Survivors

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Content Warning: This concept incorporates heavy themes that I always hope to be deeply cautious and thoughtful about, including disability, bigotry, parallels to traffic stops, violence against the marginalized, and death.

Disclaimer: Related to the above, I’m generally extremely wary of sharing something like this publicly before I've had more time to refine it. But I’m also trying to stick to the goal of daily game design work, and I don’t believe that sensitive topics alone should be a reason to withhold art or process as long as it’s being made with good intentions (and, ideally, prefaced like this).

That said, I hope this text gestures at the idea of zombies as a metaphor for the dehumanization of disability and otherness, not disability and otherness itself. My goal in writing this was to invert the ugly politics of a vast majority of zombie stories, which tend to implicitly vilify dense populations and valorize urban flight in ways that I find troubling. I want this game to cut against that, but it still bluntly invokes tense and deeply uncomfortable scenarios, and I absolutely may have been unintentionally careless in any number of ways.

Notably, I have some issues with how the “cravings for flesh” aspect of zombie stories appears in this game, and on revision I may look into changing it to an untrue rumor or something similar.

Either way, please reach out ([email protected], or DM on bluesky) and let me know if anything here really doesn’t sit well with you! I’m willing to adjust or take down this page to revisit later, if needed.

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Survivors is a horror game for 3-5 people about a group of sapient zombies moving supplies through a camp of hostile unturned survivors. It’s pretty heavy, so please take a look at the content warning and disclaimer above.

The Story So Far

The outbreak was terrifying. The symptoms of the disease were nightmarish at first: graying skin, hair falling out in clumps, atrophying muscles, and strange, insatiable cravings. In dense urban populations like San Francisco, it spread like wildfire. Against the most infectious contagion we’ve ever seen, it’s remarkably difficult to suddenly wall yourself off from everything and everyone. Few came out of it unafflicted.

Us

As the weeks and months wore on after the outbreak, two things became clear. The first was that the disease had fundamentally changed our physiology; we’re physically weaker and our minds are often fuzzy fading in and out clarity. At the same time, though, we’ve become impossibly hardy. The second thing was that even though we were at first overcome with strange cravings, they were not coherent or survival imperative. Somehow, without any sustenance at all, we live on indefinitely in this state. The cravings can be resisted, ignored, and even medicated against. With time, they begin to dull.

Life began to resume, though it looked quite different. We still had needs to fulfill, work to do. Medicines and treatments to prevent our flesh from rotting off of our bones, regain some degree of fine motor control, and keep our minds sharp. A mutual aid network to help us resist and overcome the strange cravings, to administer medicines. We can’t do everything we once could. Few of us have the constitution and dexterity to do things like drive cars, operate a smartphone, or repair machinery. But with ingenuity and community, we can still build infrastructure and make art and share stories—and, crucially, we can distribute this medicine to other populations that need it.

Our little crew here has embarked on a journey to bring a truck full of supplies up the coast to Seattle, one of the longest journeys we’ve taken since this all began.

Them

We were well on our way, deep into rural NorCal with no major snags so far. We thought the town we were passing through was abandoned, but we were wrong. This is a Survivors camp.

“Survivors” isn’t our choice of word; it’s what they tend to call themselves. As if we didn’t also survive. As if we’re already dead. They’ve formed groups out here in the country, building compounds and policing their perimeters with a seemingly endless supply of guns and ammunition. Occasionally, some of them tromp into the city to loot it for supplies, killing any of us they happen upon. Being as well-armed as they are, we do our best to stay clear. But the road we need to follow goes right through this little town they’ve claimed, and there’s no doubt that they’re already watching our approach.

A small group of them have walked into the middle of the road to block our path, rifles raised. With luck, they’ll think we’re unturned. But I don’t think we’ll be that lucky.

Characters

Each player picks a role from the options below, gives themself a name and pronouns, and answers the question associated with their role.

Hauler

An infected person with strength most intact, best equipped to load and unload the truck.

When you choose the Hauler, answer: What community chore do you help with back home?

Then, add one more point to any stat that’s less than 4.