What does someone without guns do in a zombie apocalypse? Get screwed or run.

Zombies can chase you, but in a slow shamble. However they have mobs, can call to each other and coordinate. They are terrible and climbing.

That's where parkour comes in. Instead of a typical zombie game where you survive by shooting everything that moves, this is a zombie game where you have to run from or through zombie crowds without getting caught. This means jumping off ledges, over roofs, up walls, and scaling buildings to get away from the omnipresent threat.

Should be: Open sandbox environment (perhaps randomly generated) that players will have to run around and be resourceful. Say you're running on the street but the pursuing zombies screech and another wave heads you off ahead. You're trapped. The environment ought to be open enough that a resourceful player could scale the nearest building - with zombies close behind - or jump between two walls Mario style or some such. A player should be able to get anywhere from anywhere if they understand their environment and have fast reflexes.

Think first person Assassins Creed. The alleyway you are in is the end of your line of sight. You have no idea what may lie beyond. More zombies? A death trap? A safe haven? Only one way to tell.

Mixing dark visuals, increasingly organized (as the game goes on) zombie hordes that actively hunt you, bait you into compromising positions, surprise you on ledges while you are completely powerless to fight back, creates an immersive survival/horror experience where the player is the prey, not the hunter. No crafting, no guns. Only exploration driven map awareness and flow state reactions.

This pumps up the need for perfection when climbing buildings, jumping down stairs, running across roof tops, and escaping an organized horde. Screw up your jump and you might be toast. As the story progresses, the zombie hive mind will become more and more organized, using police tactics to try and control the player's movement through a labyrinth of unfamiliar city streets and alleyways. The feeling of being powerless against a malevolent and increasingly intelligent enemy sets the mood quite nicely. Staccato moments of adrenaline followed by quiet moments of hiding, sneaking, or resting in safe zones.

-optional ideas-

Perhaps the player should have two options of movement - stealth, or full on parkour. Rather than always being on the run from the zombies, searching frantically for somewhere safe, the player should be able to move quietly and slowly in uncrowded areas, or maybe even pretend to be a zombie themselves, hoping to go un-noticed by the mindless masses. After all, the zombies themselves are mindless, and slow to notice subtle things... it's the hive-mind that you've got to worry about noticing you.

Being able to hide during a chase would grant some diminuendo from the constant crescendo of running for your life.

OH GOD THEY SAW ME HELP AHHHHHH *runs down an alley, up a staircase, over a roof top, and hides in a trashcan while out of sight.* The zombie horde passes by completely.

This would also add tension. Hiding quietly in a trashcan, powerless, hoping that nothing saw or heard you get in. Zombies run by and........ whew. they're gone. Or conversely, CRAP! THEY'VE GOT ME!

Sneaking would of course be much slower, and not always effective. This would add tension as well, hoping that you're excursion into a zombie infested area doesn't get you killed horribly, as the game gets very quiet - no sounds but that of the nearby zombie threat, nothing moving but the few that can see right in front of you, because you can't look around to keep tabs on the rest of them or else you risk blowing your cover.

My imagination of the story line starts with zombie out breaks, where the zombies are nothing more than aggressive brutes. Fast, dull, viscous, guided by hunger, and the smell of blood/fresh human. Later, as more and more zombies are converted and time goes by, a hive mind slowly emerges... not much smarter than the normal zombies at first, but growing. As the hive mind begins to take more control of the crowd, individual zombies aren't as quick to react to their own senses, unless provoked enough that the hive mind would take particular note.

The application of this is that earlier in the game, trying to sneak past zombies would not work. They'd smell you, or hear you, or wander over to wherever an odd noise came from.

However later on, with the growth in the zombie population, it becomes more possible to sneak by, or even infiltrate a particularly randomly spread contingent of them, so long as you move slowly, dont bump into one or give it any reason to pay attention to you.

Think of the hive mind like a motion detector light. If it's not already suspicious that you're nearby somewhere, It's focus is busy looking through the senses of other zombies and thinking about other things. All the zombies everywhere are all looking at and seeing other zombies wandering around. Thus, the hive mind wont really be paying too much attention to another inconspicuous zombie-like form shambling by.

