Why did "Zombies" do so poorly?

...and, how do you think it could be improved?

Back around 2005, I and a friend developed a turn-based tactical game called Zombies. Game play takes place on a grid. Units are either Humans or Zombies, and Humans can be in any of three states: Clueless, Panicked, or Aware. You only control the Aware humans, which are listed on the right (you can select one to move either by clicking them on the gameboard, or in the list). Panicked humans run around at random, and Clueless ones just stand there. An aware unit can inform a clueless one, or calm a panicked one, by moving into them.



Each unit has 1-3 hit points. When a human gets reduced to 0 hit points, it becomes a zombie; when a human is reduced to 0 hit points, it is destroyed.

Humans can attack unarmed, but there are also a variety of weapons scattered around the map (axe, pistol, shotgun, pitchfork, torch, etc.). Each of the weapons has a different behavior; torches, for example, not only do damage, but can catch zombies on fire, which can sometimes spread to neighboring zombies. Ranged weapons can attack from some distance away; melee weapons require stepping right up. Finally, it matters which way units are facing; you'll do more damage attacking from behind, and also zombies are more likely to attack a unit ahead of them than to turn around and attack one behind.



On each turn, you get to do up to three actions with each of your Aware units (the white dots in the list on the right show how many actions they have left; the red bars are hit points). After you've moved all your units, the zombies all move. They move according to fairly simple rules (though there is a small bit of randomness to it).

The game is tactically quite deep. Winning (particularly on the harder difficulty levels) requires carefully balancing a lot of factors: informing/calming other units vs. attacking zombies, going for better weapons vs. attacking with what you've got, and planning your moves so as to attack a zombie with several units at once, so your attackers don't end up converted into more zombies. I feel that each game (which takes about 10-20 minutes) has a good tension curve, as initially the number of zombies tends to increase, and then finally you either have enough well-armed Aware units to overwhelm them, or they overwhelm you.

When I was designing this, I prototyped it with a very crude UI where the units were simply colored squares on a grid. I found it fun, and the folks in the forum I hung out on in those days agreed it was fun to play. So, I thought that when we prettied it up and added sound effects, adjustable gore levels, etc., it would be a hit.



But, it was not. We released it to the Mac App Store, and was greeted with the sound of chirping crickets. Our total sales was something like 4 or 5 units.

(If you want to try it, you can download it for Mac here, or for Windows here, though these files are over 10 years old, and I'm not sure how well they work on modern OSes.)

So. We're now kicking around the idea of rewriting this in Unity for modern platforms. But it's not going to be worth it if it meets with the same indifference as before.

I've wondered if maybe it's just too much of a "thinking person's game" for the theme. Perhaps people looking for zombie games expect something less cerebral and more button-mashy.

What do you think? Is this fundamentally flawed as a concept? Is there any way to make it more appealing?

Thanks,
- Joe

 

Hard to say the game itself is flawed. It actually sounds interesting to me. A game with some depth to it!

You prototyped well then you polished it replacing the graphics and so forth. What did you do for marketing? Just wondering if maybe the lack of success was simply due to it being a very solid yet very unknown game?

 

Marketing?!?

Yes, you're right, we didn't do anything at all about that. That is undoubtedly my greatest weakness... I cling to the belief that if you build a great game, people will find it. But that's almost never true today, and may not have been true in 2005 either.

So, it's certainly possible that that was the main problem.

 

The name is terrible. It fails the "can you Google it?" test, for one thing.

 

Yes, that's certainly true enough. Better ideas? Zombies are certainly a key feature, but it'd probably be good to also somehow imply that this is not a shooter, smasher, beat'em-up, slasher, RTS, or any other sort of action game. And while the actual game play is serious, we're not opposed to injecting a bit of humor into the trappings. Just spit-balling here...

• Zombie Infection
• Night of the Dead
• Zombies: Dawn of Darkness
• Zombie Tactics
• Zombie Show-Down
• Braaaaiiiiiins
• He Was a Good Man, But Now He's a Zombie (abbreviated HWAGMBNHAZ)
• Zombies Rising
• Zombie Panic

I do agree that almost any of these would be better than the original name. Thoughts?

