zombies leaves you feeling like your killing or seeing nothing out of the ordinary.
mystery element great idea
To add: I like the idea of unknown by sight zombie types. Great Idea. however, lets be honest, just like soldiers in war zones, you will eventually become desensitized by zombies. The longer you survive the more confident you are in your skills. With zombies I want to see lots of them in some areas and less in other areas (city versus Rural)
That is true lol, but that’s a real natural progression especially in a realistic game. L4D feels like its just horde after horde, while the more the merrier applies the more zombies you have the funner it can be, but having lesser zombies that are hard to take down can be just as fun. It’s about balancing of course it sucks to be trapped by 500 zombies, but they are easy to kill, but being trapped in a corner by 5 zombies that are harder to kill to me makes me feel more helpless lol.
I do like the different number of zombies to area ratio, which makes perfect sense. You won’t see too many zombies maybe a few here and there in a forest, but the city streets would be loaded and you’d not want to be roaming around there at all maybe even with a larger group of people. I think the zombies need to be more on the harder side to kill instead of feeling confident that you can stand there and take on a bunch, I don’t want to feel like a Rambo but another scared victim that it’s not always the best idea to fight, but to flee.
Plus I really hope these guys work out a server system with hundreds to thousands of players or something in class 4 , because I’d love to be apart of like a “raid” style mission into town with like 50-100 people from a town who needs resources which you go into the city in groups to look for. Day and Night cycles should make everything definitely scarier especially at night when sight is gone, you’d maybe have to camp out or board up in a city building over night while zombies try to come in:D or maybe build fences around the perimeter to hold them off lol
Great point about the day and night cycles. Definetly need a realistic night cycle, where at night its just about pitch black. You could even add the whole moon cycle too, with nights with a full moon being more lit up than those with a new moon.
Realistic lighting would also add a sense of horror that would be terrifying. Say you walk into a building that has no lights on, so you pull out your torch to look around. You should only be able to see where your torch is aimed at, with shadows and such being thrown off objects in the room that move as you move the torch. All these shadows moving around would make it creepy, as you wouldnt be sure whether or not that black thing moving on the wall is a zed or just a shadow.
One last thing you need to add is sound. Sounds make up a major component of horror, as in todays movies we automatically assume bad things will happen when the music says so. We need to have moaning and groaning of the zeds of course, but also the everyday sounds of crickets, buildings settling etc. This would come into great context in a night setting, as due to our lack of vision (it being really really dark) we automatically rely more on our sense of hearing to give us an idea of what is around. Having shuffling sounds that we arent able to pinpoint will make us panic, making us flash lights around frantically to search for the source of the noise.
I’m really glad you guys are the ones working on this game, your making brilliant observances and really care about how the player approaches the game I really appreciate that!
Take my money now please, i know its in good hands, also when can we expect to see game-play or a trailer even?
Ok, having trouble putting to words how excited i’m getting about this game =D
I’ve spent more brain cycles than the average consumer thinking about what I would do in the event of a zombie apocalypse. No, really. I have a bug-out bag ready at all times and I have some (but not enough, not nearly enough) food and water stored away. I totally have a plan for what I would do in the home I currently live in. You have an opportunity here to teach actual useful information to people with this game, like how to make fire, prepare food and get fresh water, etc
I also love that you guys are thinking some of the same thoughts that I’ve thought. You’ve clearly thought about plenty of the little details, what motivates the zombies, about other survivors possibly (probably) being more of a threat than the zombies, about the truly unthinkable horror of facing off with zombie versions of people you used to know or worse, like you said, family members. I’ve tried and I seriously cannot imagine.
What scares me? I think you nailed it when you were talking about their anti-humanity qualities. I’d be afraid of losing my family, my own life and humanity as a whole.
What excites me is the the challenging of the notion that survival is based upon one’s ability to wake up at 7am five days a week.
One more thing, you guys should read the slow-motion apocalypse if you haven’t already. It’s alpha_dog’s livejournal, written by a guy several years ago now in the form of an online journal as the events play out around him. Some really great fiction, but you have to start here and scroll all the way down to get to the first entry and then work your way up:
http://alpha-dog.livejournal.com/?skip=250
Thank you for making this game btw, and I still wish I could help with ideas.