However as a part of sneaking, one should be able to make distractions. Maybe even traps. You need to go through a crowded street. There's a car in the distance and a crap ton of zombies. If you chuck a rock at the car, you might be able to set off it's alarm, drawing the attention of all the zombies in the world to that spot. You might be able to sneak by in conspicuously if you dont take to long. Maybe.

Also, later on into the plot as the player's journey moves from being in a state of constant survival horror run-away, to starting to master surviving the zombies and moving to the final confrontation, players might be able to create improvised traps/weapons.

Need to cross an infested street? Sneak into a vacant alleyway nearby, setup a trip wire spanning it's width, run out into the road and catch the horde's attention, and run back into the alley, jumping over the chord. Zombies aren't perceptive enough or coordinated enough to avoid tripping/getting backed up over it. It'll only waylay them a short time, but it's enough to circle around a building back to the now vacant road before they can catch up far enough to see where you've gone.

Or perhaps a silenced pistol, or baseball bat. If there's a single inconvenient zombie in an alleyway you want to get to, but you don't want to alert it and thus the hive mind, you can shoot it once in the head, or attempt to take it out in a single bat swing. If you kill it fast enough, the hive mind wont be able to tell what happened, or where it occurred.

A pistol or a bat, however, will be next to useless against an on coming horde.

Story should have 3 acts, though perhaps not cordoned off with title screens and section ends, as some games try to do. More like how the original portal had 2 acts without an official break of gameplay.

Intro:

News footage of Zombie apocalypse. Mindless dead wandering the streets attacking people. Some fight back, military tries to suppress. Due to the need to secure safe places to sleep/eat while not fighting, and limited ammo, survivor groups fracture into independent bunkers and safe houses spread throughout the city, each protecting and feeding their own. Turns into a base defense + supply gathering situation where each base needs to send out a scouting team to locate and return with food and water from such left over bastions of civilization like the supermarket. However, for most the attrition damage over time of defending buildings from the zombies, and repeatedly exposing scout teams to the zombie horde ended up being unsustainable. Many more die as zombies manage to take down supply runs, invade buildings, or from hunger or madness.

As the attrition on supply lines continues to be a problem, security is a constant risk, food becomes hard to obtain, ammunition runs low, and no serious headway against the zombie spread, the military decides to pull out; enacting plan "Amish green."

The city is left to it's ghoulish fate.

4 years later.

Act 1: The player character starts the game opening their eyes for the first time in what appears to be the open body of a helicopter flying above a city. Looks around, confused. A nearby soldier notices your movement and leans over offering you a iPod and earbuds. "Hey hey! She's waking up! Hello there soldier! Your probably pretty confused, here pop this in, it'll help." As you pick up the ipod and put it on, you pause it as something odd seems to be happening in the cockpit. The co-piolet seems to be shaking, hunched over, and the pilot is calling for attention. Suddenly the co-piolet attacks the pilot and bites him, wresting the controls away from him. The helicopter spins out of control and crashes. Everything goes dark. You re-awaken in the ruble of the helicopter, the only survivor. If you rummage around and find the co-piolet's crushed corpse, you can see that he's disfigured somewhat, red eyed. He also has an unread letter in his pocket that reads "To Violetta, I know I risk my life this day to help the world become a better place. I wish you to know that I will not be coming back. I was bitten on my last fuel supply run. I hid the wound so that no one would suspect, so that our salvation would not be waylaid on my account, but I bid you farewell. May this letter come back to on the wings of those stronger than I."

As you stand up, you hear howling in the distance and vicious snarling. A soldier you thought was dead reaches out to you and tells you to run. Run fast, and collapses. You end up running away from the crash, out into and around the unfamiliar city, chased by zombies, defenseless, scared, alone, lost. Objective is to find some kind of shelter.

--Important note:-- There is no HUD. No minimap. No objective marker. Character and player are at the complete mercy of wandering lost around what appears to be a monolithic, abandoned alien city looking for shelter. Player is unclear as to what that may be or where shelter even might be, just as the character is. Does that mean I need to run indoors? Does that mean I need to find a full safe house? Is there a safe house? This is what the player should be asking themselves.

