Poll: What if a zombie game took place in 1916?

[Nomad]

Better yet, what about a zombie game set in historically accurate Medieval times? Imagine, you're a knight riding through hordes of peasant zombies on your horse; hacking at them with a massive claymore. Awesomesauce.

Agreed, take it one step further. The black death even provides a fitting backstory.

 

[Deadarm]

I would definately try it.

 

[-Orgasmatron-]

I think that would be awesome, the lack of modern weaponary would make you more vulnerable and actually make the game scary. Also I think the scenery and general feel of the time could work very well in terms of atmosphere.

On a side note, have you played Eternal Darkness? If not you should, I think you'd like it.

 

[Baby Eater]

sounds pretty intresting but some things *coughracismcough* would be a lil inappropriate to show now.
pirate era zombies anyone?

 

[Spaghetti]

Sounds interesting.
I'd also like to have a War of the Worlds game set in Victorian times, maybe a bit of a guerilla fighting element.

I refer you to Jeff The Waynes War of The Worlds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Wayne%27s_The_War_of_the_Worlds

It's a very old RTS on the Playstation...but not really guerilla fighting.
Plus, if there was a modern War of the Worlds game that had any resemblance to the original concept, it would have to be set in victorian times. like the book.

Anyway, it would be worth a go. I can just imagine a zombie hoard slowly crossing No Man's Land as the Allies (or Axis, take your pick) trys to fight them off with Artillary, Machine Guns and Bayonets

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I have one problem with this idea.

There were 37 million killed in the First World War. Even with a 1% infection rate, Humanity is doomed.

Actually, second problem: Home Rule happened around that time in Ireland. That would make Ireland a full scale warzone.

 

[Nickolai77]

*snip*

Good ideas, are your characters based on real people though? I would keep them firmly fictional, especially because WW1 has a strong emotive attachment to British history. Still, i like the concept of Anglo-German co-operation, i would start off the game with a brutal battle or two between the Brit's (Or canadians, whoever you choose) against the German's, so the gamer gets the hang of the control's, get's some of the horrer element, and to show of some smexy visuals. Then, when the Allies and the German's start co-operating to survive the zombie onslaught there could be a nice juxtaposition element there, and room for plenty of drama.

You serious that some developers won't make a game unless there is an American in it?

Seriously, that suck's, i've played many WW2 games with no Brit's or Empire&Commonwealth troops in it, why carn't the American gaming market do the same?

I would not bother with the American character, especially if your setting this in 1915, only insert American's if a sequel is made set in 1918. The European market will buy it, the German's would be glad to meet a few "good" NPC's. Similarly the French might buy into it as well, after all the war was heavily fought on their turf, and the French fought in it as well.
I would create a "hard ass" French soldier character, just to challenge sterotypes, and have him die heroically.

 

[Windexglow]

OK, dammit. You got me. Congratulations. I've practically made this game for you...

You enjoyed that, didn't you? I never really put a lot of thought into setting it actually near the front lines until the replies this topic got. For starters it'd give me a lot more nationalities of weapons, zombie models would be easily limited to uniforms (and a single gender). The town you gave is a tad small but easily enlarged. Thanks for writing all of that up
And with it being set near the front lines would give me some much-needed experience in modeling destroyed buildings.


As for the racism - I didn't mean make blacks stereotypical, I mean make it harder for a white(racist) man to join your group if you have black members in it, and things like that.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

Have an Australian as the Main Character and then i'd think its Good maybe you could set it in Gallipoli

Yeah the aussies did kick ass more then anyone else in ww1

British commander: We need to make a distraction while we flank Turkey.
It's a big cliff, complete suicide mission with heavy casualites and whoever is there will most deffinatly lose and die.

Austraian general stumbles in. He's completely drunk and unshaven.

ANZAC General: Err G'day, Sorry I'm late... what'd I miss?

British general smiles slyly....

several months later:

ANZAC General: I'm back. I took that cliff you asked me too, now what?

I lol'd hard at this!

OT: I would like to play it it would seem cool!

 

[Chipperz]

*snip*

Good ideas, are your characters based on real people though? I would keep them firmly fictional, especially because WW1 has a strong emotive attachment to British history. Still, i like the concept of Anglo-German co-operation, i would start off the game with a brutal battle or two between the Brit's (Or canadians, whoever you choose) against the German's, so the gamer gets the hang of the control's, get's some of the horrer element, and to show of some smexy visuals. Then, when the Allies and the German's start co-operating to survive the zombie onslaught there could be a nice juxtaposition element there, and room for plenty of drama.

