The site
One compound
Authored, not generated. A two-storey office, a car park and a service yard, in ten named sections across two floors. You will know it by round five and it will still get you at twenty.
§01/The role
Fight for your life…
from Corporate.
Damn, Zombies is a first-person online multiplayer zombie survival game for one to four players. A round is a wave: it opens, it feeds a horde onto the field, and it ends when every body from it is dead. Then the next one opens, slightly worse.
The wire
Sixteen breaches
The horde arrives outside the fence and has to tear the boards off to get in. Boarding one back up pays. Which one you leave open is a decision, not an accident.
The clock
Difficulty is the round
Every zombie's health is multiplied by 1 + 0.1 × (round − 1). Nothing else scales except the size of the horde, how much of it runs, and the sky.
There is no win condition.
The run ends when the survivors do.
§02/The organisation
Every single one of them
has a line manager.
The horde is dangerous because the corporate hierarchy makes it work together. An Employee is nothing on its own. A Middle Manager makes five of them worth being afraid of. HR makes sure there are always five more.
Grade 1/General staff
The Employee
Weak alone, and it knows it. Arrives at 70% strength in round 1 and is not up to full until round 6 — the only body in the game that warms up.
Grade 4/Line management
The Middle Manager
Every 90 seconds he stops and calls a meeting. The nearest five staff within ten metres come out of it 20% harder to kill and 20% angrier, for forty-five seconds. He will not address an empty car park.
Grade 5/People & Culture
HR
When the field thins out she raises a requisition, and two or three new starters arrive beside her. One in twenty comes in at management grade. She is why the horde never quite ends.
Grade 10/Senior leadership
The Executive
Hurt it badly and it heals, runs, and puts a Scapegoat between you and it. Its eyes burn yellow while it does — which is the tell, and the only warning you get.
Off payroll/Nothing rolls one
The Scapegoat
The body the Executive puts in front of itself. It only ever runs, swings once, and dies. Every Scapegoat is rigged to blow the moment it does.
Rounds 7, 15 and 23
Management would like a word
Three rounds are not ordinary rounds. Each replaces the whole roster with a handful of named bodies, put down indoors, near somebody, at one and a half times the size — with moon-blue eyes lit from the first frame. From round 24 those same bodies start turning up in ordinary rounds as elites.
07
The Executive
One body, and nothing else walks in. What fills the compound is what the boss itself sends: two Scapegoats every fifteen to twenty seconds, aimed at whoever last put a round into it.
15
The Heads of People
Three Heads of People and a Head of Department, each raising seven new starters at a time. Nothing here is hard to kill. There is simply always more of it.
23
The Chairman
A Chairman and two Heads of People, under the eclipse. The Chairman's dying routine puts it back up once — and the queue the other two keep feeding is still arriving while you do it again.
§03/The arsenal
Everything here was already
in the building.
Nothing was shipped in for the apocalypse. The axe is off the fire panel, the revolver is off an executive, the trophy is off a shelf, and the Swag Blaster is a t-shirt cannon from a trade stand. Fourteen weapons — 5 chalked up on the wire, 9 that only ever come out of the crate.
Game asset
Security Pistol
Semi-auto. Full power to 12 m. Everything else is balanced against it.
- Damage
- 12
- Range
- 30M
- Wall
- 1,500PTS
Every model above is the asset the game ships, not a render of it. Full stats for all fourteen are in the database.
§04/The economy
Killing the staff
is how you get paid.
Every body pays. What you do with the money is the whole game: a better gun now, a door you cannot afford to open yet, or one more pull on a box that owes you nothing.
Eight of them, flat
2,500pts a door
Doors are map, not loot
The only purchase that hands the buyer nothing. What it buys is somewhere to go. It opens once, for everybody, for good — and it opens the room behind it to the undead as well, so the route you bought is also the route they take.
Unclaimed property
950pts a pull
The LOST & FOUND crate
It glows green, which is how you find it, and it does not always stay where you left it. Seven weapons spin over the lid like a slot machine. One pull in fourteen is the troll: a hand comes up, the box shuts, and it is gone.