 

How the hell am I 'sposed to tell you that when I get a runtime error when I try to run it? Honestly, it looks like something I'd be willing to try. But, without playing it I can't help you. Ironically, that puts me in the same spot as a complete stranger who knows nothing about your game. From looks alone, since that's all I can tell from my chair, it doesn't have a pleasing aesthetic quality. So, if I just had to judge your "book from the cover" I would say it's not readily appealing.

I really wanted to play it, but oh well.

 

Hey, no need to get upset — I did mention that the executable was over 10 years old and might not work on modern OSes. I'm sorry about that. If I could easily make a build that runs on modern systems, I wouldn't be considering a rewrite.

Thanks, that's helpful feedback. Characters too chunky? UI too busy? Or something else entirely (if you can put your finger on it)?

 

Also, when considering remaking this today — particularly for mobile — I wonder if a deep, thinking game where you control every decision is going against the tide (see the thread on auto-mode). Or maybe it is, and maybe that's a good thing — perhaps games that require you to think and plan will become a niche, and gamers in that niche will be willing to pay a bit more for a quality offering?

 

My opinion looking at the screenshot, graphics looks pretty bad, I can't tell whether they're uv mapped properly, to me it looks like you forget to 'flip normals' judging by the dark spots. You can do low poly well, this however, is NOT. Interface is pretty cluttered, font choice 'trabajon pro' is just no, no, no same with comic sans. Gameplay, I can't comment on, I tried the mac download but as it is ten years old it's pretty much obsolete, got some message to do with 'power pc.'

But yeah, to sum up, it's the graphics that kill this, in terms of 'why wasn't this a success?'

Hope that helped brah.

 

OK managed to get it open under winxp on a vm...

I found myself pressing wasd randomly and hitting enter, I wasn't quite sure what was going on but the zombies seemed to move, I didn't read the manual mind you, so take my gameplay reviews with a pinch of salt. I did like the animated menu however, when you bring up the tombstones, I thought that was nicely done for a game 10 years old, but when you have to read a pdf manual to figure out the gameplay it's a bit much considering most this generation get bored after 10 seconds.

 

Adding "tactics" to the end is a pretty classic move for a turn-based strategy game, but Zombies Tactics is still way too generic (I'd still be impossible to find via Google). How about "Get 'Em in the Brain, It's the Only Way To Be Sure: Tactics" or "Remember Your Training and You WILL Survive: Tactics" or "Short, Controlled Bursts: Tactics" or "You Just Don't Lead Them as Much: Tactics"?

Or more realistically, create a protagonist and name the game after him or her.

 

If the problem is that only 4-5 people downloaded it, then why would it be something involving game play?

Iirc, 2005 was before the mobile boom and the whole flappy bird revolution, which meant that peoples expectations for games tended to be closer to AA/AAA.

You were just too ahead of the curve Joe

In terms of recreating this for today - I would think about re-theming it. Gamers are pretty bored with the whole indie zombie game at this point I think.

 

Well, it is just not pretty. Bad colors, bad form. It is what you would expect a CS major with zero artistic talent to produce. It has no visual theme or style, it's just poorly attempted realism. It begs the question: What were you going for? "It was a dark and blurry night, low rez textures will distract you from the awkwardly shaped geometry, but the menu layout will make you wonder if this is a DOS game."

Since I can't play it, that's what you get.

Also, we live in an era where people don't shop for games anymore, they shop for genres. Which popular genre does this game fit into? You can choose from Resource Management or Tower Defense. Turn based field combat games are a tabletop nerd niche, too hardcore for the casual player to jump in to.

If you want to make a good virtual board game, you will have 15 die hard fans and 6.5 billion people who aren't interested.

Who is your target audience?
What genre is this game?
Is that genre popular?
Did you hire an artist?

You can spend $100 on marketing to make $10 in sales if you want, free country. But it's probably better to just hit that drawing board.

Zombies are still cool, it ain't zombies.

But imho its not even worth making a game unless you can answer this question: What does this game have to say? What is the take away? What is your one good idea unique to this hame that only JoeStrout can show the world?

It's not about doing something new, it's about doing something ordinary in a new way.

