Corpseburg Is Zombie Survival On A Google Map

I live in Bath, England, a Georgian city with an abundance of coffee shops and places to buy hummus, but a real lack of hardware stores. This is a problem when I need to buy nails, but also when playing Corpseburg. It's a free browser game in which you attempt to survive a zombie apocalypse, the trick being that it's played upon a Google Map. You provide the starting address, and the locations you're then looting and dying inside are the real shops, pubs and schools nearby.

The game splits Google Maps into grid squares and each movement between those squares puts you at danger from zombies. In each square, you have the option to scout for locations, to fortify a location, or to try to sleep. Scouting for locations is what reveals the nearby restaurants, shops and other businesses that can be broken into and scavenged.

Hardware shops are important because they're a useful place to find weapons and tools for fortification, without which you'll be vulnerable while travelling and vulnerable when sleeping at home at night. I've yet to find a usable weapon in Bath, though I was able to break into my local pub and nab a crate of beer, and to steal some protective boards from the toilets in a local nursery. Hey - it's an apocalypse. See the image above; Jane Austen described Charlcombe as being "sweetly situated in a little green valley," but things have changed.

It's a simple game but fun, and your inevitable demise is more interesting for it having happened in your actual neighbourhood. It almost makes me glad that Google Maps is shit enough to think there's a Debenhams in Woolley, a village of about 12 people.

Corpseburg was released in September and has an official site, but the version on Kongregate linked in the first paragraph is the newest.

Thanks, Free Game Planet.