Hud interfaces, explicit directions, visual cues and linear map structure break immersion. They are the invisible hands of developers reaching out from the game, and guiding the player on what to think, how to act, and what things mean. These approaches break their own stories at the best of times by de-stressing them, and reduce acclimation to the game world into naught but a todo list. By being intentionally vague about what the player needs to be looking for, and how to even find it, especially this early in the game before the player develops tacit knowledge of how the game is designed, we open the field for them to define what safety means, and encourages exploration and interaction with the game world. Am I safe hiding in an abandoned house by myself? Do I need to keep exploring? OH GOD IM BEING CHASED BY ZOMBIES AND RUNNING INSIDE DID NOTHING. Thats not safe.

What the gamer doesn't know, is that zombie hordes and the city scape for this initial level will be crafted to naturally guide them along a linear path, without making it appear so. This serves as a gentle introduction to the open city exploration possible later in the game.

---

After exploring and running around for a few minutes, taking in the dystopia that has befallen this once bustling city through innocent eyes, the map will wait for him to get caught in another zombie chase (accidental or no), and spawn dead end alleyways around all possible exits they could take. When they run down one and get caught between a wall and the horde, a cutscene takes place where the character hears "TAKE COVER!", and a grenade falls into the roiling mass of zombies and blows them up. A tall lanky man armed with a knife and a silenced pistol greets the character.

This new character, Jack, is a kind hearted survivor who lives with a nearby bunker family with a penchant for very sarcastic and often dark humor. He is at first completely perplexed at the idiocy of anyone running around out in the open, alone, without weapons and wants to know what your story is before he kills you -- believing that you could not have possibly gotten away without being bit. He also complains a bit about having used one of the few grenades he has left to save you. "If you're so concerned about not wasting supplies, why do you want to shoot me?!" "Newly infected people are far more dangerous than any zombie. You see, people are smart. We can plan, use tools, plead, and above all, we want more than anything else to survive. When a person is doomed to a walking death, desperation takes over and desperation can do horrible, horrible things. Desperation can sabotage safe houses, steal medicine, sacrifice the lives of everyone. For what? To appease madness." Or some such dialogue. When he recognizes how completely naive you are about the zombies and the state of the city, he is more willing to check you over to make sure you don't have any bite marks.

While he's physically checking you out, a woman runs up behind him, out of breath and angry, yelling something about the idiocy of running outside without protection and alone. (hypocrisy for both jack and jill)

When she catches up she notices you for the first time, and jack's inspection. Looking shocked at first, she quickly assumes lechery. The characters have a humorous, character setting back and forth, everything is eventually explained. I'm spending too much time on small details.

--This scene is meant to introduce that other humans do live in this city, despite the isolation felt during the first playable portion. Tone wise, it's also meant to help offset the depressing and violent atmosphere with a bit of off color humor, and the re-affirming knowledge that human life still persists against the odds. --

The net is that the character is saved by Jack and Jill, and is brought back to Erysium, the "strong hold" to which they belong. Erysium is little more than a few apartment buildings interconnected crudely by plywood boards between windows on the higher levels. The bottom floor has been retrofitted as a miniature armory, and the doors and windows have been barricaded. Other tenants live here as well, who you get to meet. Everyone is suspicious of you, thinks you may have been bit except jack, and by proxy jill. Many people want you out. However your given room and board so long as you work to help the community.

The culture of Erysium is one of suspicion, anger, sadness, paranoia, but mainly stress. Food is dangerous to get, ammunition is even more so (less of it to find), and there are plenty of mouths to feed. Furthermore, who knows when if the zombies will be able to ever overcome their defenses. They've been getting tougher lately. (first indication of the hive mind's growing influence. Zombies are chasing people for longer, being more effective.)

You are assigned with the supply gathering team, to help gather food. Turns out your fleetness of foot is amazing for dodging zombies and scouting out new areas of the city. (zombies are still pretty stupid at this point. May blind chase if provoked, otherwise only lethal if careless.) (No one uses cars, no gas.)

Jack nicknames you Nike.

Run a couple tutorial missions of scouting, finding food, and bringing it back. Chance to explore city a little.