You serious that some developers won't make a game unless there is an American in it?

Seriously, that suck's, i've played many WW2 games with no Brit's or Empire&Commonwealth troops in it, why carn't the American gaming market do the same?

I would not bother with the American character, especially if your setting this in 1915, only insert American's if a sequel is made set in 1918. The European market will buy it, the German's would be glad to meet a few "good" NPC's. Similarly the French might buy into it as well, after all the war was heavily fought on their turf, and the French fought in it as well.
I would create a "hard ass" French soldier character, just to challenge sterotypes, and have him die heroically.

I don't think there's an actual developer that wouldn't make a game unless there are Americans in it, but I do get the sense that some developers in the US will "write about what they know" and not even bother to try to include characters of other nationalities. I also know for a fact that a game concept I'm developing at the moment set in a post apocalyptic England has had a faction of guerilla fighters turned to American refugees to make it more marketable to a US audience (so I made the two main characters Ellen Page and Samuel L. Jackson - HELL YEAH!).

Also, those characters are completely made up. All of those pictures come from the first page of a Google image search for 'French Peasant' 'British World War 1 Officer' etc, with a background that I pulled out my ar... Made up for them. I like the idea of the American being replaced with a French soldier, but meh, it's Windex's game, I have kinda taken over too much

OK, dammit. You got me. Congratulations. I've practically made this game for you...

You enjoyed that, didn't you?

Yes I'm training to be a games writer/developer, so I need all the experience I can get though

On a more serious note, after my half-asleep ramblings on page 1, the whole idea has really grabbed me as something awesome. The small village, while initially seemingly quite bad for a zombie game, has a lot more potential than a larger town that's entirely urban - you could have points in Autumn where supplies are running low so a few of the characters have to make a supply run to a nearby farm which is, of course, crawling with undead soldiers. The barely functioning radio has picked up a wire about a supply column that was "ambushed by the Bosch" which you can make the cross-country hike to get ammo, balancing the gains of a few extra shots against the number of shots you'd have to make to get there.

Plus, every good zombie movie has a bit where the survivors are stuck in a wood

 

[Mr_spamamam]

seems like a good idea. would make for a very different zombie experience. Would you be able to have scythes as a weapon?

 

[Woem]

So you mean like NecroVisioN [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NecroVisioN]?

NecroVisioN is set in 1916 during World War I. The player takes the role of Simon Bukner, a young American soldier recently recruited into the British Army. In addition to German soldiers, Simon soon finds himself fighting supernatural forces, including vampires, demons, and zombies found in locations varying from the battlefields of World War I to secret laboratories and underground caverns.

 

[Undead Dragon King]

I'd like the setting and atmosphere that this time period would bring, but using really old guns would be kind of lame. I'd rather not wait a minute in between shots for reloading, thank you.

If they got rid of the guns and added pitchforks or something...that'd be pretty cool.

You havn't played Darkest of Days then, otherwise you would have seen that the reload times for WWI era guns aren't that bad. Bolt Action rifles like the Lee Enfield and Gewher 98 had relatively good-size clips for the time and were very powerful.

OT: A WWI zombie game sounds brilliant, and I'd really like to give it a try. More tactics based anti-zombie action sounds like a novel spin on the genre.

 

[J-Alfred]

Now, I'm cheating because in my mind, you didn't type 1916 but instead 1926. I know that's a whole decade later, but I just can't get the image of suited-up gansters toting tommy guns blowing the heads off of zombies out of my head.

Think Public Enemies meets Zombieland, and you'll know where I'm coming from.

 

[dannyboi1236]

only thing i can see that is wrong with this is that your weapons would suck ass. i mean even in nazi zombie's you need the best weapons to be able to stay alive at all after a very short time.

 

[no_more_usernames]

You know what would be even more awsome? Playing as a zombie to create an army to take over the world... It would be pretty ironic if the nazis took over the world then immediatly six million jewish zombies took over the nazis.

 

[Bulletinmybrain]

Instead of completely leaving out americans and leaving the game up to just french beret wearing arse-hats(In jest), have it progress to the the 1918's for the climax? With american doughboy's landing, and the german offensive only to find zombies..