…and, how do you think it could be improved?
Back around 2005, I and a friend developed a turn-based tactical game called Zombies. Game play takes place on a grid. Units are either Humans or Zombies, and Humans can be in any of three states: Clueless, Panicked, or Aware. You only control the Aware humans, which are listed on the right (you can select one to move either by clicking them on the gameboard, or in the list). Panicked humans run around at random, and Clueless ones just stand there. An aware unit can inform a clueless one, or calm a panicked one, by moving into them.
Each unit has 1-3 hit points. When a human gets reduced to 0 hit points, it becomes a zombie; when a human is reduced to 0 hit points, it is destroyed.
Humans can attack unarmed, but there are also a variety of weapons scattered around the map (axe, pistol, shotgun, pitchfork, torch, etc.). Each of the weapons has a different behavior; torches, for example, not only do damage, but can catch zombies on fire, which can sometimes spread to neighboring zombies. Ranged weapons can attack from some distance away; melee weapons require stepping right up. Finally, it matters which way units are facing; you’ll do more damage attacking from behind, and also zombies are more likely to attack a unit ahead of them than to turn around and attack one behind.
On each turn, you get to do up to three actions with each of your Aware units (the white dots in the list on the right show how many actions they have left; the red bars are hit points). After you’ve moved all your units, the zombies all move. They move according to fairly simple rules (though there is a small bit of randomness to it).
The game is tactically quite deep. Winning (particularly on the harder difficulty levels) requires carefully balancing a lot of factors: informing/calming other units vs. attacking zombies, going for better weapons vs. attacking with what you’ve got, and planning your moves so as to attack a zombie with several units at once, so your attackers don’t end up converted into more zombies. I feel that each game (which takes about 10-20 minutes) has a good tension curve, as initially the number of zombies tends to increase, and then finally you either have enough well-armed Aware units to overwhelm them, or they overwhelm you.
When I was designing this, I prototyped it with a very crude UI where the units were simply colored squares on a grid. I found it fun, and the folks in the forum I hung out on in those days agreed it was fun to play. So, I thought that when we prettied it up and added sound effects, adjustable gore levels, etc., it would be a hit.
But, it was not. We released it to the Mac App Store, and was greeted with the sound of chirping crickets. Our total sales was something like 4 or 5 units.
(If you want to try it, you can download it for Mac here, or for Windows here, though these files are over 10 years old, and I’m not sure how well they work on modern OSes.)
So. We’re now kicking around the idea of rewriting this in Unity for modern platforms. But it’s not going to be worth it if it meets with the same indifference as before.
I’ve wondered if maybe it’s just too much of a “thinking person’s game” for the theme. Perhaps people looking for zombie games expect something less cerebral and more button-mashy.
What do you think? Is this fundamentally flawed as a concept? Is there any way to make it more appealing?
Thanks,
- Joe
