On the Origin of Species

Everything has to come from some where, every tree was once a seed. As game designers this is occasionally a fact we have to acknowledge, as tempting as it may be to just say "It just is" or "It's there because I want it to be" to everything. It's OK if you just shrug off gratuitous health pack placement because a player is about to fight a boss, "It may not make sense for there to be a pile of bandages outside this mobster's little hell hole, but if there isn't one the player will probably feel completely overwhelmed inside, and it does give them a heads up that something big is going to happen, so what the hell? let's just place a bunch there." but you can't do that for everything, and in my opinion this applies to one thing more so than anything else:

The antagonist

Specifically these key points:

• Who/what they are
• Their motivation(s)
• Where they came from or how they came to be

With zombietopia we've got it pretty easy for the most part. Our antagonists are zombies and their motivation is a desire to engorge themselves on human flesh. Simple enough so far, but where did they come from? How did they become zombies?
Once again, that isn't necessarily too hard, there is a multitude of tried and true answers to that question, the main ones being: Disease, Black magic or Brain Parasites.
We plan on trying something a little different though, I'm not going to let the metaphorical cat out of the metaphorical bag quite yet, but I'm sure at some point down the line we'll tease you all with little nuggets of our plans suspended from fishing wires.

As always, we aren't married to anything yet, which is the beauty of the early stages of a project. Also as always, if anyone wants to talk about their own idea for a possible 'zombie origin' or about how it's been done else where, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email.

brainwashed and cold