 

True dat. From the screenshot, I see that you got yourself in a state where you've lost all your Aware units. You have 5 Panicked units who may calm down and become controllable (or they may run right into a zombie and join the shambling horde).

(Hey, Steve, how about "Shambling Horde" for a name?)

Gameplay is actually pretty simple: you just move your units. Moving into a weapon picks it up. Moving into a clueless or panicked human informs or calms him. Moving into a zombie attacks him. It's pretty much all movement.

But it could be that the controls for moving them were not intuitive. (It's: use left/right or A/D to rotate your guy; W or up to move him forward; and S or down to turn him around and move him the other way. Rotation does not count as a move.) On a touch device, we'd have to redesign the controls anyway.

 

Yeah, I mean clearly I haven't studied the pdf manual so my gameplay review is completely unfair, also my graphics review is unfair somewhat, I'm comparing it to some of my work, and yes your game was made 10 years ago so was somewhat ahead of it's time.

As for how it would do today, personally, I can't see someone taking the time to figure it out, unless they know you, and have made a concerted effort to understand the game play mechanics. What I would suggest is maybe introduce the strategy simply, bit by bit, almost like a walk through tutorial. So the gameplay unravels as you play it. This would be a good idea, but sadly this generation is too lazy (myself included) to even do this...

 

Well, it could be that people went looking for a zombie game, read the app description, and said "What, turn based? I'm looking for a zombie-themed Quake game! Next!"

But, yeah, I suspect it may have more to do with presentation (i.e. graphics).

Hmm, could be. But the thing is, "zombie" isn't just a theme here — it's a core design element. The whole thing was designed around the idea that your units, when defeated, turn into enemy units. So there is this really interesting tension where putting your guys into battle too quickly (unsupported or ill-equipped) may actually end up strengthening the enemy. And this led quickly to the two types of neutral units (clueless and panicked), which can go either way, so you have that initial race to recruit them, while also trying to keep the zombie numbers down at the same time.

If you replaced zombies with pirates or ninjas or something like that, it just wouldn't make as much sense. Sure, I guess you could claim that when your pirates are sufficiently beaten up, they defect to the other side... but then you'd expect them to behave exactly the same, and they don't (I also like the asymmetry of zombies, which are stupid and can't use weapons, but can make more zombies). I suppose you could shoe-horn in a different theme, but it would take a lot of explaining (or be an entirely different game).

 

Better.

 

is it multi player? co-op? PvP? these type of came usually get better word of mouth marketing success.
If its just single paler you would need a stronger marketing campaign like having youtubers review it.
For myself I probably wouldn't play it if I couldn't play with someone else. You would have to have an amazing storyline to hook me into a single player game. when you go to mobile you probably aught to simplify it. if a round lasts 20min... I don't know who spends 20 mins playing a game on their phone without mass amounts of feedback and achievements.

What do you get when you win?

 

My partner was (and still is) an experienced professional artist, and for the time and given the constraints we were under, I think he did a great job. The animations are smooth, clouds drift lazily past the moon, dark skeletal trees surround the arena, etc. Yeah, the people are blocky, but they have personality — and each character turns into a unique zombie still vaguely recognizable as the human they used to be (which was quite unusual in that day). The graphics elements combine with good ambient noises (moaning wind, occasional howls in the distance, etc.) to evoke a spooky, Halloween-ish feeling, or so I feel anyway.

But of course opinions can vary, and I asked for yours, so I thank you for giving it. (And I recognize that most of the polish I just mentioned can't be seen in a screen shot.)

Right, well that's the core of it, isn't it? Are there still more than a dozen people who will play this kind of game? I'm not sure. It's certainly not what is commonly popular, but sometimes you a niche can be a good thing, provided (1) customers in that niche feel under-served and hungry for something new, and (2) you can actually reach them.

The unique idea here is a tactical game based around the zombie (i.e. unit-conversion) mechanic. To me, as a player, that's fascinating. And rarely done; in almost every zombie game, the zombies are simply targets, which could be replaced by robots, aliens, mutants, animated crash-test dummies, or anything else and work just as well. This is a game where the conversion of "us" into "them" is central. That's the big idea.

