What would be in your ultimate zombie survival game?

[fiddilydee]

What would you want in your ultimate zombie video game? What features would have to be in it?

Personally I like where games like DayZ and Project Zomboid are going, they are the closest to what I want for sure. My problem with DayZ is I don't like the mmo component, I would rather a computer driven story, as long as it is a good story. And my problem with Zomboid is my brain can't comprehend what I'm seeing, between the fog of war, the invisible walls and density of building interiors I find it too daunting, that and I don't like the zombie combat.

I think the zombie genre to be done right has to be approached with a counter-intuitive approach to game design. My ultimate game would have some RPG elements, leveling should be purely skill and strength based if any at all. I'd like to see a game where character progress is based on loss and gain, not just gain. Obviously food, water and sleep are important components as well as fortifying a base. I wonder what would be interesting, but realistic objectives once the you have built up enough stuff to survive a few days. If you were a few weeks into the zombie apocalypse and you had a nice little fort going what would you try to do next?

Anyway, that's enough from me for now, I want to know what you think. There clearly seams to be a huge hunger for this type of game right now, what are designers getting wrong now? and how would you do it instead? What do you think of my ideas? I'd like to see what we would come up with.

[Zeruis]

This is pretty much my favorite zombie game: a minimum on the action, and more drama. Only possible flaw it might have would be the ending. Even if this is TWD, I want this game to have a HAPPY ending.

[CapnJay]

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-gr...r-get-to-play/

Number Six

[ommmnomnomnom]

Oblivion style gameplay, crysis 2 graphics, Arkham city melee combat and bulletstorm kill varieties and score systems, but imagine this with zombies and gears style horde mode.

[dx1]

I'm waiting for ►Dead State, hoping this will be as promised. Would make me happy enough.

[Master of Aeons]

Resident Evil Gamecube is still my favorite.

Crimson Heads? Forget about it!

[Milosuperspesh]

Originally Posted by Master of Aeons

Resident Evil Gamecube is still my favorite.

Crimson Heads? Forget about it!

those fuckers nearly gave me a heartattack the first time i got one in the mansion...not the one in the coffin cos that was obviously going to move lol

[Master of Aeons]

Originally Posted by Milosuperspesh

those fuckers nearly gave me a heartattack the first time i got one in the mansion...not the one in the coffin cos that was obviously going to move lol

Crimson Head Kenny! We demand it!

[Toxic Tarantula/Fadel]

I feel the walking dead was good, but the combat was really something. I really want the walkind dead, because although I would like more action, it has to fit the story, and really the story to the walking dead was just fupping heaven, so just... the walking dead.

[Sutinen]

DayZ. Nuff said.
I say fuck skills and story-driven gameplay in a survival game, everything that happens in DayZ is player-controlled and I like that. Life is also fragile in DayZ, a sniper with a fiddy cal can get killed in a 50m firefight facing a Makarov pistol.
The sneaking around zombies and the medical system (Blood, shock, broken leg) is also great in DayZ. It's currently in mod state and it's pretty amazing even currently.
I can't wait to see the standalone.

[Saemunder]

To me it has to be size, by that i don't mean some mega map that's going to span a continent but actually feeling like you are in a city. Completeness of buildings, millions of zombies, and most importantly more choices than you could shake a stick at. I want the survival to be the focus not an added nuisance like we are seeing with three way fps' where the third side is npc controlled. Another thing i would love is the start of a zombie apocalypse, that chaos and danger would be interesting. ie much of what CapnJay pointed at with that link.

DayZ is good in that everything is in the hands of players, but there are so many little intricate details not there that mean that there will never really be a story there (in the traditional sense I mean, not war stories with friends).

What usually makes a survival game for me is the story, whether it's coming across some bloodbath or a collection of corpse's hanging in a room but not explicitly told. You wonder what the hell happened and maybe if you will come across whatever did it.

Also i want something that says fuck you to achievements, they annoy me to no end and have only managed to cheapen the experience of playing a game for me, but i'm probably in the minority there and believe a game should be able to stand on it's own legs with nothing else to help it.

@Zeruis: You have to remember that happy endings don't stay with a person as long as ambiguous or sad endings, sadly it's just human nature (it's easier for us to remember the bad than the good) even if we prefer the good endings. Would as many people remember Firefly if it had ended any other way?

[Platinumb]

I like playing Telltale's Walking Dead version of zombie games: dialogue-heavy, impacts on character interaction, minimal to no actual zombie-killing.

It would be cool if you could have drastic changes to plot based on these interactions, but I know computer technology isn't that far advanced.

[AnnaSan]

It would be really nice if there would be multiple endings :]

[KUyTh]

I'm looking forward to the release of State of Decay and Project Zomboid. Also Zafehouse Diaries seems to be a very interesting text-based survival game.

[thestalkinghead]

my ultimate zombie game would use the same engine as my ultimate game, my ultimate game and would have a very good physics engine, where you could design things eg. traps and weapons and the way they work would be based on real physics, so if you were to make something simple like a bow and arrow you would have to first have a knife to carve the wood and before that you would have to design the knife, and to make the knife you would have to design a furnace and a mould and you would need to find or dig up the materials to burn or melt and so on, and the bow you made would work by simulating the force that a bent piece of wood can give to an arrow.

basically a big physics/engineering simulator, so crafting wouldn't be as simple as twigs + metal = spear you would have to open some sort of 3d modelling programme and not only design the shape of the tool/weapon you would also have to design the process in which it was built, so the tools the 3d modelling programme you would use to shape things would be stuff like a rough rock to sand a piece of wood into shape and heavy rock or piece of metal to bash metal into shape, and over time you could design more complex machinery to build more complex weapons and traps.

if it were set in the modern world you could find modern machinery and it would work the same way it would work in real life eg. a car would be a real simulation of a car where it actually burns fuel that turns a simulated engine that moves the complex set of mechanisms to make a car work, to save processing power this would be simulated once/a few times then after it's been simulated it would become mainly animation but with simulated physical interaction with the world

basically i see the zombie apocalypse as an engineering problem and i would like to be able to solve it in a realistic way.