Great article to spark discussion. I’m excited at the direction you guys keep re-affirming.
I think for me, the scariest part of surviving a zombie appoc.. would be the unknown of each corner. Am i going to run into hundreds of zombies around this next corner?
Is my buddy whose in my truck, as good a shot as he says he is?
am I as good a shot as I think i am?
Will I be able to find something on the ground to help defend?
Will I be able to eat tonight?
where is the best place to setup camp?
Will my friend kill me to save his own life?
Will my truck run out of gas?
How far can I drive on this flat tire?
These are the kinds of questions I’d hope to ask myself and worry my little brain when I’m out there.
I think in any game i’ve ever been truly immersed, and freaked out, I’ve had an over whelming feeling of the unknown and genuinely loved it.
I’d like to login to class 4, even class 3, and not know what my safehouse looks like, because it could have been attacked while I was offline. Or perhaps whether my garden has been ransacked. I want that unknown.
Like the power station we cleared out yesterday, is totally full with zombies the next hour as we go back with less fire power. Will we collectivly as a group make the right choice. If going on foot today the right choice? Did I bring the right weapon? or should I have brought a melee weapon instead?
That sort of stuff..
oh 1 more thing. Its sort of OT. But please focus on the vehicle physics.. Please don’t make them too arcady.. I don’t want to see cars that go absolutely rocket speeds.
I use the following example because its perfect. GTA IV. The cars felt fantastic, they felt heavy and felt like a real car would feel. When you went over a bump, you felt it, but you also felt the absorption of the suspension.
The vehicles HAVE to have proper weight and feel to them. If i hit the gas, it should spin the tires a little, it should fish tail in mud a little as I try to get control of it.
It should NOT, just take off from 0-60 with no spinning of tires, or no fish tail in grass. Thats all.
I would love to log in on occasion only to discover I did not choose a safe enough place to log out (or, for the character, get some sleep). Logging in on occasion to find my safehouse occupied by the undead would be great!
I mean, frighteningly great! Where in the hell did I put that gun?! To be forced to run away from your safehouse in your underwear, with a handful of things that were closest to you, and no knowledge as to whether your friends made it. That’s scary.
How do you envision safe houses being handled in the game’s online incarnation?
If we’re talking a persistent world, who’s in the world with you, and who shares the space with you?
Are there a few select structures that can be used as bases, or can I fortify anything? Can I dig myself a hidden shelter? Can I put a lock on my shelter? Can I camouflage my shelter? If someone picks the lock and decides my shelter is a good place to be, will they find me sleeping in the shelter? Will I spawn in to find them looting my things? Will I even know they came? (If someone decides to use my base, could they randomly spawn in on me when they log in?) Is my shelter an instance of the same shelter other people can cohabitate, or is it persistent among everyone on my server? If I don’t want to invest in a shelter, can I set up a tent? Will zombies eat me in my tent?
In the field, if I log out in the middle of a building, do I spawn inside that building upon reentry? Is the space repopulated with zeds? Again, is the building an instance of the same building in others’ worlds, or is it truly persistent?
Ideally, in class4, I’d like to be able to find a random building (a barn, say), create traps for random zombies, set up bare-bones amenities and an obvious safe with a token valuable or two inside, then hide a trap door behind a sliding bookcase and dig myself a little bunker with the real goodies, perhaps even a tunnel to another building.
I’d like to be able to make it my space, and hold it down with some friends. However, the mechanics of how this would work with other players, particularly when I was offline (apart from the rather boring first-come, first-serve, claim it and its yours forever possibility) puzzles me.
Perhaps people could try to loot someone else’s safe house, but couldn’t actually sleep there or claim it without a fight? And if there were a fight, and the original owner lost, we’d assume the original owner made off with _most_ of his things? Does anyone else have a sense of how this could work? I’d rather not live in the same town as everyone else or occupy a perfectly secure, cookie-cutter shelter, but I can’t guard my in-game things when I’m attending to real life.
