The last talk of the day was taken by Andy Hodgetts which was all about his new project that he's creating entitled Project Zomboid, which is currently in it's Alpha stage and available for early access purchase. Project Zomboid is essentially a how long can you last on one life, a permadeath if you will, and is a 2D isometric survival/horror game.
He started his presentation off by first speaking about 3D and it's advantages, even though he's creating a 2D game, but he states that there are so many advantages to creating a 3D survival game as you can become closer to the action and almost feel what the character is going through. But his spin on this game genre is very interesting as he takes this zombie apocalypse and asks, what would you do if it were to happen? Well we all have our plans of action, but whats interesting is this game makes those choices possible. It is theoretically a simulator built into this horror genre, as you can build, farm and create just about anything you want. If you want to make a fort, you can. If you want to build a farm, you can. If you want to make a specific type of soup, well you will be able to soon as due to popular request more soup flavours are being added, which is the best thing I've ever heard in a presentation.
The general idea behind this project is lovely and works so well with the low budget that they have for this game. The character needs very little animation and what they have tried to do is take gaming back to its routes and simplify it, which is something I love to see. Due to the fact that it is still in early access there are still quite a lot of bugs wrong with it, but they are continuously working on then and fixing things up every week. They are also looking to adding more survivalists into the game as well, as at the moment it is just you alone with the zombies.
Where this game is unique and very special compared to most 3D games is the fact it is so quick and relatively easy to create additions to the game and change elements of it. Most scenes can very easily take around 5 minutes to create and using just two sprites, an item and a line of dialog, which would cost so much more if it were to be made in 3D and probably about 600 times longer. If you take the game Skyrim for instant, you are told your in a free open world where you can do whatever you want, but in actual fact this game is linear in some ways. Like for example the fact you have to be a Dragonborn, there's no backing out of that one, and then even in the branching of paths in the side missions, still not as open as you think as it would require an enormous amount of time to animate every path you take if you didn't follow the set stories.
Differentially this is where Project Zomboid comes into play. even though the gameplay included hardly any animation, it just works so well as this open sandbox game. There is even the elements of map editors as you can build just about anything you want to keep you safe from the zombies and use any resources that you can find and combine to create other objects and food. To finish off what really interested me about this game is the multiplayer aspect that could be brought in. At the moment, as it is an Alpha, it is only single player, but as the game progresses Andy Hodgetts hopes to bring local coop into play, then regular coop and then finally multiplayer which could be incredible. Due to the fact that you only have one life it makes the game appear more real and you can start to build colonies with other players and if you get bitten that's it, which is an absolutely fantastic idea that is so unique and I can't wait to see it in it's full glory.
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