An Ode to Zombies (EN)

Zombies and why I love them in games

They chase living prey moaning “braiiiiins”. They shuffle along aimlessly with arms outstretched until they find warm flesh. They climb atop each other to build flesh pyramids like decomposing siege engineers. The word zombie can conjure a slew of different images depending on who you ask and which type of series, movie, or novel the questioned recently consumed. Zombies have been ubiquitous on screen and page for over a decade and the sheer number of stories in the genre has produced a plethora of different versions of the undead, as well as the type of narrative they star in.

For this article, the archetypical zombie – you can call it the Romero Ghoul if you want to be specific – has the following characteristics: A deceased human body that has risen and regained enough semblance of life to move about and sense a variety of stimuli. If it senses a living being, it is driven to approach and consume it. It mostly moves with a shambling and clumsy gait, but on ideal, unobstructed terrain or downhill it can reach a slow jog. If they still have their eyes, they can see about as well as a living person. Same goes for their hearing, though the fact that they don’t blabber much except for the occasional moan, and that they spend most of their time standing around in silent environments, makes them surprisingly good listeners. To take down and consume their prey, they rip, bite and tear with teeth and hands. The zombie fighting style is not very sophisticated but completely uninhibited and relentless. The bite is the most dangerous because it can turn the victim into a ghoul through a bacteria- or virus-like process. If the victim does not die from their injuries right away, an infection progresses from the wound which results in death after about a day. Chopping off an affected limb is the only way to stop the process once a bite has occurred. To destroy a Romero Ghoul, it is necessary to cause considerable damage to the brain or remove the head completely. Bodily trauma does not affect them unless it hinders their ability to move, sense or consume. Note, however, that losing an arm, leg or jaw does not actually hurt a zombie, it just makes their day-to-day unlife more difficult. The undead’s mental functions are typically reduced to those dealing with sensing, consuming and movement, there are several narrative settings – chief among them that of the “X of the Dead” cycle by George A. Romero – where zombies in an idle state start to mimic basic routines from their former lives, visiting favourite places, pantomiming jobs, grabbing tools etc. How far this behaviour goes and in how far it calls the zombies’ mindlessness in question is a setting-specific question I will not go into here.

There are several sub-types that, while deviating from these classic characteristics, are counted as part of the zombie genre. The first type I want to highlight here is the Infected. Popularized by movies like 28 Days Later, these antagonists are not in fact undead – what makes them zombies in a broad sense is their mindlessness and drive to kill the living. As the name implies, a virus is typically the cause for a transformation from normal person to movie monster. The infection causes an unstoppable compulsion to attack uninfected persons, spreading the disease by fluid transfer. It is important to note that they retain the full range of human mobility while losing all inhibitions. Consequently, they tend to be even more mobile than an uninfected person once they set their sights on someone. While this readiness for physical exertion may seem admirable from a fitness standpoint, it invariably goes hand in hand with a total disregard for a balanced diet. The Infected typically don’t eat their victims or anything else. Waiting for and attacking the uninfected is their one overriding agenda. Since they are basically just sick people, the Infected are susceptible to bodily trauma just like healthy persons, but their single mindedness gives them a near total resistance to pain and mental exhaustion.

The two zombie variants above are quite different from each other and there are two noteworthy hybrids between them that keep turning up in stories. Hybrid one is the Runner Zombie. This is simply a Romero Ghoul that retains the full range of movement of a living person and, since the undead do not grow tired or have a sense of self-preservation, they even outpace any living person in the long run (pun not intended). While this change is small on paper, on a setting level it ramps up the threat level of the scenario to eleven. What would have traditionally been a Night of the Living Dead is now a Night of the Homicidal Athletes. The second hybrid type is the Multistage Zombie. This is simply a chronological connection of Infected and Romero Ghoul (or other type of “actually deceased zombie”). In this scenario a healthy person gets infected with some kind of pathogen that initiates the Infected stage characterized by frenzied movement and aggression. Once the unfortunate subject is taken down or dies from other causes, they rise as a more traditional shambling undead. The Multistage Zombie is an attractive choice for narratives that cover an extended period because they give the author an opportunity to vary between scenes of frenzied activity and slow burn, looming threat.

Ok, time to talk about zombies in games now, and why they make such great antagonist-obstacles here. Taking the Romero Ghoul as a starting point, the artificial intelligence needed to make a credible and authentic zombie is minimal: It needs a small basic movement (ability to shamble towards a target, to go prone and get up), an attack mode (usually a grab/bite), a reaction to damage received (stumble back and/or fall over, permanently if from head trauma) and finally, a threshold for the type and strength of stimuli the creature reacts to (typically visual range and sound levels). Obviously, this simple feature set for an enemy to fight/avoid is not enough to carry the gameplay. The zombie only shows his true range when combined with specific level design features. Modify those features, you can completely change what it means to face zombies in a game. The game Dead Island is a perfect example to illustrate this. The game starts with the player outside a tropical beach resort after a zombie outbreak has already spread everywhere. This location features lots of open spaces like beaches, pool areas, wide roads, and parking lots. In this environment, a zombie or group of them serves only as a minor obstacle. In many cases, the player could just walk around them. Other options include destroying them with plentiful improvised melee weapons (kicking a prone zombie is a great social activity in multiplayer) or luring/pushing them into environmental hazards - even without the outbreak, the resort would a hilariously unsafe place, having as many volatile propane tanks lying about as paying guests, and the zombies go inert when immersed in water. Overall, this first area is a good place to learn in peace how to deal with the game’s hazards using the tools it gives you. The game then leads the player(s) into enclosed spaces like a hotel parking garage, and the next big area: the Island’s main city and its slum district. These new spaces completely revamp the tactical threat the zombies pose. Enclosed spaces with low visibility and many nooks and crannies turn their passivity into a strength as they can lurk in blind spots everywhere. Sudden encounters provide little time to react, the sudden noise often alerts additional enemies and there is limited room to manoeuvre. The almost light-hearted (if violent) atmosphere of the pool-and-beach map suddenly turns much more tense and threatening. Upon reaching the slum, this trend continues. The overrun urban space ramps up the number of zombies and adds a measure of verticality to the spaces. In the narrow, debris-blocked streets with multistorey buildings and elevated walkways, danger can now come from any direction including above, and a sense of disorientation can easily lead the players into dead ends.