A possible solution:
What if the degree to which your valuable were hidden or secured determined the likelihood of someone actually making off with any of them, with looting being calculated automatically based on the strength of locks and the number of barriers between the looter and his prize? Alternately, looters go inside a different instance of your home and try to take what they can within a time limit? Limits are set on how often a given home can be looted, and looting players have some kind of attribute that contributes to the extent to which their robberies are associated with them. Lawless players are hunted, fined, or killed by peacekeeping NPCs, but may find solace among bands of criminals outside the main settlements. If a player loots the same house too often, the owner will be notified of who he is, and may place a bounty on him or otherwise hunt him down with no repercussions (at least in terms of his standing with the NPCs,)
I’d like to engage in this conversation about the function of safehouses/bases further, Keith, but I tend to go off topic enough as is. Perhaps, there will be a Q&A upcoming which will open discussion about this topic?
Personally, I mentioned the safehouse because of the idea of waking/logging into a room that was safe when you slept/logged out, that has become infested with zeds looking for a meal. Maybe you ‘awoke’ to the sounds of them breaking in, and have no time to gather supplies you have spent days scavenging. It would be frightful to run for your life away from that situation, especially if it was dark outside at the time, and a light source was not one of the few things you had time to grab.
Good call, I was way off-topic. I was doing mundane things around the house so I wound up spending a lot of time thinking about the game. Hopefully we’ll hear more about shelters in the future.
Emily posted a response elsewhere that assured us a thread about bases/ safehouses is upcoming. Very exciting.
There is two big elements in scaring someone first is the distraction then the Scare. Most games have background noise or shadows lurking in the corner but the biggest and most confusing thing would being put in a very unfamiliar environment with unfamiliar predators. Not knowing where you are and not knowing what is endangering you is the best way to create a surprise. Now you can’t just have something jump out of thin air that is a cheap scare its also not very surprising.
Create more of surprising scares not just yelling Boo! If the player is in constant danger or feels in danger that is how to scare them correctly and won’t have the fear phase out. Having lack of ammo, food, supplies having to take that risk for survival always adds to the fear but you can’t make it too challenging also. If you go into a darkroom and are automatically frightened by a cheap scare its memory fades. Now if our survivor has been fleeing a horde of zombies and runs into a old gas station or store building ect. As he looks around he realizes he is not alone and is placed into one fear into another.
Other than the gameplay scares the game must also have certain properties. Most horror games have save rooms or a base they put safety in a game that is suppose to be filled with horror. Also the player power element being able to defeat everything in your path with a giant gun with no challenge well make a player fearless, therefore getting rid of the fear.
You mentioned safehouses in most horror games. I like this idea. I feel that there should be no ‘safe’ place in Class 3 or 4. I feel that every place should have an equal chance of being raided unless you have made it safe ie a player created base.
To make it easy to understand, ill use Dead Rising 2 as an example. In the game you can always know that the workshop rooms will be uninhabited by zeds, and so if you run into one and close the doors behind you you know your safe. This shouldnt be like that for Class 3 or 4. When you run into a room, no matter what room it is, you should have to worry about making sure if there are zeds in there. In order to make it safe, you must clear it out first. But once its cleared, it shouldnt stay that way permanently, with zeds randomly wandering in from time to time.
You know, I don’t know what you guys have got planned in this area as of yet, but I would really prefer having to start at the beginning of the outbreak reaching your area. It’s when everything hits the fan that is the most terrifying about the Zedpocalypse to me, so in a game that’s taking survival as seriously as you guys are making it, I would want to experience that fear of quick decision making right from the beginning with no weapon, no food/water, no idea about what to do when the first undead walks into your building. Want to make it terrifying to me? Then make me work /hard/ to survive.
I really like this idea, and think it would go well with the concept of the zombies’ group makeup and behavior being determined by an evolutionary process.
There are so many layers of fear of zombies. If we strip away all social fear, it does come down to the fear of being dead.
The zombies that scare me the most are the members of the undead that when not bothered, try are trying to “shamble” around when they did when they are alive.
When bothered, they attack and will not stop until this “undying” need subsides.
I think it will come down to 1 of 2 options. Either, the dead have a more basic animal instinc, or (pulling from Return of the Living Dead) are trying to leave the pain of being dead.
giving a zombie a base motivation would be awesome.