But, just because it's fascinating to me, doesn't mean it will be fascinating to anybody else. And there remain the problems of (1) how do I find the people who would be fascinated by it, and (2) how do I get them to try the game long enough to discover how awesome it is? Better graphics and more hand-holding may be part of the answer.

 

Hmm, good point. No, it's single-player; the zombie actions are deliberately simple (because, you know, they're dead after all — not a whole lot of higher mental activity going on). BUT, I can imagine ways to add multiplayer. Two players could each control a separate subset of humans... or, we could have one player control the zombies (who would then be much smarter, and therefore tougher, than normal). That could make for a pretty interesting asymmetrical game, though balance might be tricky.

And when looked at that way, it really does become apparent that this is a virtual boardgame. You could play it with LEGO minifigs on a tabletop (in fact, come to think of it, we may have done a bit of that during the initial prototyping).

Yeah. It's certainly not a casual game, in the modern sense. (Though being turn-based, you could swap out at any time and pick it up again later.)

The remaining humans jump for joy, there's some sort of triumphant banner and music, and you get a history graph like this:

(Only without the legend; this is from the manual.)

 

You increase your resources by turning people into zombies. So it's a resource management game. But people will be trying to kill those zombies, which is bad. So defeating enemies reduces your risk and increases your assets, because you get a new unit. Now how can you protect those assets? Swat gear zombies are harder to kill, so can get to enemies without dying so easily, for example. What are some creative ways to upgrade these zombies to increase their power? Can you make improvements to your horde? Maybe zombies evolve powers with special chemicals or a virus?

You travel a city full of survivors, rogues and whatever remains of the military. You spread out your zombies until you control every part of the city.

At the end of the game you get nuked.

I hope someone makes that game, lol

And instead of day time being safe, only Night time is safe

 

Seems like a decent idea, and if you perhaps chose to use voxel characters to make it more appealing visually (magicavoxel, simple easy to make models, good for "programmers art" to be acceptable art ) and kinda made it very self explanatory in control and mechanics, like maybe the first game you play it points out everything in tutorial gui's, like "this is a panicked living person" and "try to calm them down by..." and such... just make it user friendly as hell.

Oh and also marketing is tough stuff. I suck at it too. I'd try and offer some advice but I just frankly don't know the best ways to promote and market games

 

I'll contribute two items to the brainstorming of names:

Zom-board-tactics
Zombie Awareness PSA

Meh, I'm not good at this, but maybe it sparks an idea for someone else.

Some probably do, but others might miss something else. It doesn't look like there is much of an overarching survival aspect to it, like a fixed group of survivors that carries over from mission to mission and has specific goals like improving their shelter. For me that kind of stuff is a core aspect of what I like about zombie games. The mechanics sound interesting but it's not enough to make me want to play the game over the tons of other games I could play. For me personally it's probably a bit too abstract for a PC game. When it comes to turn based strategy I'm looking for something like Jagged Alliance 2 or X-Com. X-Com had the aspects I mentioned, you have your base(s), you have your squad of soldiers that you try to keep alive and you recover loot and have an overarching goal of stopping the whole invasion and saving the world. Not sure if you could somehow integrate those things into your concept without deviating too much from your vision.

I'd say "overall production values too low". This one for example would still be too unpolished for me to buy it:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/340050/

I think there is another one, but I can't find it among the flood of zombie games, which shows part of the problem.

A year or so ago I tried to get a few friends to buy 7 days to die and one of them said it's too ugly for him to play:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/251570/

Dayz or Minecraft were good enough for him. Those aren't especially pretty games, but they are more consistent in their style. 7DTD is a bit all over and can't quite decide whether it wants to be goofy and funny or super serious and bleak.

I feel like the level of visual fidelity and/or consistency that many gamers today expect, to even consider a purchase, is still being underestimated by many developers around here.

Deep, thinking, mobile... I don't think those fit very well together. I haven't read the other thread yet, but for a deep strategy game I'd focus on PC or make it a boardgame. I could see this being quite interesting as a coop boardgame. Imho the level of abstraction that feels a bit strange for me in a PC game would be just right for a board game, it solves the artwork issue when the publisher commisions that and you don't need the overarching base-building or character leveling. The game could offer a modular board that can be used to construct different scenarios that have varying degrees of challenge. Maybe take a look at "Escape" from Queengames. That game was really successful as far as I know. The boardgame market has zombie games as well, but imho it isn't as flooded with them as the PC games market.

