Wow. There are some great ideas here! Thanks for your opinions, everyone! Sorry I haven't replied in a while. I kind of set this game aside while I work on a simple top-down shooter to tune my XNA skills. But the information in this thread will sure help me out later on!

I'd say create a zombie game where the reason for zombies is unknown and never known. Maybe give a few ties to what could have been the reason but give possible contradictions to it with another possible reason. Living in an age of "everything must be explained" diminishes the mystery and fear behind the unknown. Heck look at vampires, people used to think they were real and were terrified of them. They "could" be real but now they're cool and people want to be one.

My own opinion but I'd say give several questions for the player to ask. Like where did the zombies come from, how do they actually be dead but still alive, how am I going to get out of here, are there other's who haven't turned into zombies yet?

But only answer the more necessary ones, like the last two. Give the teaser of "the answer is behind this door" but then provide some massive zombie group falling through the ceiling to cut the player off from ever knowing what was behind it.

Maybe give hints but never see what is behind the whole thing. Anyone else wondered who the heck was the guy in the suit, later known as the G-Man from HL1? You kept seeing him everywhere but you could never reach him.

m2c

Try not thinking of Zombies as the focous of the story but rather as a constant threat and source of conflict. Give the player some other objective to concentrate on and use the zombies as means of supplying fear and danger to hinder them on their goals.

Player: I've got to reach the reach the police station if I'm going to have any chance of finding out where Daos has taken Sarah. But between me and there are 47 blocks of zombie infested city streets and I've only got 7 rounds left my shotgun. This could be a problem.

First off, I don't think it's really that important to explain why there are zombies in the first place. Of course, you could have various characters talking about why they believe the dead are walking (religious reasons, biological, etc.), but it's really not that important. In a game about survival (which I'm assuming this one is, given the zombie plot), explanations don't really matter a whole lot. The focus is on surviving the slaughter, not filing a commission report about why it happened.

The biggest flaws of the Resident Evil stories is that they over-explain everything. By doing this, the writers give us unnecessary details that feel superfluous and don't enrich the experience much; they only distract from it.

We can look at other situations where little is explained and a good product still follows. In Alien and Mad Max, we are given little or no explanations about the circumstances, and yet the suspense and urgency are still intact. If an explanation isn't warranted in any logistical or thematic sense, it probably isn't a good idea to slap it on merely for explanation's sake.

The issues with the Zombies storyline is that it is essentially beaten, literally, to death. Also, the zombie games never actually place you in the point where all the crap went wrong, but just shove you in to a place where hell has already broken loose. How did it get that bad? Hell if you know...just grab a shotgun and fire away. gets old doesnt it.

There aren't really many "ghost" horror games out there that break any new ground either. Fatal frame and the Nth number of PC adventure games are all real nice, but also...getting old.

Now possession! thats a genre of horror that rarely gets touched. You never see a game where people become all crazed and "zombie-ish" (for you undead lovahs) because of spiritual means. Doom kinda played on it, but that's a FPS and was the story REALLY all that important? no, you just wanted the big gun.

I say if your really going to go original in the horror genre you'll be heading close towards Silent Hill, and I say that not because you'll be stealing ideas, but because you'll nearing obscurity and stories that are almost too complex for the casual gamers to understand let alone care about.

Well, it wouldn't be an original storyline, but it would be a first for the zombie genre....why not have someone make a zombie game based on "Cell" or "The Signal" those people weren't really undead they were just crazed and animalistic and insane. It would be a nice twist (oh, and for anyone who doesnt know about those two stories, it's about a pulse that goes through TV's or cellphones, depending on the book, that makes people just go animal and zombie like crazy. Would make for a wonderful action game.

There was a game I was never able to get my hands on called "Geist," in which you play a disembodied spirit who is able to possess living beings, such as people and dogs and whatnot. I think you, as the ghost, have to divert a pending disaster or something like that. Are there other ways you could take the concept of this game and use it?

Is it possible? I would say so. We're not all Romeros, after all. Mind you, redundancy is the largest problem in any horror novel/game/movie/anything. Mankind is terrified by many, many things. And over the years, thanks to movies, books, and the ilk, we have come to refine what we fear.

How often does someone express a fear of mummies? Rarely. When you think horror, do you not think lycanthrope and vampire? Do zombies not come to mind? These are the fears we have refined over the generations. And so, we must have new takes on these things in order to keep things...original.

For example... I am writing a lengthy story, currently classed as a novella (as it is incomplete at the moment) in which there are all of the above mentioned elements. The premise of the story is that the zombie apocalypse has come and all of the supernatural creatures that had been living on earth are finally able to live in daylight without fear of persecution by the humans that are now the minority.

I should say that this is a fairly original concept. If that were not original enough, I have redefined the laws surrounding Lycanthropy (werewolfism) and Polyphoric Hemophilia (vampirism). As well as drawing religion into question. Is there a soul in these creatures, and is there any kind of repentance or heaven for them?


I apologize for the lengthy post that doesn't quite address the question head on. But I should say that it is entirely possible to create an original concept. Just think outside the box. That's what writer's are called to do. If I recall. ;-)

If you, (referring to darkcypher543) are looking for someone to assist you in writing the game, please contact me. I work mainly for free, and at the very least, could be a friend to bounce ideas off of. I am contactable through GameDev or Via e-mail (AVPmaster3@aol.com)

If its a clearly a zombie survival horror game, you basically have the one case where you don't need to invent a story. Like someone posted before about Romero's Dawn of the Dead, no real reason makes the scenario scarier.

Give a vague set of explanations, and let the player make up the story themselves. If you look at Resident Evil and ignore Umbrella Corp, you have individual people with motives of power and greed. Those 2 factors alone, a player with any understanding of ethics will make their own assumptions.

How about the opposite?

You start out as a scientist working on some mysterious substance. Suddenly, you accidentally get yourself infected and you turn into a brain-thirsty zombie. Now go infect your lab mates and begin the takeover of the city!

You wouldn't have to worry about dying, as long as other zombies are present: you can just take control of a different zombie when you "die". You could do all sorts of team commands to work together to kill the humans.

That would be a fun game. It would take very good AI (for the citizens) to make the game interesting though.

How about...
A 'signal' is transmitted in your small town turning the inhabitants who hear it into crazed people with overactive glands. somehow this makes them leper like so they start falling apart like lepers do(and zombies too)and overly aggressive and bitey. The signal also short circuits most of the lights in town, and those who were exposed to the signal start attacking the 'uninfected' people. The main character didn't hear because he was fixing his classic car with a broke radio/everything. He just wants to get his Girlfriend/Mom/Dad/Grandma and get out of the town to get help(he isn't qualified to solve this sort of thing and he is aware).The beginning would have some light, the middle little, and the end relatively none except for the flashlight that may routinely go on and off. Add a few moral quandaries and different survival possibilities(foot, car,plane maybe,etc)
OR -HPLovecraft status have a small east coast town attacked by increasingly frequent abductions/ murders caused by some alien entity loving cult.
Sorry if this is ridiculous, just reading this and would like to add something, zombies are scary and i love them, iono if this is is 'zombie' enough.