Can anybody give me a zombie game idea?

So I'm developing my first game as practice (Not my first project, it's my first game to be released. I am not a noob for Unity). It's a zombie fps game, and I have a scene and basic attack+weapon system so far. I had several ideas for the game, but I keep changing my mind about the theme because I think they're not interesting enough, and there're too much zombie game. I wanna make something fun to play and innovative in stead of just killing zombie like most of the zombie game does. So, here's the list of my ideas:

- zombie RPG
This is my first idea, to survive and collect materials, then building a community and recruit new survivors to my group. This is fun enough, but it losts the focus of a zombie game, player may focus on building, upgrading instead of battle.

-survival game like minecraft
The game has no story. Player needs to discover and explore stuffs for dynamic actions. He will collect materials and find his own way to escape/survive. There are more than one way to escape the city. Just like minecraft, you may build a house to live forever, keep explore, or even fighting with the ender dragon. It's different from the first idea as there are no skill upgrading or building elements. It's a realistic style survival game.

-pure story zombie game
Like biohazard, it has a story flow and lots of cutscenes. I hate this idea most, as it will be boring and expensive to develop(lots of dialogues and cutscenes)

-survival with story
It is like the second idea, discovering and survive, but there's a storyline. Player will discover key item, which activates a story/cutscene. The player will reach the same ending with checkpoints unlocked.

-zombie building game
The player keeps building inside a building or a safe area to defend himself against zombies. It is different with actively killing them, but passively defending with creative buildings.

-role playing characters
Well people are sick of traditional battle zombie games. It will be cool if the player is a character other than a fighter. For example, the player plays as a doctor to save other survivors, or as a detector to find out the truth,etc. The main focus will not be dumb zombie killing in that way.

What do you think about my ideas? I wanna make some fun and low cost game idea like slender and firewatch. They don't have long story or big scene, but fun enough to play with. Although they invest a lot, they have less cutscenes and story. That's what I want. What do u think?

 

'nuff sed.

 

These have a lot of mechanics to sort out. Maybe you should do something simpler for your first game?

 

Make it the exact way you want, then never release it, do that for like your first 10 games.
Build them and never release them. You don't want to release something when you aren't familiar with the tools you are using, do this so you can learn new techniques/things to do things better workflows, etc.
Then when you are absolutely comfortable, release a really great game when you know what you're doing!

May not be the best advice in the world, but it's honest.
I'd rather personally release something only when I know it's worthy of release, not half done shady built games with ripped code/assets.

 

I can definitely advise to NOT go with a building system for your first game. But a zombie shooter isn't a terrible idea, just make it an arena style game.

First scene:
menu scene
Play Button
Quit Button

Second scene:
in game
place an fps controller in this scene
place a few cubes in this scene that will be graves that zombies will randomly rise from
create an empty object (right click in the hierarchy) and name it 'graves'
drag all of your grave cubes into the empty on the hierarchy
make a script on the empty that randomly spawns a zombie at the position of one of the children of the empty
make a script to add onto the fps controller that raycast from the camera position in the direction of the camera forward
tag the zombies as enemy
check your out hit parameter in your raycast for the gameobject being tagged with enemy
destroy zombie, increment a kill count by 1

Third scene:
summary scene
To Main Menu Button (loads scene 0)
Restart Button (loads scene 1)
Quit button (Application.quit(); )
Summary text - tells the user if they killed all of the zombies or died trying (check kill count to put together a message here)

That should do nicely as a first game. A first person arena shooter with no goal, so you can focus on programming mechanics and gameplay.

 

Zombies are so overdone. Especially zombie survival games. Just go buy UnitZ or some other kit off the asset store and be done with it.

There are a couple of possibilities that haven't been done to death with zombies yet. Consider

• Playing as the zombies
• Zombies that can be reverted to human some effective way
• Some sort of complex social structure that can break down as the zombies take over
• Some other relevant twist on the zombie theme

The world really doesn't need another FPS zombie shooting game.

 

Maybe try another angle. You have a close bond with the zombies. You see them as just humans who are sick. It disgusts you to see people killing these poor helpless zombies. You arm yourself with some gear (guns, ammo, traps etc) and become the Zombie Protector. Maybe you are 1/3 zombie yourself being changed much slower than normal.

 

Woah, there's a whole series of extra credit movies that focus on "first game" with Unity? You guys should promote this more!

 

My dad is pretty into his mobile addicting games and has a strong concept on what he thinks will make millions. He keeps talking about killing zombies, and rare ones will come up etc. You can collect stuff, and you monetize the weapons/guns, have them get upgrades or stronger ones with cash shop etc. Anyways best I can do on what I remember what he said, this is a mobile idea. But I strongly advise you not to make another fps zombie survival building game for PC...soooo many out there recently. I believe the zombie / gun simple game is a strong concept for mobile though.

