Forums » Writing Workshop » Read Thread

I am making a zombie/survival game. I am planning on making it very realistic, whereas every single zombie poses a huge threat. I even have a five page, single zombie, escape scene. Is making every single zombie a major threat a good decision for a story-game?.

The thing is... there already exists a very impressive (2000+ page) zombie survival adventure.

Oh. I probably won't read that JJJ. It's a zombie apocalypse. I like zombie stories where the infection happens in one place, and the protagonist has to escape. A zombie apocalypse just drowns out the hope, you're living just to eventually die. It's kind of hypocritical of  me to say this though, cause I like the walking dead show

You won't read it?

.... That's pretty much the game, ha ha.

The more of that you can include in your story, the better. The only thing to consider is how long you can keep up that level of detail and you own writing momentum. It happens a lot around here when someone begins an amazing project, but simply runs out of steam shortly after.

^ this.

It's absolutely better to spend the time to make a well-thought out game rather than rushing to publication. 

But, there's an awful lot of people who post lengthy descriptions of how incredibly detailed their thousands-of-pages epic is going to be, and spend a lot of time debating in forums about every idea and character and sidequest they plan to add to it-- only to publish a five page, choiceless "preview" after about two weeks, then abandon the project when they realize how much work it's actually going to be, or when they get a "better idea," or they just lose interest.

PS: I'd say don't let the fact that there's already an amazing storygame in your genre stop you from utilizing the theme. 

^Or as in the case that happened to me, real-life rears its ugly head and you have to spend a bit of time dealing with outside commitments. (In my case, house move and a rota-shift job doesn't help).

My own story has been mostly untouched for 9 months I think, beside the occasional touching up as I simply have no time to get on with it. So, be wary of the time commitment, it's not just writing it. You need to think about the revision, the coding, the re-edits to smooth out the flow of the game and so on. Expect to take a lot of time to make progress on something, break it down and don't hype it up until it's a page away from completion haha!