Say hi to David Schneider; he’s the 1-man band from California, USA that put together “After Us” for the All Out War Game Jam. You can play the game, here!
Jaz Rignall was one of the judges who picked out After Us as one of his favorites. “I really like this, because it does something different. And that’s turn a generic, homely environment into something packed with horror. The sky is blue. The sun is shining. It should by rights be another nice day. But it isn’t because there are a fuckload of zombies after your ass, and you need to kill them. What’s not to love?”
TWD.com : What was your creative process for this game idea?
DS : Add zombies. Add guns. Add a small environment. Add more zombies. Seriously though, there wasn’t much to it. I’m a huge Walking Dead fan and love anything zombie related, so of course zombies were a necessity. I tried to work in the All Out War theme as best as possible and make it actually feel like you were at war against them, fighting for your life. The result was a game in which you have to fight past a zombie horde in order to retrieve supplies that’ll keep you alive for another week.
TWD.com : What kinds of games do you aim to make?
DS : Games that people actually want to play, rather than games that are focused on making the most money possible.
TWD.com : How do you think you will further develop this game and its concept in future?
DS : So the plan is to create an open world zombie survival game, with an emphasis on survival. I can hear a lot of people right now saying “oh no, another zombie game,” but most games in the zombie genre are focused on action, rather than survival. The few that do focus on survival all have major flaws, in my opinion.
In After Us you can expect to see a large open world, set in a suburban/urban area, with most buildings enterable and loot distributed in logical places. Many different objects will be able to be used as weapons, from baseball bats to katanas to frying pans. As this is a survival game, there will, of course, be a hunger/thirst system as well as some other to be determined systems (i.e. humanity or insanity).
Players will be able to barricade any house or building they wish – no predetermined safe-houses here. The zombies in After Us also differ from zombies in most games; these are your classical shambling zombies similar to those seen in Dawn of the Dead or The Walking Dead. No zombies that sprint at you at superhuman speeds, no special zombies, just good old slow zombies.
That’s not to say they won’t be dangerous… While a few by themselves aren’t a threat, ten in a narrow alley or hallway may be, and you definitely won’t want to mess with a horde of one hundred. Rather than just scratching you or smacking you, zombies will also grab on to you and attempt to bite you. If you can’t escape from their grip, or you’re surrounded by other zombies, it’ll most likely be game over for you.
TWD.com : Any particular favorite comics?
DS : The Walking Dead, of course!
TWD.com : Anything else to add?
DS : Hope you guys enjoy playing it, this is my first game jam (and actually, my first attempt at making a game) and I had a blast. It didn’t end up quite as polished as I wanted it to, but I had to spend a week trying to recode the way Unity handles animations – typical skinned mesh renderers are terribly unoptimized and didn’t allow me to get more than ~100 zombies on-screen at once…with my method of “faking” animations I’m able to get literally thousands on screen at once, but I limited it to about 200 for the judges’ sake…
To follow the game’s development, visit David’s official site here, or follow him on Twitter, here. And if you missed it the first time, you can play the game right now, on this very website!
Fun game. I loved the giant horde 😀
Just watched your vid. 😀