By John Walker on July 4th, 2012 at 6:00 pm.
Sure, you roll your eyes when you hear about yet another zombie game. But you still play them, don’t you? One you can play for free in its alpha form is I Shall Remain, a top-down squad-based zombie shooter, in which you shoot at zombies and survive. Me describe games good.
It’s very definitely still in an alpha state, but it’s completely playable. Certain aspects are missing, like the map, and the squad AI is currently pretty useless. But that really doesn’t matter a huge amount as you gather up guns and shoot the oncoming hordes.
I’d say this is a fair way off being something that will be particularly satisfying. Not just the overly slow movement of your character (running is an option, but it drains stamina, etc), but the whole thing has a clunky feel at the moment. But then that’s what alphas are for. I think it needs to be significantly smoothed out, perhaps learn a few lessons from the sense of pace of various Alien Shooter clones.
Take a look for yourself. It’s on Desura as a free download. It looks decent, there’s some lovely lighting, and the music is utterly fantastic.
I Shall Remain – Alpha Release Trailer July 2012 – Desura
04/07/2012 at 18:05 Enzo says:
I want all the zombie games to die, then ressurect so I can kill them again.
04/07/2012 at 18:38 Arkh says:
And I want a zombie survival simulator complete with destructible terrain and objects, scavenging, NPCs, dynamic world that changes with the time, one you can build anywere and build your fort in any building, with a random generated map and no PZ won’t do because (nothing against Isometric view, I personally love it) isometric view in a real-time game where you depend on your sight to survive is shit. And DayZ has no building.
So, until a game with some modest graphics and the said caracteristics above is produced, the zombie genre can’t die.
Also, a surviving in the wild simulator with similar features would be nice. Or a pre-historic survival simulator… hm…
04/07/2012 at 18:58 SirKicksalot says:
Cliffy B’s Fortnite?
04/07/2012 at 19:11 Arkh says:
Could be. But almost no details have been released, and it looks cartoonish. Although if does all this things right, I wouldn’t complaint at all.
Also, Fort Zombie don’t count. It has almost everything, except make your fort anywere, destructible environments and sandbox infinite play (game’s over after final invasion). BUT – the game is shit.
05/07/2012 at 12:25 Felixader says:
I prefer cartoonish to be honest. It is the reason why games like LoZelda – Wind Waker, the Paper Mario Games and things like Jet set Radio and Viewtifull Joe still are amazing looking games.
04/07/2012 at 19:21 LennyLeonardo says:
Pre-historic survival sumulator, yes please! Bit like Stalker, but with sabretooth tigers instead of mutants and subtitled grunting instead of Russian. Mammoths. Craftable flint. Oh my.
04/07/2012 at 19:37 Arkh says:
I wish. I even thought on trying to develop these games on my own. Like Grand Strategy is a genre basically Paradox develops, I would be (at least for a time) one of the only ones to develop survival simulator games. Surviving in the apocalypse, surviving in the zombie apocalypse, surviving in chernobyl, surviving in a urban area when society colapsed and people form tribes, surviving in pre histoy, surviving in medieval times, etc.
But what I learned from all this is that I suck at developing games. And at coming up games names.
04/07/2012 at 20:07 wodin says:
Paradox are the only ones to develop Grand Strat Games? Oh come on, open your eyes mate.
04/07/2012 at 21:51 HexagonalBolts says:
ahhhh, the ideas, the beautiful ideas. How can such a small thread come up with ten of them but mega corporations like EA and activision with zero of them?
04/07/2012 at 23:50 LionsPhil says:
Would Phil Harding from Time Team voice the tutorial for that mechanic?
05/07/2012 at 03:58 Arkh says:
No, I’d rather have Bruce Bradley from Exeter do it. He really knows how to flint knap.
05/07/2012 at 04:04 InternetBatman says:
I always wanted this.
04/07/2012 at 21:48 HexagonalBolts says:
Arkh those are exactly my feelings. As I said before in one of the DayZ threads: it just seems so obvious – why does it not exist? Even with extremely simple graphics, a zombie game that allowed you to REALLY interact with your environment would be just incredible.
05/07/2012 at 04:11 Arkh says:
I don’t really know why they didn’t come up with this idea. Or better, someone probably had this idea but dropped for some reason. I think it’s not really the trend now like plataformers, 2D side-scrollings and shooters are in the Indie and Corporation scene.
I still imagine the panic when trying to sneak through a lot of zombies, being detected and running to a nearby bulding, piling up furniture in the entrance and frantically trying to find a good exit. Or setting up my fort on a Police Station, Fire Department, a Prison or a simple house, to ambush other scavengers or to hide in the basement, Meeting other survivors groups – be they NPC or humans(although if the game was a MMO we would end with a bunch of survivor groups raping lone players), and interacting with them. I imagine shooting right by their entrance just to attract a horde to their doors, for fun or to wipe them out.
PZ do a decent work, but the Isometric view and the way zombies spawn don’t really work for me. They have excellent sight and pathfind, seeing you through windows while you frantically try to close the curtains and not open/close the window, and even if you are in the 2nd floor, they break the ground level windows and come right to your bedroom. Roguelikes can have all this, and I love Dwarf Fortress, but to games like this I rather have a first or third person view. Or if they did build a game like this in the SIlent Storm engine I would be happy.