Oh man, when my friend and I are talking about this game we are wondering what the game would be like.
I might be a little off topic but…
What we want, is a challange. We want to be stuck on a roof I want to feel that sinking feeling that hope is slowly fading and that we are as good as dead. We want to feel that fear not knowing what is around the corner of the building. My friend and I, we were playing Grand Theft Auto IV online with just him and I. We were doing a cop run (It’s when you run accross the city on foot and weapons, with no weapon or health spawns and getting overrunned by cops) and as we were being hunted down we had to plan every step carefuly or we wouldn’t survive long. We run from the prison all the way to the airport and when we arrived the airport with red light health blinking, we hold off the cops as we got surrounded by them, hunted down by them, using every last bullet until either the timer ran out or we are killed.
This is what I want… I want the zombies to feel like a real threat. I want there to be moments where my friend and I are backed up in the back of the store behind the counter while a huge mass of zombies break through the big glass windows in the front. And if we were to get out of there, it’ll be a memory. Months after playing the game I want to walk accross that store and say to my friend “Oh dude, damn remember that was the store we almost got killed… I can’t believe we survived that…”.
I guess what I’m saying is that the behavore of zombie AI is pretty importaint. strategy is something I look foward to a game. Dead Rising, I found myself planning and looking at the map more then playing the game itself and it was one of my favorite games because of it. Making you Thinking is something a lot of games don’t do very well. Someone mentioned Dead Space, well I loved that game because I FELT the phyiscal and mental exgaustion the main character felt. I felt tired, I was shaking and I wanted to just give up and die.. but I felt compeld to push foward, survive, beat the odds that were set infront of me for no other reason other then to live another day.
I’ve been craving for a game to do that again and Crysis 2 did that pretty well but it’s not what I needed.
When I think of a zombie apocalypse… It feels bleak… depressing. I look at my family and think “What if they all turned?” and I realize, I would be devastated… but I would survive for them.
To make it short
What scares me about a zombie apocalypse?- Not being able to survive, being overrunned and losing, being bitten and being left behind for it.
What Excites me?- Surviving and being able to talk about it months later
What moments and feelings are you hoping we’ll capture?- I want to feel tired, exgausted both physcially and mentally. I don’t want the Pop out scare but the fear of not knowing what is around the corner. Is it one zombie? 100 of them? a Thousand?
I want to feel the sand in my hour glass of life slowly pour down, every single grain. My life and luck slowly ticking away until the day I am unable to fight anymore.
I’m weird I know but when I think of this game, I feel as if that is what will make the game epic.
that was a bloody good post, your exactly right.. I can say many of us want to feel helpless, like just grab what you can, and never know what’s coming, or even the belief that it could be over soon.. or buy surprise.
I know that loads of people like the idea of a real challenge. and i definately do!! But many people and somtimes even me need some time where you know that theres not much threat so i think it should be like this in the big cities. but in rural areas should be easy to survive
Turning would be bad, but there would be some comfort in knowing it would all be over soon. My wife turning would be horrifying. How could I possibly shoot her? How could I not, knowing what she had become?
Being surrounded in the near pitch dark by the sounds of shuffling, scraping, screaming zombies would be horrifying! And all the more so if they were eating someone who was still alive!
I imagine scavenging a burnt out shell of a building, stagnant water pooled in areas due to water main breaks, flies buzzing in horrendous droves, cockroaches, and sewer rats-who have surfaced-clicking around unchecked.
I am a young survivor, and am not paying attention to the time. Soon, the sun is setting and I am many flights up in the dilapidated building I am scavenging. The dark of night lays over me. I know my only light source will soon be my flashlight. The city is without power.