Edit: got ninja'd by a bunch of posts, guess you figured the board game possibilites out yourself already .

 

I ask what you get when you win to see how strong the replay ability is. Lets say you have an above average skilled gamer who does well the first time playing, wins pretty quickly. there is no incentive for them to try again. needs some unlocks like new maps, harder difficulties, new weapons.

Maybe make it a web game like Happy Wheels. let players make their own maps and zombie scenarios and challenge each other.

 

I see your point. I will replay a game (assuming a different random layout each time) many times, just because I enjoy it. But then, I'll read books I like multiple times, too. I may be an odd duck.

Hmm, that could be fun. The initial selection of placement of zombies, humans, obstacles, and weapons can make for quite different scenarios. You should be allowed to post these only if you first beat it yourself. And doing so should include your score (sort of like the "par" for a hole in golf). This could lead to some fun one-ups-manship.

Hmm, web game, eh? I honestly hadn't considered that. It might be a good fit. (Whether/how one makes money on a web game is a question for a different forum, I suppose.)

 

Most of the voxel art games (no matter the genre) has become boring to me. Not sure if this is reflected in other gamers minds, just laying it out - fyi.
Visuals have been thoroughly scrutinized so no need for me to pile on, however one point I think might be an enhancement to consider.
Most turn based games have standard animations, idle and death, different attack and got-hit animations. Some have intro animations as well. IMO the common/standard animation set for turn based games has grown tepid and same-ol same-ol.
Not saying some super kick butt animations would have any positive outcome on sales/users, but (if the mechanics and gameplay is solid as stated in OP) it'd be something that increases the quality and visual attraction of the game, could be used for marketing even, and would be something to tout about - being better/different than others. Maybe.

A number of randomized idle breaks, over the top type animations and fx could really push the visual appeal. Especially when units are not being interacted with. When the player would expect them to go straight into common idle cycles - some twitching convulsions, puking, berserker randomness, feigned scratch and scream attacks, maybe even comical, an arm falls off and the zombie has to reattach it, , eating it's own brains, symbiotic like tendrils coming out and snaking around like a zombie type Carnage, etc -

For names -
Tactical Zombie Clash.

Money.

I also like Zombie Tactics.

Hmmm - Turned to Zombie Tactics.
Turned Tactics.

 

What about more of like a 'necromancer tactics' or something - instead of just zombies you could also have other undead or monsters. Would that kind of thing help move away from the word 'zombie' while still enabling the same mechanics?

I hate to keep harping theme, but I really think that many people seeing 'zombie' and 'indie' these days is going to roll their eyes. Theme is really really important to people.

 

That is kinda catchy... And it is true that voxel art games have gotten a bit... saturated...these days?

Maybe just a low poly, almost "darwinia" level of detail would work... that way it would be easier to do the art, plus have a more "tactical" feel? Idk... I need coffee haha

 

Building on this, the interface looks like it's straight out of 1996 (and, not in a good way.) There's so much stuff - and stuff that's hard to see - that I took a look at your screenshots and nearly instantly said, "No."

I think a problem you may have had, was that you were developing something that required a PC interface for a phone...an easy mismatch to make. When I take the time to really look at your UI, I see that what you're doing isn't actually so different from Final Fantasy XIV.

My proceeding comments are a comparison, ignoring the obvious fact that the games in question were developed nearly a decade apart, with great strides made during that time in the art and science of UX design. I'm not saying "Zombies should've used the UI from FFXIV" as that's an anachronism, but rather, "Zombies and FFXIV are doing similar things, that's why I'm comparing them." That said, here's FFXIV:



1 - Your HP/resources are along the bottom. For your game, obviously all the actions underneath that aren't necessary. Note how the resources are obvious due to coloring/contrast, but small so that the player can focus on the gameplay itself. This provides an easy way to check your HP/resources as part of the action. In Zombies, that information has very poor contrast and is harder to find.