05/07/2012 at 09:35 Zakski says:
Have you guys ever heard of Urban Dead? Its f2p, no in-game store at all bit abstracted zombie mmo
04/07/2012 at 23:59 superstepa says:
So
The cataclysm roguelike
I mean if you can stand the ASCII graphics it is all you are asking for (and maybe even more)
07/07/2012 at 06:57 Geen says:
Cataclysm is that game. Play it. Now.
05/07/2012 at 07:25 Fuzzball says:
The Dead Linger. It’s a very promising Kickstarter project that succeeded, and it fits almost all of those criteria. Check it out!
05/07/2012 at 07:45 Arkh says:
You are indeed right. This kickstarter funded game seems what I’m looking for, except for the part of not having NPCs and maybe destructible terrain. Even without that, if done right it’s worth it. I just hope it really get released.
There’s always the chance the game turns out to be a FPS with some RPG and building. When instead of running from a mob of zombies you got to shoot them, even with 16 guys, it means it’s more like a FPS than a survival game. But I can’t know for sure since I never saw it done, and I’m hoping the game will be awesome.
05/07/2012 at 10:37 Mouse says:
I think the majority of people who play / read about these sort of games want a game like this. Hopefully a team can pick up this sort of idea and actually do something with it.
05/07/2012 at 21:15 bronze says:
@Arkh a game already exists that meets almost all of your criteria, its called Rogue Survivor and its free. http://roguesurvivor.blogspot.com/
It lets you do all that your asking for. It has a dynamic world, randomly generated with customization options to just about everything. It is however turn based. Also graphics obviously were not priority in this roguelike but fans have made tile sets. Its a bit obtuse at first but once you get used to it, it is a fun fort building survivor sim with zombies.
Here is a review from a player to get the gist.
http://stuartgames.blogspot.com/2012/05/roguelike-review-rogue-survivor.html
05/07/2012 at 02:17 HaVoK308 says:
I will never understand people wishing for particular games or genres to die. Not interested? Stay away. Simple enough. But nah, one must constantly seek out things they have no interest in just to inform those who do how wrong they are.
Obnoxious.
04/07/2012 at 18:20 Beelzebud says:
Zombies are definitely the new World War II in video game land.
04/07/2012 at 18:25 Spengbab says:
Oh hey, an electronic video game software package in which you shoot at undead. How novel.
04/07/2012 at 18:26 gschmidl says:
No. No, I don’t play them. Not even if they’re free.
04/07/2012 at 18:36 Njordsk says:
same here, didn’t play a zombies game since L4D2 demo.
i’m not much into zombie thingies.
04/07/2012 at 21:19 Hmm-Hmm. says:
Me neither. I guess I could try out L4D some day, though.
05/07/2012 at 00:13 Quarex says:
Left 4 Dead is not the kind of zombie game that people really want, though. Left 4 Dead is about zombies about as much as Day Z is about a military simulator: they are both fundamental parts of the whole, yet the “feeling” is totally off. There are precious few zombie games that feel anything like the reasons zombie movies are satisfying.
05/07/2012 at 17:10 plugmonkey says:
Frankly, there are precious few zombie movies these days that feel anything like what makes zombie movies satisfying.
It’s not about blasting zombies.
L4D is a great game. It’s not really, nor does it ever pretend to be, a zombie game. It’s a co-op shooter, and its enemies are entirely designed to support it being a fantastic co-op shooter.
If you’ve skipped over it just because you’re bored of zombies, you’ve missed one of the greatest games of this generation. Get three friends together.
04/07/2012 at 18:28 hypercrisis says:
Slow news day, eh?
04/07/2012 at 19:22 LennyLeonardo says:
Might be one of those fast ones that’re popular these days.
04/07/2012 at 18:30 Drake Sigar says:
“Sure, you roll your eyes when you hear about yet another zombie game. But you still play them, don’t you?”
Yes! Help me, I can’t stop!
04/07/2012 at 21:51 phylum sinter says:
Nein. You have to give me more than zombies these days. Much much more.
05/07/2012 at 00:17 Nick says:
I’d like Dead island done better (hopefully DI 2) and a “proper” zombie game (hopefully Dead State). Other than that I don’t play them and don’t really care about the slew of somewhat tedious shooters they mostly seem to be.
05/07/2012 at 00:54 callmeclean says:
I knew there was another awesome use for stem cells. And now they have discovered it, creating zombie games.
05/07/2012 at 01:55 amisylili says:
Frozen French fries production line
Frozen French Fries production line covers the whole process from French fries making to its packing. Steaming, slicing and smoking machines can make your meat processing more easily.
05/07/2012 at 08:00 Sisco says:
This is a good example why I love to read RPS. I couldn´t give two shits about yet another zombie game, but the style of writing so prominent on this site got me to click the jump anyway, just to see what came next.
So, thanks for that.
05/07/2012 at 09:13 LTK says:
Looks like it plays a bit like Alien Swarm. I wonder if they got any inspiration from it?