I peer out a broken window to determine how much time I have. Do I need to risk the extra sound and run down the stairs? As I am looking, I notice on the street below me two zombies in front of the building across the street. They are sluggishly wrestling, pushing and pulling each other. One bites the other on the forearm. I hear a faint crack from where I stand on the fifth floor. I look down quickly to control my urge to vomit. On the street below, directly in front of my window, lies a corpse, broken and twisted. It takes me a moment, then I realize why the window I am standing at is broken. I’ve gotta get out of here. I turn quickly to go. As I am reaching the door to the suite I’ve been scavenging, I hear what sounds like the squeaking belt of a worn car engine, faintly echoing off the buildings on the street below. The sound is growing louder. Good, maybe I won’t have to walk back in the dark. I’ve got a few things I could trade. I go back to the window to try and locate the car. Instead, I see a zombie, running toward the building I am in. One of its legs is locked at the knee, and watching the thing catapult itself down the street makes my knees hurt. As it is getting closer, the squeeling sound is growing louder. Behind this running zombie, I see many others moving in the same direction, toward me. Some shuffle, some stutter and hop at a jog’s pace. Two more are running, screaming, pushing slower zombies out of their way. Those who fall are trampled. The first runner is close now, and incredibly loud. It hasn’t taken a breath. It just keeps screaming. I watch it dive headfirst into the body of the person who jumped from my window. What am I doing? I’ve got to get the _ out of here.
There are zombies in the stairs below. Why are they in here? Do they smell me? How do I get out? After a short, panicked search, I locate an old elevator. The thing has a crank on the inside of it similar to a grain elevator. It must have been from the original building design. I decide it’s worth a try. I can see by the markings on the shaft wall I am nearing the lobby when I hear a low creak, and the elevator car drops the last flight, into the basement. The crash is loud. My left ankle is hurt. I won’t be getting upstairs to the lobby using that thing. I step carefully into the dark of the basement. I hear the moans, the shuffling, stomping, adn constant screaming of the many zombies above me. How long do I have before they find a way down here?
I hope that wasn’t obnoxious . . .
whoa, wow another great post !, im seriously excited to be playing with you guys in the future. If the servers are going to filled with folks like you, were going to have one hell of a scary and exciting time!
wow, awesome story!
Thanks much.
Wat scares me the most, like some of the others is being alone and knowing there is danger near but not knowing where it is or where its coming from, for example (and its pretty pathetic lol) in minecraft wen im mining and i here that gurgling sound the creeper makes or the monsterspawner music or any of the monsters for that matter i instantly stop and look around and start placing torches every where and blocking up tunnels where they might be.
) and sound along with other things like Imagery, unpredictability, and “starving the player” were all components developers used to “Scare the hell out of players one design at a time.”
I think some of that fear comes from knowing that wen u die u lose everything that was in your inventory, this is something that would be interesting to see in class 3/4 and would be a nice ingredient for fear along with sound.
I read this article in gameinformer a few months ago issue 211 the name of the article was fear factors by Annete Gonzalez (yes i went back and looked up the article 4 u guys
~ Fears and Excitement ~
Many of us living in North America have known only relative peace and security all our lives. ( YES- there are exceptions all over the place…I know. )
I imagine waking up to a world where ALL comforts and security are lost – and the closest parallel is one of constant warfare.
In human societies, even open warfare must have it’s predictable moments. There will be a break sometime because humans need to rest. Some things are expected and can be prepared for. Opposing human forces may decide to disengage, retreat and regroup to attack later – or even make peace.
Humans have never faced an unrelenting enemy that does not get demoralized, will not, and cannot give up, and does not need to rest.
I can now take NOTHING for granted.
I may be assaulted at any moment.
I have no assurance that I can find security anywhere !
This was captured beautifully in “28 Days Later” where Jim returns to his family home. He hoped to find comfort, shelter and his parents. Instead he was attacked and nearly killed in a surprise attack by Rage Virus Infected persons. The shock and horror of that moment is intense.
That kind of constant uncertainty really scares me.
Every living person will crave SECURITY to no end, and so Survivors will band together out of Necessity.
It simply is not practical to face the Zombie Apocalypse as a lone wolf. Who will guard your back ? What if you get injured or surrounded ? Even if you are Rambo – how long can you keep your eyes open ?
Even if I am fortunate enough to achieve a fairly secure base, I’m going to have to leave that base sometime in search of supplies, and other recruitable survivors.
The very thought of having to leave my base with limited knowledge of enemy movements fills me with tension, fear and excitement.
The thought that I might be able to win the game of survival ( for the next few hours or even for TODAY ) – is exciting – and terrifying.
