Survive the Zombies

<<<SPOILERS BELOW. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.>>>

Survive The Zombies ditches the strong narrative focus that Dead Man Walking opted for and instead weaves a more humorous and lighthearted take on the zombie formula. With simple choices and an even simpler protagonist (right down to protagonist profession), STZ is an enjoyable read that doesn't take itself too seriously and is a great literary timekiller, especially if you haven't found all of the choices and routes.

Surprisingly, there are more than the first glance would make it seem. I played this game for years and just today discovered you can rescue bob AND get the cure, discovering the best ending only today. Of course, I never sat down and tried this hard until now, but it goes to show this is not a game to avoid, even if you don't prefer this tone in the genre.

I found most of the humor landed, especially when a couple of looters simply wanted my cat, or when I pushed my injured best friend down the street in a wheelbarrow. Of course, I never once even considered giving my cat away, but things like this made me belly chuckle and made the overall experience a pleasant read, a surprising one on the first playthrough.

It all isn't without flaws, though. Perhaps because of the strong fixation on keeping with its own tone, the game can be a little dull and encounters can be almost jarringly short and meaningless. The witty narration and self-aware commentary do little to distract from the clear lack of challenge or real threat to your character. Being able to survive Phase One using only common sense and not taking any risks or inserting yourself into danger and chaos makes sense, but the author sort of implies it will get harder as the game and, thus, apocalypse march on, but no, it honestly, really never does. A humorous take on such a genre requires still some level of encroaching threat or ever-present, looming danger, but not even the zombies or various pockets of humans you can run into ever fulfill this role. Its less of an easy game and more of just an enjoyable, funny, smartly-written but nonetheless slightly disappointing tale set in an almost actionless apocalypse.

Regardless of these medium-level critiques, the story and overall experience fortunately are enough to make up for these things, but maybe only because the vast majority of jokes and funny situations stick.

Nonetheless, while it fails to go toe to toe with any well-written, serious take on the zombie story like Berka's Dead Man Walking, Survive The Zombies reigns supreme regardless in its own division, and it certainly worth your time.

This was pretty awesome, great work :)

I have played many storygames that involved zombies, but this game in particular was pretty enjoyable. The writing was good, with little errors and there was never a dull moment with what was happening. I find it impressive how you were able to combine some rather good humor in a situation where everyone in the world is becoming undead cannibals with a tense atmosphere, but you did a rather awesome job at doing so.

Honestly, this was quite entertaining and I liked that the answers go certain situations weren't obvious or easy as this makes this fun to play over again and test out different decisions and paths.

There's plenty here that this game gets right, and that certainly makes this quite an enjoyable story with good replay value.

I got to the king of the zombies ending

I hate myself

my family made it out and I would do that for my family my grandparents have a bunch of guns and I would probably get a gun so we would survive

I'm annoyed that the zombies were even there

pretty fun man

6/8
Very interesting and realistic.

really fun to stave off boredom

I saved Bob but got killed, 10/10 would stick a bin on a zombies head again