The worst outcome is not nothing. It is nothing, and now walk.
Staff benefits
Six vending machines. One of each, ever.
7,500pts each
They stand apart, in six different parts of the compound, and every one of them is past at least one bought door. Choosing is a trek rather than a look along a row. The plate reads FITTED once you have bought one.
Speed Boost
FittedMOVE FASTER
+20% movement
Health Boost
FittedSTAY UP
+20% maximum health
Fanny Pack
FittedCARRY MORE
Double reserve ammo, every gun
Performance Bonus
FittedHIT HARDER
+25% weapon damage
Just-In-Time
FittedJUST IN TIME
Every reload, twice as fast
Ninja Certification
FittedBLACK BELT
Double swing speed, +20% melee
§05/The sky is the clock
Nobody tells you what round it is.
You look up.
The sky is on a schedule, and the schedule is the round number — so the light is also the warning. Every stop below is worse than the last: more health on every body, more of the crowd running, and less of the compound you can see it coming through.
The sun, 62° up
01Midday
The easiest the game gets. Eight bodies on the field, and an Employee arrives at 70% of its own strength — it is not up to full until round 6.
- Zombie health
- ×1.0
- What changes
- Baseline
It is the only stretch of a run where you can afford to walk somewhere rather than work out whether you have time to.
The sun, on the horizon
08The sun goes
Every body takes 70% more killing than it did in round 1, the crowd is bigger, and more of it runs at you instead of walking.
- Zombie health
- ×1.7
- What changes
- The lights start going
The office wiring begins to fail here. Ceiling panels go out for good — not on a timer you can learn, and not ones that come back — so you are holding the same rooms with less of them lit, and the first boss round is already behind you.
The moon, full and red
16Blood moon
Two and a half times the health of round 1, and from here every body on the field is empowered on a ramp — ×1.10 move, ×1.20 damage and ×1.20 health by the time it finishes.
- Zombie health
- ×2.5
- What changes
- The whole field turns
Their eyes come on with it: red for the staff, orange for the Executive. Once everything is glowing that colour is the only way left to pick the thing worth running from out of a car park full of them.
The sun, behind the moon
24Eclipse
The ramp finishes, and ordinary rounds start carrying boss bodies — one to three of them mixed into the crowd, rising to three by round 36.
- Zombie health
- ×3.3
- What changes
- Elites in ordinary rounds
This is the last difficulty ramp the game has. Past it, more health only buys a round that takes longer rather than one that is harder: the danger stops climbing and the attrition does not.
Captured in engine at each stop of the schedule. Health multipliers are the game’s own: 1 + 0.1 × (round − 1), applied to every body on the field.
§06/The compound
One office park.
Two floors, sixteen ways in.
A car park at the front, the office between, a gated service yard at the back — and no way out of any of it. These are the game’s own plans of it, rendered from directly above with the roof lifted off, and every price on them is the price the till charges.
- Wall guns
- Five bought off the wall. The other nine are not for sale.
- Vending machines
- Six perks, one of each, and a trek between them.
- Doors
- Eight. What you buy is map — and another place they come from.
- Lost and found
- Five spots. It moves when it feels like it.
- Breaches
- Eight in the wire, eight boarded doorways inside.
- Spawn apron
- Shaded on the whole-map sheet. Where they walk in from.
Rendered in engine from the shipping scene. The key is set to be read at a desk — open a sheet full size for the numbers.
§07/Footage
Captured in the compound
Straight out of the game on a real run — no sizzle reel, no staging, and nothing tidied up for the camera. A trailer follows once there is one worth cutting.
Closed beta build. Captured in engine — score, HUD and perk badges are as they were on the run.
§08/Induction
Join the beta
The closed beta is running and places go out in batches. It is all handled on Discord — that is where builds are announced, where places are handed out, and where the bug reports go. No form, no mailing list, nothing to unsubscribe from.
Join the Discord
Opens Discord in a new tab. Free, and you can leave whenever you like.
