Honestly, I think Valve has cornered the market on zombie games. I don't think they're going to be able to top Left 4 Dead.

Ugh, I read Turn based and was completely turned off. I can't feel pressure if its the traditional Turn Based strategy that everyone knows. If they manage to switch that aspect of it, I think it'll turn out better. As for now, I'm sadly uninterested. It sounds like a fantastic idea though.

Hmmm, well I have mixed opinions about the entire thing to be honest. I understand what they are going for, but the problem I see is that most "psychological zombie horror" works by having a group of "normal" people who react unrealistically to the situation and ofentimes refuse to learn. It should also be noted that the Hollywood definition of "Normal" often strikes me as being at least mildly retarded. Typically in such a movie there are at most one or two people who have even an iota of common sense.

The thing with an RPG based around the concept is simply that most players aren't going to play characters who are "normal people" and if they do, they are going to rapidly cease to be normal people the longer they survive and the more they learn.

It should also be noted that Zombie horror is not all that uncommon, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in the US who has no experience with the genere at all, even if they don't care for it. Even dealing with niche markets like fanboys your dealing with a lot of people who have probably spent an unhealthy amount of time thinking about the hypothetical possibility of a zombie uprising. Consider that we've got numerous best-selling video games (Resident Evil, Left 4 Dead, etc...) Zombies are a stock villain in ann kinds of fantasy and science fiction, then we've got numerous board games (Last Night On Earth, etc..) and paper and pencil RPGs like "All Flesh Must Be Eaten" and "Dead Reign". Not to mention the movies themselves which remain popular enough where it seems your seeing at least one or two churned out for direct to video release every year.

The point being that barring the initial disbelief, most people aren't going to be "OMG, what is that??!?!?". It's a bloody zombie, we've been looking at bloody zombies since we were five. As teenagers we watched dozens of zombie movies... really.

I guess my point is that ZRPG sounds interesting at first, but honestly I've oftentimes felt the "FPS" or "combat RPG" take on the genere was accurate to where things would wind up before too long. Making a whole game out of the "ZOMG! There are Zombies" reaction that would last maybe 5 minutes if that seems like a problem.

It's sort of like a lot of other horror concepts in various media. Once they get past introducing the concepts and the intiial shock, a lot of them have trouble actually DOING anything with it. A good example of this would be a paper and pencil RPG called "Nightbane". A lot of GMs are good with the "Boo there is a monster invasion, and your a monster too!" but then have trouble dealing with the fact that in the end it's more of a fantasy/dark super heroes type game based around monsters beating the living crud out of each other than it is based on actual horror and suspense (other than as a trapping). The same thing applies to Zombie RPGS and such, and frankly I could see this game suffering from the same problem (if I'm describing it correctly). "We don't want to make another zombie bashing game" seems to be their motif, but honestly that is what happens when the zombie genere is explored seriously past the very beginnings.

What's more when you get down to it, even if .01% of the human population survives and is unaffected the Zombies ultimatly lose. It might take a while, but anyone with even a mild amount of creativity can come up with ways to kill the things by the tens of thousands (and we've ALL thought of stuff like this watching Zombie movies). Sure the numbers seem endless but there are only so many people on the planet. To put things into perspective if you had say 5 people you could probably "kill" "everyone" in your neighborhood fairly quickly if they were all mindless shamblers that could be relied upon to move towards you. Then you could take the show on the road to neighboring areas or other towns since there are only going to be so many people in a given area to have been zombified. Given time, humans are going to reproduce, and frankly you'd be shocked at how quick humans can be disposed of (ie Vanishing Villages in Vietnam and such, when they weren't even zombies) never mind effectively mindless zombies.

Well enoguh rambling.

Good luck with the game, I'll keep an eye on it, will probably buy it if it seems decent in the end, but honestly I'm not sure if a decent game can be developed around those concepts (as I understand them).

hmmm, sounds pretty interesting, if you ask me... psychological horrors are always more scary than just blood and gore, afterall... (case in point? I'm a total coward yet I don't find SAW scary)

Milkman Dan:
After reading World War Z, I can imagine how epic an RPG of this type would be, beyond the obvious 'survival' aspects.

Think they might do something like the battle of Yonkers?

Sounds interesting. What platform(s) will it be for? PC only?

And I don't mind turn-based combat. I'm actually rather surprised by all the people here turned off by turn-based gaming.