Part of the fun of the game is how well it captures that paranoid feeling from the best zombie movies, where survivors cling to what they have, and, at any given moment, the Mall Tour will swamp a safe area with the undead. Survivors are not always pleased to find someone prying away their barricades and stumbling in seeking sanctuary, and may lash out at their fellow players. "Crazed survivors are always a part of any good apocalypse," Davis says, adding that he didn't work to encourage hysteria, but left the door open. "The players have built various systems around it, both of vigilante justice and of thrill-seeking psychopaths who enjoy the extra challenge of having both the zombies and the local militia groups after them." Those unable or unwilling to join one of the local groups skulk in the shadows, sneaking from safe house to safe house, scrounging what equipment they can from the rubble.
The zombie experience is similarly authentic. While zombies can only manage some forms of speech - various groans and horrible feeding noises - they gain experience easier than human players, as all a zombie requires to get stronger is breaking things and eating people. The zombie skill tree emphasizes destruction and consuming the flesh of the living, of course, but also supplements the mob aspect of a group of zombies, and the newly-undead are advised to log off in a mass, as a lone young zombie is easy prey for terrified survivors.
On the design side, Davis said, he tries to keep his zombies within the Romero model, with some variations for gameplay reasons - perhaps most significant, zombies can regain their humanity - and to keep things fun. Philosophically, he says, "My favorite angle on the zombie apocalypse is that once all of a city's survivors are dead, it's actually quite peaceful out there. I've not pushed it too much in Urban Dead, but it's been nice to pass through the occasional suburb where every safe house has been broken open, and you've got hundreds of zombies just milling quietly around what was once their home. Urban Dead also drives home the idea that zombies are people, too, and that a die-hard survivor character can suddenly be given a different perspective on the game when he gets killed. Once risen as a reluctant zombie, he can easily find himself being shot down by other survivors with the same mindless bloodthirstiness he once saw in the undead."
Initially, he "wasn't even sure that player-controlled zombies would work, that perhaps people wouldn't want to roleplay an anonymous and largely mute character." His worries proved unfounded, as the zombie community can be quite enthusiastic, banding together for Mall Tours and other events, and toiling away at being the best undead they can be. Grouping seemed natural, and he enforces that in the game's design. "Higher-level zombies can buy skills which allow them to help out lower-level zombies (such as dragging people out into the streets), and there tends to be a good sense of grunted camaraderie between a lot of zombies." This even extends to new players, he says. "If a fresh zombie meanders its way into a horde, it isn't regarded as a threat and will get some protection from the others. But if an unfamiliar survivor climbs through the window of a small safe house, they might well be greeted with suspicion."
