I spent what felt like a year’s worth of typing hours on the R18+ debate during my stint at Kotaku Australia, so I really don’t have anything else to add. The arguments have been made, the points refuted and the evidence presented. It looks like the only way an R18+ rating is going to happen is if Atkinson falls from power (unlikely, given his seat) or kicks the bucket.
What a horrible state of affairs.
Shortly before moving to Melbourne, I was chatting to my brother about Deadshed to help me get perspective on some of the concepts. From this conversation, I came to the conclusion that I really was just building a complicated duplicate of Zafehouse. A good one, but not unique compared to its predecessor.
It needed spice. Preferably, the sexy type.
We threw about a couple of ideas – air-strikes and such – until we came upon X-Com. I love X-Com. My brother loves X-Com. There aren’t many (sane) people who don’t have a warm spot in an internal organ for it. Particularly, I liked the resource management and base-building aspects.
At first, I thought these subjects were outside the scope of Deadshed. But they’re not. Reinforcing a house or shop to keep out undead invaders? Making sure you have enough ammo for your next fight? These activities sound like base-building and resource management to me. I was always enamoured by the research element as well, and this, if anything, was the most left-field idea to come out of my brotherly musings.
Regardless, I knew I wanted it all in Deadshead.
After pondering it for a little longer, I sold myself on the idea of converting my six survivors into newbie soldiers. Your troop will have to find and secure a building, retrofit rooms to serve their needs (somewhere to keep supplies, a radio room) and send research data off to their HQ in exchange for ammo, food and other bits and pieces. You still have the survival horror thing going, it’s just from a different viewpoint (the armed rescuers) and quite a shift in gameplay from Zafehouse.
Rule against having zombies in your game? Certainly doesn’t exist. Heck, I’d be in an arseload of trouble if it were the case. But my undead-o-meter has been smacking max the last few days and it’s really beginning to hurt.
First, there was World of Warcraft and its zombie invasion. Right, I can handle that. Then Call of Duty: World at War (which, apart from the co-op, is very much in “meh” territory for me) flaunted its unlockable zombie mode.
So, my fill of zombies and gaming was definitely had. The buttons on my pants were undone and to consume another morsel of cadaverous goodness would surely result in something distinctly Monty Python-esque.
Then… bam! Zombies!!! for PSN and Xbox Live Arcade. I’ve played a few games of Zombies!!! the board game and let me just say, well, it’s no Settlers of Catan. It’s very luck-based, and the dogs in the fourth (?) expansion are hardcore to the point of epic fail.
There is such a thing as overexposure and as much as I like zombies, they’re basically the gaming world’s Brangelina right now. It’s almost enough to turn me off Left 4 Dead.
Almost.
I’m writing a sequel. I couldn’t help myself.
My original, completely devious plan was to write an expansion to Zafehouse so players could control building encounters… instead of staring at a steady stream of text, text and text. Yet, as I started hacking away, I found the feature detracted from the simple formula that makes Zafehouse so cool. I decided to split the module, called Deadshed, from Zafehouse and turn it into its own game, with the RPG flavour of SimMMO, another project I’d shelved a while back. The above screenshot is the result.
If I had to make up a genre for it, I’d go for “zombie survival horror RPG”… or something better if I was more creative. The game design itself is in a state of flux (I’ve already rewritten the combat engine), but there are a few details that shouldn’t change that I can share.
Zero Day. It’s a rogue-like in VB.NET that David Kidd and I have been creating on-and-off since September/August of last year. It’s based on the essentially-discontinued Heroic Adventure source.
The current prototype is up on Codeplex if you’d like to take a look, but don’t expect anything wonderful – it’s still under heavy development.
The premise is simple: Zombies. People. Surviving. It sounds a lot like Zafehouse, I know, but as I said the format is much like Nethack or ADOM, and the focus is on avoiding your undead oppressors, rather than facing them down.
Dave’s not exactly up-to-date with programming in VB.NET, but he does understand the concepts behind scripting and the like. So, I’ve slowly been migrating hard-coded data into XML files, so he doesn’t have to delve into the source to change stuff like zombie hit points or infection rates.
I realised quickly however that he’d need more power, more control, if we were to ever shift some of the coding weight from me to him. As such, I’ve started work on a basic scripting engine.
Considering the game’s enjoyed moderate success, and I plan to improve on it from time to time, I decided to grab zafehouse.com and seek out some hosting. I’m almost there, and I’ll let you know when it’s up and running. Might even debut v1.6 to celebrate!
Update: Zafehouse.com is now live. I’ve changed the page graphics as well.
What’s Play day? It’s like a game review, but not. We take a look at the design choices of a particular title, the fun and not-so-fun aspects, then we suggest a quick fix that would improve it and finally, long term plans for success.
The first Play day is Dungeon & Dragons: Tiny Adventures, the Facebook app designed by Wizards of the Coast.
More hilarious shenanigans from me, over at Atomic. This time I prattle on about couches, beds and TVs. Here’s a snippet:
Recently I’ve been serenaded into dreamland by the authoritative yet staggered prose of Captain Kirk. But before that it was MacGyver, and before his mullet-crowned greatness, Dr John Dorian. It’s not unusual these days to see my prone, settee-bound form from the breakfast table, mumbling instructions on how to build a lifelike Zach Braff doll using nothing but a paperclip, duct tape and a photon torpedo.
My tiny zombie opus Zafehouse was picked up by the very readable Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Fantastic stuff, I might add:
Like most of the recent PC-freeware zombie games, it’s looking more at the zombie-survivalist angle rather than the well-explored Resident Evil-esque part. That is, it’s a game about gathering supplies (while avoiding being eaten by zombies) to spend on killing zombies. In other words, it’s about deciding what you want to spend your resources on.
I agree with the criticisms mentioned later in the article (hard to see where perks are going, limited places in buildings), and given the time and resources, I’d love to do a super-improved version.
Trembling Hand’s Dave Kidd also noticed that Zafehouse makes for an excellent diary game.
… is now out. Not that the ball starts rolling until late September. Fun times ahead!
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