Now I'm not usually one for a mmorpg, a massively multiplayer online role playing game, but I had to take notice of urbandead.com. This is a low-tech game of limited turns and interestingly enough... no random monsters! Every zombie you see, every person you find to eat, is another player!
Set in the fictional town of Malton, Urban Dead allows you to choose from three different military classes, three different civilian classes, two scientific, and of course, life as a zombie! Skills and levels are built up through a number of ways-- healing people, tagging buildings with spraypaint, and, of course attacking and killing zombies or people. The skillsets grow as you gain experience, and you can be sure (due to a 50 move limit per day) that it will take you a couple of days to get even that first new skill.
Buildings can be barricaded so that survivors can hide out from the zombies. Zombies can smash barricades to get inside at the tasty meatsnacks inside. Some players even choose to act as zombie spies-- telling hordes which buildings have people hiding inside, or helping damage barricades, or as player killers-- hunting survivors because they can.
Everyone begins with 50 hit points. People can heal from drinking a beer or being healed by first aid kit. Zombies don't heal until they've reached 0 hit points and spend 5 moves to stand up, fully healed. Weapons available to survivors are fists, crowbars, fireaxes, pistols, shotguns, and flare guns-- though the truism from the Zombie Survivor's Handbook rings true here, if slightly modified: "Fire axes never need reloading."
Go take a look. There's a full wiki detailing the town and a large supporting community that has grown up around the game in the three+ years the game has been up. If you're looking for some good fun that's sure to have limit on the addiction you can suffer, urbandead.com is the game for you. Besides, where else can you brawl with zombies?
-Ben.
On a sidenote, for those who prefer fantasy, Kingdom of Loathing is a mocking look at old school muds and has a similar mechanic.
Tags: Zombies Mmorpg
