Monday 8 August, 2005

A friend reccomended this game to me, and it is pretty interesting. It is sort of a turn-based strategy-rpg-board-game. Usually online games like this are interesting to me for about a week, and then interest wanes until I log in twice a day, then once a day, then once every several days...

But Urban Dead has kept me intrigued. You can start as either a zombie or a human. The city, of course, has been over run by zombies. Your goal is to...? The FAQ is very vague, and there is no player's guide. So it is very much make it up as you go along. Which, I think, is part of the fun.

So far my goal has been to find the mall. Yes, indeed. I picked the lamest looking human character class (civilian; consumer) because, well, that's what I do with games like this. My character has no skills with which to defend himself. My only skill is that I get bonuses to finding stuff while looting the mall. So far I have spent a week just trying to find the damn mall. The map is huge!! I started making my own map, then peeked at a map someone had put together online and threw mine away.

One of your options in an area is to search it. This is how I have cobbled together my collection of a crowbar, a book, two gas cans, a shot gun shell and a first aid kit. I had a spray can, which was fun, because you could tag buildings and other people would see the tags when they came by. The dev announced on thursday a mission that ended today to spray as many buildings as one could with the same tag. The person who tagged the most buildings would get a hefty XP bonus. Just as I was starting to tag like a maniac my spray can ran out, and I couldn't find another one. Oh well. So far I only have 4 XP, 3 for hitting a zombie with my fist (10% chance) and 1 for hitting a zombie with my crowbar (5% chance). But now that I have checked the map, I finally know where the mall is, so I should be able to reach it tomorrow.

Then let the looting begin!

It seems kind of cool. After I saw your post I logged on and made a character (Tajoman). Unfortunately the site seems to have been Slashdotted or something because it is completely collapsed! Gameplay seems...well, massively single player with not a lot of ways to interact, though the creator(s) do seem to be making constant updates.

So far I've got 1XP, 1 beer bottle, 1 wine bottle, 1 pair of wire cutters.