- 01Join the serverOne click. No form, no address, nothing to confirm.
- 02Say helloSo there is somebody behind the name when a batch goes out.
- 03Watch #game-updatesBuilds and places are announced there first.
- Position
- Survivor, fixed-term
- Reports to
- Nobody. Everybody above you is dead
- Hours
- Until you are dead
- Notice period
- Eight seconds, then despawn
People & Cultureis already in the server
§09/Frequently asked
Questions, answered properly
What kind of game is Damn, Zombies?
Damn, Zombies is a first-person online multiplayer zombie survival game for one to four players. You hold a fenced corporate office compound against an endless horde of undead office staff. Killing them pays points, and points buy weapons, ammunition, doors deeper into the building, permanent upgrades and pulls on a mystery crate. Rounds get harder without end: there is no win condition, and the run ends when the survivors do.
Can I play Damn, Zombies solo, or do I need friends?
Both work. It is online multiplayer for up to four players with a dedicated lobby server — lobbies are named after two-word office objects, so you read out something like RUSTY-STAPLER to your friends. It is also entirely playable solo, and solo is not a reduced mode: the same map, the same economy and the same rounds. Only the boss rounds scale with how many people are playing, from +15% health solo to +40% at four.
How does the points economy work?
Killing the undead pays points. Five weapons are chalked up on the perimeter fence between 750 and 3,500 points. Eight interior doors cost 2,500 each and are the only purchase that hands you nothing — what they buy is somewhere to go, and they open once, for everybody, permanently. Six perk vending machines cost 7,500 each, one of each per survivor ever. The LOST & FOUND crate costs 950 a pull.
What are the perk machines?
Six vending machines at 7,500 points each, standing apart in six different parts of the compound, every one of them past at least one bought door. Speed Boost gives +20% movement, Health Boost +20% maximum health, Fanny Pack doubles reserve ammunition on every gun, Performance Bonus adds +25% weapon damage, Just-In-Time halves every reload, and Ninja Certification doubles melee swing speed and adds 20% melee damage. The plate reads FITTED once you have bought one.
What is the LOST & FOUND crate?
A wheeled road case stencilled UNCLAIMED PROPERTY, 950 points a pull. It glows green, which is how you find it, and it does not always stay where you left it. Pull the lever and seven weapons spin over the lid like a slot machine. One pull in fourteen is the troll: a hand comes up, the box shuts, and it is gone. The worst outcome is not nothing — it is nothing, and now walk.
How many weapons are there?
Fourteen. Five are chalked up on the perimeter fence — the Fire Safety Axe at 750 points, Security Pistol at 1,500, Exec Revolver at 2,500, Nail Gun at 3,000 and Swag Blaster at 3,500. Seven more come out of the LOST & FOUND crate and nowhere else, including the Facilities Shotgun, the Performance Review Rifle and the Synergy Beam. The Golf Club and the Employee of the Year trophy are never sold at all.
How hard does it get?
Difficulty is the round number. Every zombie's health is multiplied by 1 + 0.1 × (round − 1), and the size of the horde and how much of it runs climb alongside it. Rounds 7, 15 and 23 are boss rounds with their own fixed rosters. From round 24 ordinary rounds start carrying one to three of those same bodies as elites, rising to three by round 36.
What platforms will Damn, Zombies be on?
Windows, Linux and macOS. The game is built in Godot 4.5, with a Bun and Postgres lobby server behind the online multiplayer.
Are there leaderboards or highscores?
Yes, opening with the closed beta. Because there is no win condition, runs are ranked by the highest round you survived, with points and run time breaking ties in that order. A round only counts once it ends, so dying part-way through round 18 records as a round-17 run. Solo and squad boards are kept separate, because boss health scales with the number of players.
How do I get into the closed beta, and what does it cost?
Damn, Zombies is in closed beta now, and places go out in batches. It costs nothing. It is all run on the Discord server: join it, say hello, and watch the game-updates channel, which is where builds and places are announced. There is no form to fill in and no mailing list — we do not ask for your email address at all.