So it looks like zombies games are here to stay. The past three years has seen a shuffling horde of undead adventures, from open-world indie role-player State of Decay to Popcap’s light-hearted blast-’em-up Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare. These senescent monsters just refuse to lay down and die.
Of course, as cinema has taught us, zombies can be endlessly re-invented for new generations. In the 1970s and 1980s, they were used to explore everything from Cold War paranoia to rampant consumerism, through the films of Lucio Fulci and George A Romero. In the 1990s and 2000s, Danny Boyle and Marc Forster have used them to consider the lurking horror of global pandemics, with the zombie apocalypse becoming a handy symbol for bird flu and ebola. Zombies also suit today’s epic sensibilities: they attack in massive swarms which looks cool on the big screen, and they are relentless and therefore easy to franchise. Just look at the ever-transmogrifying Resident Evil series.
This week sees the release of sandbox zombie chiller Dying Light and later in the year we’ll get Dead Island 2, newer builds of DayZ and an Xbox One edition of State of Decay. So if we accept that zombies are here to stay, what’s next for the monster who can give us everything except beauty tips?
Zombie strategy
We’re already seeing zombie games that give you control over undead characters: in Dying Light you’re able to troll other players by taking over one of the game’s more terrifying night beasts. But how about a title that lets you play as an undead commander, strategically deploying a mass of zombies against an army of human survivors? Imagine Zombie Pikmin, where players group their monsters into squads then point them toward their prey. Or Zombie Dynasty Warriors, where you’re commanding from the front line as your degenerating squadron battles human victims. And there’s always Zombie: Total War. Creative Assembly must have considered it – if only at the pub of a Friday. Sure, there have been a few indie games that have toyed with these themes, but a big, sweeping Triple A tactical zombie blockbuster would certainly have legs. Until they rotted off, of course.
Zombie sports
I mean, why does Fifa have no zombie mode? It’s crazy. Imagine having to make a substitution after 10 minutes because a rocketing volley has taken your right-back’s arm off. Imagine your Uruguayan striker being shown the red card for devouring the entrails of an opposing defender. You’d probably need larger team sizes to cope with the carnage, with players employing a traditional 400-400-200 formation. (Actually, there is an indie title named Death Penalty: Zombie Football if you want to see this sort of thing in action). Also Zombie PGA Golf! You’d have to carefully measure how hard you wanted to hit the ball against the possibility that your hands would be wrenched off in the process.
Zombie fighting games
Immortal Kombat! Undead or Alive! Hang on, I’m still thinking.
The Sims: Zombie edition
Dress your rapidly decomposing sim in a selection of putrescent rags, customise their necrotising skin conditions, then guide them through a nightmarish never-ending semi-existence. Perhaps your unloveable creation will want to hangout at the shopping mall, like in Dawn of the Dead, hammering on the locked doors for a few days; or maybe they’ll lurk in the loos at a petrol station, hoping for a human survivor who forgets to check behind the stall door.
Experential zombie art games
Picture this: Resident Evil meets Gone Home. A group of spec-ops soldiers finds itself in a mansion filled with undead monsters – but then utilises this seemingly confrontational scenario as an opportunity for quiet reflection and emotional nourishment. While exploring, players discover notes and recordings that hint at repressed romantic relationships within the Umbrella Corporation. Eventually we come to understand that the T-virus is in fact a symbol for the permanence of human warmth against a backdrop of stultifying societal norms in which notions of death and life are rigorously defined and enforced.
Zombie dating sim
Something about your boyfriend quite literally falling apart.
Where else could zombie games go? Let us know in the comments section.