2 - Tracking of allies is done in a pane to the top left of the screen; tracking of enemies (and, more specifically their aggro indicators) is a bit harder to keep track of in their UI, it's towards the bottom left, just above the Chat box. This is something your game could do, but probably better than what Square Enix has chosen. In my actual play of FFXIV, I find the aggro indicators to be one of the weak points in their UI...but I think the concept could be used in your game. Also - observe how these things are carefully designed not to absorb more real estate than they absolutely need! Your friend/foe list is ginormous.

3 - The minimap is similarly placed, but look at the XIV minimap, versus the Zombies minimap. The XIV minimap uses good contrast between indicators, to be easily visible. The dots that indicate friendly/foe positions on the Zombies minimap are obscured by the stone texture. Also, the XIV minimap takes a quarter of the screen real estate of the Zombies minimap - that's more room that can be devoted to action.

4 - The typefacing is a bit of a problem. I get the whole 'gravestone' aesthetic, and think it's a good attempt, but it doesn't flow very well, as the font is much finer than the game world where the action is happening. I know first hand how difficult finding a good font for a game is, and I also know it's important to sell the text without breaking suspension of disbelief. No offense - but an ugly font was chosen.

5 - The counters. I avoid displaying counters in my games, because it's a very 'programmer-y' thing to do. My experience is, while counters are good in very specific situations, most of the time they look amateurish, which given the other UI problems, only makes the amateurish UI worse. I'd recommend a visual instead, sort of a tug o' war sort of setup; 0 zombies means that the player gauge is all the way full (left to right, of course), while 0 allies - other than being an obvious game over - means that the zombies completely cover the map.

TL;DR - A reason that I think your game failed, is the screenshots did their job - they showed the game, and they showed a seriously flawed UI that I highly recommend to be re-thought. Additionally, given the nature of your UI, I have to ask: are you sure this should be a mobile game? This seems too complex to be well controlled by tapping a touch screen.

 

Uhh, wait tho...

This wasn't for phones...

 

Compare it to other successful turn based games like xcom. To me it isn't just the graphics, it's the viewpoint. I feel like I'm to low down & can't scope out all the angles to work out the strategy, & angles are important since you said it depends which way they are facing.

Turn based can work for mobile for people that like short 2-5minute games while waiting for the bus. If the game saved after each turn then Theoretically players could queue up the moves for their turn while at the bust stop.

I agree with above, if there were only 5 downloads then it must've been the way the game was presented in the first place such that it didn't encourage people to download it.

 

Great feedback, everyone. Thanks very much! I don't know for sure whether or not we will try to bring Zombies back from the dead, but if we do, we'll consider all this very carefully.

 

Zombie game title...

 

To be perfectly fair, the UI pictures had put me off far enough that when I saw "App Store" my thoughts immediately jumped to phone games, and from there my nerd-rage snapped and I stopped reading. It's one of those moments when you see something, say "Oh, hell no", and only then start performing rational thought, instead of thinking first. So...failure mine on that one.

 

I played it a bit, the controls put me off, would rather have sort of an actual moving WASD thing over anything else

 

Did you ever play around with an overhead 2D look? It's quite possible I've just played too many games of HOMM 3 over the years, but for strategy turn-based battles I think those are superior.

Jay

 

Or even isometric so you get an overview of the battlefield. Introduce a fog of war as well

 

Might be worth a look:

Containment: The Zombie Puzzler
http://steamspy.com/app/203560
http://store.steampowered.com/app/203560/

 

I couldn't get it to run, but as many other have said, for a strategy game, you need to have a good overview of the map and all the units. An overhead camera like Age of Empires, Fire emblem or something like that would be much more preferable. It feels like I would have a better view of what's going on with the small map in the upper right corner, so if the gameview could be in that perspective would probably be better. I'm not sure you really need to have an overview of the units either (the list at the right), but instead a button (not ingame) where you can change to the next unit that can do a move, which would free up much space.
Speaking of space, if changing the perspective to overhead, you wouldn't need a "world map" in the top right, and the "status bar" at the bottom could be removed and put up like a little box above the unit or something when they're actually used (again I'm thinking of something like fire emblem.

As I said, I couldn't get it to run so I can't critique on the gameplay, and stuff might not be as they seem on the screenshots, so some of the stuff I talked about might be obsolete!