~ ~ ~
As I am a living human I MUST be able to eat, hydrate, shit, sleep and find shelter from the elements or die of starvation, dehydration, go mad from sleep deprivation, or perish from exposure to the elements.
* Oh yeah -if the shit piles up – Cholera, Dysentry or other illnesses and water contamination is a possibility too !
~ ~ ~
Every living person will crave SECURITY to no end – unless they are psychotic or sociopaths – and that scares me too !
Human Predators may well try to kill me and mine for the resources they think we have. * ( I imagine furiously wanting to destroy those who would make such a choice. )
So in this world – the beast in mankind is unleashed. It will be up to us to create enclaves of civilization.
Without these enclaves, civilization ( and perhaps all Humanity ) will fall and never rise again.
Being able to create an Enclave excites me. It would give rise to many “Mad Max” moments – because there will always be a tension between those who are only looking out for themselves – and those who want to hope for a future for Humanity.
I want to capture moments of Hope !
I feel strongly that we would need to band together – or perish separately.
A new society might emerge, one with a warrior culture and a cooperative system based on mutual security. Might we see the rise of a new Sparta ?
A more Dystopian version might be something like Bartertown – where there is some security -but people still prey on each other.
I realize that some of these ideas may be beyond the scope of your envisioned game… think of them as rays of hope in a very dark apocalyptic scenario.
*** Sources of Inspiration ***
Lucifer’s Hammer – by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Postman – by David Brin
Mad Max – the Road Warrior
Mad Max – Beyond Thunderdome
Being alone would scare me the most in a zombie apacalypse.
I love this game already but a few things I think it needs are stuff like any zombie is killed by a headshot except huge mutant zombies and you should be able to melee, but even if it doesn’t kill them, it knocks them back to give you a fighting chance
I think for scares not only from zombies but say other actual players. make it so we can set up “scare crows” such as real corpses on a stake to scare away people trying to take our base. Maybe even a way to capture zombies and keep them chained up. Just the element of making it to where the players can make the world a little scarier in their own way because the collapse of civilization will always make a few crazy people.
What i love in a zombie apocylapse is that you can kill people and have no remoarse. Also i want to be able to taunt the zombies and like shout at them to distract them so my buddie can get past them to grab supplies.
Haha this should be fun killing some zombies with lotd of friends leaveing some behind when bite or traped is going to be fun but my have bad sides like them wanting there pay back hell i know i whould
If you’re open to suggestions and ideas, I’ve always thought it would be cool to fortify a vehicle (bus, rv, etc) so your fortified home is mobile in case things get too hot in any one area. Secondly, making the character able to outfit himself/herself with protective gear (helmet, eyewear, gloves, thick long sleeve clothing) to help prevent being bitten. I’ve never understood how nobody in any zombie movies ever considered wearing proper gear when facing zombies. They’re always running around in tank tops, short sleeves, etc just asking to get scratched/bit or be infected by splattering blood. I would love to see these ideas incorporated into the game. Thanks for your time.
He’s right, it would be really awesome if you could use proper protective clothes, for example a really thick leather jacket. It would be nice if you could go to a museum and steal an armor, plates metal armor. Nobody can bite metal after all. It would also be better if all the zombies hunt as an individual, a screamer that attracts other zombies or zombies that can sprint would suck. In resume no superpowers, no group work for the zombies and different clothes to choose from.
Looking at Max’s post i thought it would be pretty unrealistic to have mutant zombies like in Left 4 Dead… Isn’t it a virus? How would it mutate them?? I think it should be just people that are like rotting or covered in blood. Also, I agree with the melee being able to help you a little bit but not really push them back (definitely not like L4D!). If somebody your size was running at you and you were just standing there and stabbed them with a knife as they ran into you, it wouldn’t push them back… *But if you hit them really hard with a bat it might stop them/knock them down!
I liked the ideas of being able to have mobile homes and being able to add metal and protect them making them bullet proof. Also the person that said you could tie somone up to a tree or somthing is good to scare people off. But an idea that i had is being able to tie up another online character and leave them for dead giving you a sense of power and vulnerability!!