At one point, go on a routine gathering mission (local shopping mall), but the zombies are there waiting for you, almost as if they predicted your team would be there. First time they've ever shown anticipation. Massive horde attacks your team, much larger than your limited munitions can handle. All of your teammates except jack die. Jill is separated from you, presumed got away. You manage to escape via super parkour, Jack is fast enough to keep up, if barely.

Come back to Erysium, two of the three apartments have been swarmed with zombies. Apparently they had waited out of view until the scout team left with the weapons, and then sieged the building. First time they've shown tactics, took Erysium by surprise. Remaining citizens in the last apartment blame you out of incoherent fear, given that you're the newest change in two years, and they don't know who you really are. You are expelled. Jack tries to convince everyone to leave, it's pointless to try and continue life without enough of a military force to do scouting runs. Citizens refuse, there's no where else to go that's any safer, they'd probably die in transit anyway. Fear causes irrationality. Jack argues that they could take the last of the munitions and try to travel to Amish Green. Ridiculed for hanging on to fantasies. Not winning the argument against fear and anger, Jack decides to stay and help secure Erysium. He's the only one who knows how to wield a proper gun, and he wants to stay in the hopes that Jill will show back up. You say farewell, and he tells you that Amish Green is not a fairy tail, it's very real. It's supposed to be the last bastion for humanity. The military pulled out and abandoned the city to recoup their forces and build a massive stronghold around a farmable area on the outskirts of the city. The idea was to provide a safe haven for fleeing citizens and army personnel somewhere that could be self-sustainable. Most people think it's a legend because everyone who's gone looking never came back, probably died in transit or found a better life there, but Jack knows its true - he was a captain in the military when the order was given, and deserted to protect those who stayed behind. He points you in the general direction that he thinks it lies in, but he dosen't know how far, or what direction it really is.

Your quest to find Amish Green. Act two is all about you defenseless, alone in the massive city with predators everywhere. The training wheels are off. Your supports are gone, probably dead. Your mission is ambiguous. You have little sense of direction outside of street signs, or a compass that Jack gave you.

The plot moves along like a treasure map. Following the footsteps of others who have tried to make it to Amish Green, mostly failing. A clue here pointing to a makeshift camp there, leading to... oh a zombie wearing their clothes. Damn.

It's also important for the player to seek out and use safe houses to replenish health, sleep, and save. Nike will get tired if she hasn't slept in too long and is constantly pumped up on adrenaline.

At some point, whenever the player gets bit by a zombie while running around,(probably early on) a subplot will start where Nike believes she's turning into a zombie, and becoming infected, but is dedicated to making it to Amish Green. Perhaps they have a cure for it. (reference to Jack's desperation speech) She covers it up so she dosen't provoke any other survivors she might meet. She then forgets about it for a while. When a survivor interrogates her about what she's covering and forces her to remove it, it just looks like a normal cut, and she's reminded that it's there.

First clue that Nike is immune to zombie infection. (and writes in the game mechanic where you can get hit once without just dying.)

This is where the sandbox comes in. Open city to explore, with stuff in it to find, when your not being chased to death by zombies. Think Fallout, only without the ability to fight, and with more enemies everywhere. At this point, being stealthy is becoming possible.

Zombies seem to follow you everywhere, like they have some special vendetta against you personally. At one point this becomes especially clear when you meet a traveling companion for a small subplot, and every zombie chase you instead of her when you split.

As you adventure around and piece together the path, zombies will become smarter and smarter. starts slowly at first, where they're easy to outwit, and it's possible to walk amongst them without an organized horde attacking you... but as the game progresses they start hunting you actively, looking for you, chasing you, using police tactics to guide where you run and trap you. You'll need to think fast, and improvise everyday items to parkour out of dead ends, and fight being directed. The feeling should emerge that there is an omnipotent force stalking you that's becoming smarter and smarter.

As you get closer to completing Act 2, you bump into Jill. She managed to take shelter in the wine cellar of a nearby building, and the zombies never followed her. She spent two nights down there shaking, terrified to leave, eating rations she had on her, and getting drunk of vintage wine. (think dark cave, comforting, fetal, escapism reaction) When she eventually had recovered enough nerve to leave and look for Jack, she made her way back to Erysium, and found it abandoned with blood everywhere. Not willing to believe that he was dead, she assumed he had some how escaped, maybe to find other bunker families to protect like a hero.