 

Zombies is a fun game, I have been addicted to this game. I do not think it's as bad as you share

 

What bits have you hooked?

 

You need to look at your competition and see what they did better then you. You'd be going to head with xcom and people might except that level of quality

 

I agree the unit conversion mechanic is creative! If the game could make us attached to our human characters (something akin to helping brave Kerbals) this would help the player to have a vested interest. However I would change the theme from Zombies to something else.

Why? Again this is just my opinion so please take it with a grain of salt. But I personally never play Zombie games. And as others have pointed out the Zombie theme is over saturated. I fear if you released this with a fresh coat of polish that many would simply over look this as just another Zombie game even if you did put effort in advertising. This doesn't mean though you should abandon this awesome mechanic. I propose you could just tweak the premise of your game. How?

One option would be to change the Zombies into Cyborgs. Similiar to the Borg from Star Trek the Cyborg people want others to join them and forcefully "upgrade" our humans. I'm confident you could come up with some unique story to avoid the cyborgs from feeling like discount Borg. The advantage I feel you would have going for you in this scenario is that your game will feel different. It would feel like something new and people would give the game a better chance.

Second option would be to go for a more generic biological disease route. Advantage here is that like the Cyborg route your game can advertise a different feel and it might open more unique story telling options. Of the two I think the Cyborg route is cooler but a horrifying disease is still an option.

As I said feel free to ignore my ramblings.

I just think a new theme would make other people take notice of your game and open up some cool story telling options for you. Needless to say congratulations on completing a game and I think you should revisit it sometime in the future!

 

I downloaded and played it. I really didn't see any of this. What I got was a pretty clunky. I really couldn't understand what was going on. The rules you explained to me here on the forum helped, but that doesn't count to a random stranger. I understand its an old game, but it felt closer to a 90s game in usability then a 2005 one.

Now that doesn't really explain only a handful of sales. That sounds like nobody heard of your game, instead of those that heard about it didn't like it. Can't really help there.

But if you are going to release this for today's market, be sure to include at least some hand holding. This is not the type of game that will attract players willing to read the manual or slog through pages of wiki to figure out. I think the concept could play well on a tablet, but take the time to teach players properly.

 

My advice is to focus on fundamentals: simplicity, interest curve, and flow. Whether solo, medium, or AAA, all successful titles nail the fundamentals first. Then comes things like habit loops, progression, and rewards. Later, marketing, graphics, and networking make the game MORE successful. Everything starts with nailing the first bits. Maybe your kernel of a good idea got lost somewhere, along the way as you migrated to 3D, more graphics, and deeper mechanics.

Specific ideas to consider:

• How can you simplify the controls?
• How to reduce screen info?
• How to make goals, feedback, and mechanics more clear?
• How can you improve the difficulty/speed balance?
• How can you increase the interest spikes/valleys?

Gigi

 

Hi, I do hope you guys remake this for the Ipad generation. The core game concept of saving enough humans to beat back the growing horde is really intriguing. A few considerations:

Smaller scale on game length, size, number of zombies etc, lots of outrageous weapons though, think Dead Rising
Cartoon graphics, with over the top animations to really push the comic theme
Isometric Camera, Minimal U.I, i would go to a two move control system -move/attack
Simplified game rules- make it fast to learn, faster to play
Possibly Roguelike where any survivors from the previous round form the nucleus of the next round and start off being aware. Once-off Challenge Maps are also fine but some kind of progression/procedural storytelling could work well.
Level editor, Co-OP as "stretch Goals"

I really believe it has potential for a really cool puzzler, My nephews play a lot of ipad, and it surprising how much they gravitate towards "thinking games". I am thinking as long as you get the theme right, (i am thinking "Cartoon Network") and really get your U.I right it can be a success. I would play it anyway

 

Joe, I know I am a complete noob in regards to game development, but you have to take into account that 10 years ago the "Zombie" fever didn't exist yet. And technology was also more difficult to obtain than today.

Today if you did the same thing I think that it would be reasonable to multiply your sellings by a hundred. Because sometimes people just search for the key word they want the game to have, like "Zombies", and they would much probably buy your game as they would be interested.

My advice, is go for it absolutely, make it beautiful. And cartoonish like those games you see in the store about farms, etc... people like it.