Oh and just because the guys above you couldn't handle their big idea as their first game doesn't mean you should now throw away your dreams and make a pong game like the next guy will suggest.

 

It was part of a series of initiatives designed to drain off noobs. According to my MMO detection system it hasn't made much of a difference. Those who pay attention to the video have already figured out that one man taking on EA or Blizzard will not work. Those who don't pay attention sum up the reasons for Churchill's famous comment on forms of government.

What big idea? The idea can be summed up as 'Something about zombies'. That hardly screams go for it. Pong at least is properly defined.

 

Zombie games will always be popular, they're a staple of the horror genre. I would suggest you make a simple arena shooter like suggested by someone above. Forget building and everything else. Once that is working fully, THEN revisit other ideas.

Get something started first.

 

It's his dream man, he is here because that is what is motivating him to be here. Sure his idea is shaky and needs work, but I don't understand why the forums have to hold back every new comer with their crazy ideas. Sure they may crash and burn, but it's their dream/life and nothing wrong with wanting to learn the hard way.

 

It's not about holding back his ideas, ideas are great! But unless you can do it and do it PROPERLY then you need to work more on educating your self on how everything comes together.

Just because you can make something work, doesn't mean it's done properly.
It could work, but oops to many dynamic lights, what if I need dynamic lights and no other way around it, well
then you gotta learn how to cull it, etc.

It's not that any of this stuff really is that hard, it's really not, it's just the matter of thinking out side of the box, which isn't just naturally there, you have to learn the way things are done, how to avoid problems and how to piece the puzzle without gluing the wrong pieces into place. Because once you get past the point of no return, you've wasted your time.

 

Thank you guys! Maybe I mislead some of you, actually it's not my first game in Unity, but my first large project/game to be released. I tried and learnt a lot before this project, so I guess I have sufficient to handle any idea. I also have a good programmer to work with. I make all the stuffs related to graphic and little programming, but I know how to use Unity API etc. I think I'm not going to develop a mobile game now because I never learn the mobile techniques and it's for my PC game practice. I also considered a game with the player be a zombie, but it will involve lots of survivor AI mechanics. It's more complex than zombie AI, but I will try the possibility so. Here's a look of the current project:

 

Yeah I will make the basic mechanic first. Im just trying to plan the gameplay asap so that I can prepare all models and setting I need. I'll probably give up the project once I finish the basic mechanic if I don't have a good plan

 

Make a game with dinosaurs and robots or dinosaurs robots , this is the new mood

 

Zombies are cheap and easy.

If you want a cool zombie game then don't make an FPS zombie game because you'll never finish it or even get it to a fun playable point. The best zombie game I played was Atomic Zombie Smasher and it was all about strategy.

Follow the link in Aurore's post. Do some 1GAM's, try Ludum Dare, prototype rough ideas.

 

Zombie Sandwich Shop

 

Play as a zombie among thousands of zombies in a Human Survival Game. Objective: Survive the Living Apocalypse - every living being is out to put a bullet in your head. You have limited use of your arms and legs and you must eat to avoid decomposition. However, the meatbags tend to run in groups and your low groaning and foot dragging make it extremely difficult to perform a successful stealth attack. Command your mindless companions to maneuver around groups of breathers to create havoc and potentially split up groups to give you a tactical advantage over a meal.

While the living move at normal speed the pace of this game would be rather slow similar to an RTS because the zombies move at incredibly slow speeds.

 

That idea is SOOOO five years ago: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/diner-of-the-dead/id352075570?mt=8

 

Nobody is trying to kill anybody else's big game dreams. What people are doing is encouraging people to build several really small games as their first learning steps, so they can learn enough to tackle the big game projects. A simple game clone (Pong, Space Invaders, Flappy Bird, etc) can be an excellent learning project.

Too many people try to build a massive game on their first try. For example, I see guys come into the forum wanting to design a large MMO similar to WOW as their first game project. They don't even know how to move a box around on a plane, but they want to jump into setting up networking for thousands of players in an MMO.

The OP begins by stating the desire to make a first game for practice, but then lists ideas that are clearly over ambitious for a first game. Here is a good idea for first zombie game for practice:
1) One room
2) One zombie, which slowly moves towards the player
3) Player needs to run around the zombie to get to an exit on the other side of the room
4) If the zombie touches the player, the player dies and level resets
5) If player gets to the exit, the game says "You Win"
6) For first practice game, use a red box to represent the zombie
7) Once 1-6 are working, replace the red box zombie with a free zombie model from the Asset Store and rig the walking and attack animations.