She has since been couch surfing through every bunker family she can find looking for where he's gone, getting more and more desperate as each one has no recollection of seeing him. After canvasing almost everywhere he could have gone, she now wants to believe that he's gone to try and find Amish Green.

(heavily implied in her backstory is an increasing trend alcoholic escapism. As she travels with you for your last leg of the journey she drinks herself to sleep each night.)

Stumbling upon you, her hopes are rekindled somewhat. You're living proof that he really did survive that initial attack, and that if you "his little Nike" made it this long on your own wandering the streets, then its possible that he's managed to survive too. You dont have the heart to tell her that he stayed behind to fight to the bitter end for Erysium, or that the only reason you're still around is that you seem to be invulnerable to infection.

At the end of act 2, you get to Amish Green.

You get to Amish Green. Jack was right, It's real. Walls made out of metal scrapped from a nearby airport, and various other metals. (think a huge megaton) Guards at the door look extremely surprised, recognize you and let you in. odd. Jill is very confused, but also excited to make it to what Jack called "the last bastion of humanity". A sanctuary in this age of terror. Most of all, she's anxious to find Jack here. You are pulled aside by a concerned looking guard who informs (in a whisper) you that your superiors have been notified of your arrival, and a mission debriefing will be held as soon as possible. He hands you a small wad of dollar bills, and a pager and explains it will go off when you will be needed. In the mean time he invites you to relax a bit and explore the city a bit.

Amish Green is a massive fortress that looks who's walls look like they were cobbled out of scrap junk at different points in time. Where it looks like it should be a small circular fort, segments of wall have been expanded to include larger and larger interior room for farmland. The sun is warm and bright, the farms are vibrant green and yellow, giving a calming colored contrast against the white cement of the surrounding structures. Coupled with a setting filled with people who aren't rotting, the environment is a powerful change of atmosphere from the desolate and terrififying outside world.

Initially you get a chance to explore this peaceful looking commune. Shops along the street, the noise and hubbub of a city street. Its a calming racket. You accompany Jill as she eagerly starts trying to find someone, anyone who has seen her brother. This leads you through the market, the housing quarter, local police, and eventually the bar... with no results.

This acts as a tour of the city, explains a bit about what happened, a vague sense of the military's plans, and how the civilization functions.

At the bar, Jill slowly sinks back into a drinking depression, and starts a drunken dialogue about how she secretly knew he wouldn't be here. She spouts drunken wisdom about hope, desperation, and self-deciet, and how your all that she's got left - the one who gave her hope and brought her out of hell into heaven. She somewhat humorously swears that from here on out her life's purpose will be to protect you, which seems to help her somewhat with her depression.

The pager goes off. Jill tells you to go on your way, she'll stay at the bar.

You are escorted into a military only zone, and brought into a highly official looking mobile conference room (trailer room, probably the nicest they have in a cobbled together city.) before three very highly decorated men who look extremely expectant. "Well?" "Well what? Who are you?" "Don't play games soldier! Tell us, was your mission a success?" "What mission?! What do you want from me?" The three men look at each other with a concerned expression. The one on the far right asks "Do you ... know your name?" "I am Nike." "...I see." "We need to talk. please leave." You do so, a bit later you are called back in. The generals explain the situation.

You were Violetta Eudaemon, a major in the army stationed in the city during the initial suppression of the zombie outbreaks. When you were ordered to abandon the city and fall back to what would become Amish Green, you disobeyed your commands and lead your men in a campaign to continue to protect those that the military left behind, committing acts of piracy against military supply trains to sustain your ammunition. Eventually you were caught, court marshaled in Amish Green, and sent to the local prison.

Two things then happened: new scientific research on immunizing people to the zombie infection needed human test subjects, and the tiny makeshift Amish Prison became full.

Many inmates were introduced to the infection and zombified/killed, a working vaccine was created quickly, and you with a few other inmates were immunized. (luckily.)

In the essence of time, the military hastily wiped you and your teammate's memories, recorded an mp3 informing you of who you are minus your past disloyalty, what your mission is, and how to complete it. You never heard that recording.

Running out of time to type: foot notes:

game!

-city's name is Elysium. Irony.