OK, so there was this biological warfare experiment that went wrong. The head science guy running the experiment was called Zed. Before you know it, there’s thousands of brain-dead infected people swarming everywhere trying to eat people. We call these zombies “Zed’s Dead”.

Zed’s Dead is a multiplayer isometric LAN shooter. The focus is on quick, fun competitive multiplayer play: pick your teams, pick your map, set the game parameters, and go!

Current game modes:
– Survival: teams earn 1 point per second that they have at least one character alive
– King of the Hill: teams earn points for standing close to the Flag.

One person needs to start up the game as Server, and pick a map.
Other people run the game as Client.
Controls: WASD or Arrow Keys to move; point and click with the mouse to fire.
Anyone who doesn’t have a computer can use their Android or iPhone (using Chrome or Firefox) and will get to play using twin joysticks (left joystick to move, right joystick to fire). Just point the phone’s browser to the URL displayed on the game server’s team-picking screen. Phone users can look at any of the computer screens to see the actual game world while playing.

The game runs using your LAN – so you all have to be connected to the same network.

Download the game here [alpha 0.1]: This is an early early alpha. Seeking feedback and comments please!

Windows:
[Download Windows Alpha 0.1]

As you’ll see, there’s also a map-making component. To make your maps usable, they must have 2 player spawn points (one for each team), 1 or more zombie spawn points, and 1 Flag which is used in the king-of-the-hill play mode.

I have been working on a multiplayer isometric shooter. The basic idea is that there are 2 opposing teams of players fighting various scenarios on city maps, and the game runs over a LAN. There are also zombies in the game, but they act as obstacles (or opportunities?) during the core player-v-player game, rather than being the primary challenge. One cool thing that will be included is that players can use their smartphones as twinstick controllers: so even if they don’t have a computer available, they will still be able to play – this idea was prototyped successfully in a recent game jam that I took part in.

The current graphics come from some rather excellent artists over on graphicriver.net. I’m actively seeking a skilled pixel artist to work with me on bringing this forward and fleshing it out with more graphics, GUI interfaces, etc.

The core technologies are javascript, pixijs for rendering, node webkit for cross-platform deployment (Windows, OSX, Linux) (and for its extensions adding things that would be impossible in a normal web browser.. such as websocket/UDP server, read/write native files, etc.), and websockets/UDP libraries in nodejs for networking.

I’ve got lots of interesting things to say on the technicalities of how this is coming together, and on the actual gameplay concepts.. but I’ll leave that all until future posts.

I hope to have a playable demo available later this week.

There’s a brand-new Facebook page for the game here