The above example illustrates how level design can significantly alter the experience of the zombie threat on a tactical level despite their behavioural simplicity being the same. A similar changeability on a strategic scale can be seen if you increase the time frame and/or geographical scale of the scenario in question. This typically occurs in games of the role playing (RPG), real time strategy (RTS) and strategy genres, where the increase in scale is not only a narrative detail but also characterizes gameplay. The whole zombie schtick of infecting their victims only becomes relevant when you have the game-mechanical framework to deal with it. Such gameplay loops can include how to deal with, delay or cure infection in characters you do not want to lose, or how to plan a settlement layout so outbreaks can be contained by physical barriers. A good example for this is the 2014 indie RPG Dead State by DoubleBear Productions. In this game you lead a small Texan community of survivors holed up in a school during a zombie outbreak lasting several months. You are tasked with managing and defending your base, staging forays for resources into surrounding locations and recruiting additional survivors with important skill sets. During this, you have to fight in a tactical combat system against zombies as well as hostile survivors, and consequently also handle injuries and sickness in your community. The undead here are classic Romero ghouls, but the infection process comes with a twist. Infection from a zombie leads to death within a day, however it can be delayed indefinitely through regular administration of antibiotics. Since the local infrastructure has collapsed, antibiotics are scarce, and they are often needed when work or combat injuries occur. An infected survivor is a constant drain on this vital resource and the question soon arises how important that person’s skillset is for the group. Of course, since it’s an RPG, if you decide to stop treating the character you must deal with the social fallout because nobody is an island. They usually are someone’s spouse/friend/child/parent/lover. Hilarity ensues. The game clearly gains an interesting gameplay loop because the infection process has time to shine in this scenario. The second example I want to put forth is the 2019 real time strategy game They are Billions by Numantian Games. Careful observers will soon infer that increased numbers of zombies are a feature of the setting here, though to avoid spoilers I will not say how many they are. In true RTS fashion, the player is tasked with building a sizeable colony on a large map with terrain features like forests, lakes, plains, and mountains. Using steampunk technology, the colony must include housing, material and food production facilities, and defensive structures like walls, watchtowers etc. The player also must train an army out of different infantry types to guard the buildings and explore the sizeable map. The core of the colony is always made up of vulnerable housing blocks, the capacity of which determines how much stuff you can build. The map is filled with zombies milling about who react to any build-up of sound, be it from soldiers in an engagement or construction work. Due to terrain features, startled zombies often form large groups before emerging from the fog of war and can easily overwhelm improvised defences. If a zombie reaches a housing block, it starts infecting it. Construction processes in RTSes are thankfully sped up compared to reality so it takes seconds to build something, not hours – but so is the infection process here. Within seconds, the infected building will spawn additional undead who attack nearby buildings and units in turn. Infection waves like this are extremely hard to stop with soldiers alone and often lead to a game over unless you had enough foresight to use terrain features and construction to prepare for the worst-case scenario. As mentioned before, perceptive players already know to expect zombie numbers higher than hundreds or even thousands. Periodically the colonization effort is interrupted by the arrival of gargantuan hordes. You are always warned of their approach ahead of time so you can focus your defences on promising chokepoints and similar terrain features. If you do everything right, you have enough barriers to slow the horde’s advance long enough for your soldiers to destroy them all. Having to deal with zombie numbers in the thousands using construction and human resources demands a different mindset than going toe-to-toe with them on a tactical level. At this point, your enemy resembles a liquid more than an individual monster. The task is to build a dam which can withstand a surge. Terrain features define how much pressure your barrier will have to face moment to moment (how many zombies can reach the wall to attack it at once while the rest must stay back and wait their turn). How long will the barrier hold before breaking under this constant pressure? That is the time span your soldiers behind the wall will have to destroy as many zombies as possible. The unit makeup of your army determines how many individuals the horde can be reduced by moment to moment. You will win if you manage to reduce the pressure to zero before the mass spills through the wall into your colony and infects it. Morbidly, regarding this calculation the soldiers’ fleshy bodies count as the final bricks in the wall. Once the bricks start joining the enemy, you know you’re screwed (sounds like something Sun Tzu would say when drunk).

Most games tend to spice up their zombie roster with a smaller number of special undead to add variety to long term gameplay. This usually includes some variant or infected who is more mobile, a tank-like creature who can take huge amounts of damage before going down, creatures that throw, spit or shoot, and an enemy type that explodes upon death and must therefore be kept at range if possible. While the above specials create many interesting gameplay situations it is the multitude of vanilla zombies that do most of the leg work, and they deserve recognition (this would be a good place to advocate for zombie unions, too). The concept of the zombie is extremely easy to grasp but opens up myriad narrative and gameplay scenarios to explore. When not put in the spotlight, they are unassuming and modest enough to blend into the background and partner with other narrative genres. Other classic monsters like vampires or xenomorphs usually demand a certain story focus on themselves or it becomes difficult to justify their inclusion.

I could go on and on gushing about those decomposing darlings, but I must get back to my game of They are Billions. Those stupid mutants keep disrupting the harmony of my zombie apocalypse. Oh, and if it were up to the spell checker, instead of by the undead the world would be overrun by hordes of sundaes.