Introducing Officially Dead
Our Ludum Dare game has started development towards a full release
What is Officially Dead?
Officially Dead is a top-down zombie survival action game where you use your surroundings to dispatch zombies and delay your imminent death. If that sounds fun to you, you can try a prototype made for the Ludum Dare 59 game jam here. If it doesn’t, you can still try it anyway.
Here’s a montage of gameplay that I recorded when we released the game to Ludum Dare.
What is our final vision for Officially Dead?
In the end, we want to release with two gameplay modes: a story mode and an endless mode. The story mode will follow a group of survivors who are trying to escape a zombie infested city, for the countryside. We plan to split it up into levels, possibly looking at the Overcooked games as inspiration for the general layout of the story mode.
The endless mode, however, will be made up of maps and leaderboards. The player will be scored on how long they can survive and, the longer they do, the stronger the zombies will become. In addition, every so often, we want to have a stronger zombie, a “zomboss” if you will. These will be zombies with unique movement and attacks, but they will all have a weakness that disarms them and converts them back to normal zombies.
We also want to add multiplayer to both game modes, but our priority is getting a polished, fun, single-player game out first.
Who are we?
Erebus Games, named after the Greek primordial darkness incarnate, is a team made of three people: me (William), Tiernan and Ace. Tiernan and I worked on the original Ludum Dare game that serves as the basis for Officially Dead, and Ace is joining us to do 2D/concept art, animated cutscenes, potentially some voice acting, the story, and graphic design for promotional materials. Meanwhile, I am the main programmer, game designer and in charge of the newsletter, as well as a keen musician/composer, so I will be in charge of the soundtrack. That leaves Tiernan in charge of the 3D modelling and animation, as well as the level design.
What you can expect from us
We are aiming to post regular updates at the start of each month in this newsletter, as well as eventually set up a YouTube channel to gain more reach, and a Steam page.
As subscribers to our newsletter, you will be the first to know about our progress, the first approached for playtesting and on launch day, we’ll give free copies of the game to a few of our newsletter subscribers. In addition, when we ask for ideas or feedback, you will be the first people we ask, so subscribing is an opportunity to shape the game that we’re developing. It’s free and easy, so we encourage you to subscribe.