That is a first game for practice. That game will not be worthy of selling, but it will create a lot of learning opportunities. If the OP is serious about learning to build a zombie game, that is where I would recommend starting. Then try slightly more ambitious things for the second practice game, and even more in the third practice game. After several iterations, the OP will get to a point where the game ideas listed by the OP will be within reach.

 

Haha! Awesome.

 

What I do is, I come up with this great idea, something that is over ambitious, not so much a game, but just a hard obstical I want to figure out, then once I figure it out, I scrap it, come up with a new idea, include the last idea into it but re-do it completely from scratch, that way I can train my brain over and over and over.

I refuse to save scripts no matter how big or small to re-use them, I ALWAYS start them over from scratch so I can keep my memory on par with everything and always remember it, yeah it's kinda aggravating, but that's how I roll lol.

 

Must take you forever each time you rewrite UnityEngine.

 

I do something similar but because I'm old & have degrading memory issues I keep the scripts. Then I have a collection of half arsed mechanics that if I'm lucky (& rememberi have them) I can try to combine in interesting ways.

 

Haha, man bro, I'll sit for days re-writing things I've written 20 times. It really does get old, but it's like they say, you don't use it you loose it. So I make sure I'm always using it lol.

Haha yeah I hear you man.

 

I simply use version control on framework stuff. Haven't lost a single line of code since I started using remote servers.

But seriously, rewriting framework costs you a lot of time and effort that could be better spent elsewhere.

 

I can't say you're wrong because I know your right 100% lol.
I mean I do back my stuff up, I just don't use it again unless I absolutely need too.
But I do back it up. Now I'm sure if something or a group of codes that were like 50 K lines, I'm sure I wouldn't re-write that entire thing again lol. But Something that's like 50 - 100 lines depending how annoying it is, I'll just re-write it, be faster than trying to find it.

 

BabyZ. You're a toddler during zombie apocalypse. You can't fight them, because you're just a baby, so you need to use stealth and environment (think Home Alone) to your advantage to get around zombies.

//edit: If you're not going to go with my advice, this asset pack may be helpful: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/26912 - it contains most mechanics you want.

 

I like it, I think there'll be lots of dinosaur game in next decade. Maybe I can try to make a survival game with monsters other than zombies. But it's weird if a dinosaur run in a city lol

Thank you, and yeah I did what you suggested before. It's not my first game ever created, but my "first game" that I wanna really fully finish. I learnt and confident to do all of the tasks on the list. I learnt basic mechanics like moving, attacking, point accumulation, shop, and everything basic. I also tried Photon and many kinds of plugins, modeling, lighting, texturing, etc. I'm now trying to develop a very very first playable game after my learning, as shown in #16.

Cool, it sounds cute and nobody did this before.

 

I wouldn't bet on it. https://www.google.com.au/search?q=zombie+baby+game

 

Write out your rule set & play it as a pen & paper rpg, use a hex board if you need to. This will let you work out where things need to be clarified (facets, rules, damage balance etc) & also whether it is fun or needs more work.

 

zombie game :
for (int i = 1; i <= 100000; i++)
{
Spawn(Zombie);
}

 

I think the zombies need to be riding on the back of unicorns.. . so maybe combine a gory/death/dark zombie guts kind of theme with a super-cutesy/rainbows/lovehearts/kittens/unicorns kind of theme. Zombie Unicorn?

 

Zombie unicorn jousting pvp

 

I have a great idea for a zombie game, but I can't give it to you because I want to write it some day and right now its about 50th in my ideas line. If you promise me 50% revenue share, then I'll fill you in. You don't have to use the idea obviously, but if you do and you make money, I want half.

 

Is it a zombie pachinko machine? obscure references.

 

Like Silent Hill? Dang you Konami!

 

Zombie President - a political sim where all the politicians are brain dead zombies trying to eat the brains of their constituents so that they won't be able to think independently & therefore change there vote. By concealing their own condition while making new zombies they can keep the country under martial law & funnel large amounts into the defence budget whilst enjoying kickbacks from the military industrial & biotech (making a vaccine) industries.

 

The word of Jim is far reaching in these forums

Kirby gaining the ability to eat people... redundancy simulator?

That simulator exists, you can watch it played live on *Fox News.

*disclaimer - this forum is on the internet, so people reading this are on the internet, so no one should take offense to that.

 

It's a universal theme, should be a concept anyone can grasp. Funnily enough I got the idea from watching our news over here