# Damn, Zombies — The Corporate Undead > Damn, Zombies is a first-person online multiplayer zombie survival game for one to four players. Hold a fenced corporate office compound against an endless horde of undead staff, spend the points they pay out on wall weapons, doors and perk machines, and see how many rounds you last. There is no win condition. ## Facts - Title: Damn, Zombies - Subtitle: The Corporate Undead - Studio: TSMW Development Ltd (TSMW DEVELOPMENT LTD, registered in England and Wales, no. 17204316) - Studio website: https://www.tsmwdevelopment.com - Genre: first-person online multiplayer zombie survival, round-based wave survival - Players: 1–4. Online multiplayer and single player. - Platforms: Windows, Linux, macOS - Engine: Godot 4.5 - Status: In closed beta. Places go out in batches, handed out on Discord. - Website: https://damn-zombies.com - Full stat database: https://damn-zombies.com/database - Leaderboards: https://damn-zombies.com/highscores - News and updates: https://damn-zombies.com/news ## Premise One to four survivors hold a fenced corporate office compound against an endless horde of undead office staff. The horde arrives outside the perimeter fence and has to tear the boards off a breach to get in. Killing them pays points. Points buy weapons, ammunition, doors deeper into the building, permanent upgrades and pulls on a mystery crate. There is no win condition: the run ends when the survivors do. The joke the game runs on is that the enemy roster is an org chart. The horde is dangerous because the corporate hierarchy makes it work together — Middle Managers buff the staff around them, HR replaces casualties, and Executives put other bodies between themselves and you. ## The compound Authored, not procedurally generated. A two-storey office building, a car park at the front and a service yard at the back, divided into ten named sections across two floors. Sixteen breach points: eight in the perimeter fence and eight inside the building. Annotated floor plans are published on the landing page under "The compound" -- the whole field, the ground floor and the first floor. They are rendered by the game itself from an orthographic camera pointed straight down, with the roof and the storey above stripped out, and every marker on them is read off the shipping scene: the five wall guns, the six vending machines, the eight doors, the five lost-and-found spots, every breach, both staircases and the spawn apron. ## The undead - The Employee (Grade 1, General staff) — 40 health, 0.85 m/s, 36% of a survivor per blow. Routine: Clock In. 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. - The Middle Manager (Grade 4, Line management) — 70 health, 0.7 m/s, 48% of a survivor per blow. Routine: The all-hands. 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. - HR (Grade 5, People & Culture) — 65 health, 0.65 m/s, 44% of a survivor per blow. Routine: New Hire Orientation. 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. - The Executive (Grade 10, Senior leadership) — 200 health, 0.55 m/s, 54% of a survivor per blow. Routine: Return to Office. 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. - The Scapegoat (Off payroll, Nothing rolls one) — 40 health, 0.85 m/s, — of a survivor per blow. Routine: Rigged. 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. - The Executive (boss) (Round 7, Special round only) — 1,470 health, 0.61 m/s, 54% of a survivor per blow. Routine: Sends Scapegoats. The whole of round 7. No employees, no managers, no HR walk in — what fills the compound is what the boss itself sends, two Scapegoats every fifteen to twenty seconds, aimed at whoever last shot it. - Head of People (Round 15, Special round only) — 293 health, 0.68 m/s, 44% of a survivor per blow. Routine: Seven starters at a time. HR's routine with both its gates taken off: a clock instead of a cooldown, seven at a time, and no field test. Three of them at once, and a Head of Department beside them. - The Chairman (Round 23, Special round only) — 580 health, 0.61 m/s, 54% of a survivor per blow. Routine: Golden Parachute, Take Credit. Return to Office kept as its dying routine rather than its panic one, plus two abilities no ordinary Executive has. A bar you have to break twice, that the queue keeps mending, in the dark. ## Difficulty Difficulty is the round number. Every zombie's health is multiplied by 1 + 0.1 × (round − 1). The size of the horde and the proportion of it that runs also climb. Boss rounds: - Round 7 — The Executive. 1 body, ~2,705 total health solo. One very long health bar. 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. - Round 15 — The Heads of People. 4 bodies, ~3,300 total health solo. One very long queue. 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. - Round 23 — The Chairman. 3 bodies, ~4,670 total health solo. A bar you break twice. 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. From round 24, ordinary rounds carry one to three of those same bodies as elites, rising to three by round 36. ## Weapons Fourteen, in the wire's own index order. "Crate" means it is not chalked up anywhere and the LOST & FOUND crate is the only way to one. - Security Pistol (Ranged) — 12 damage every 0.15s, 30 m range, 16 / 96 magazine/reserve, 1,500 points on the wall, 500 points to restock. Semi-auto. Full power to 12 m. Everything else is balanced against it. - Exec Revolver (Ranged) — 40 damage every 0.35s, 40 m range, 6 / 64 magazine/reserve, 2,500 points on the wall, 1,000 points to restock. Pierces two bodies at 25%. Full power to 25 m. - Nail Gun (Ranged) — 7 damage every 0.10s, 18 m range, 50 / 300 magazine/reserve, 3,000 points on the wall, 1,250 points to restock. Automatic. Pierces three at 20%. Full power to 8 m and no further. - Swag Blaster (Ranged) — 24 damage every 0.60s, 25 m range, 4 / 40 magazine/reserve, 3,500 points on the wall, 1,500 points to restock. A t-shirt cannon. Lobs its round at 18 m/s for a 3 m blast and a hard shove. - Fire Safety Axe (Melee) — 35 damage every 0.90s, 1.4 m range, — magazine/reserve, 750 points on the wall. A 1.3 m sweep that hits everything in it. The cheapest thing on the wall. - Golf Club (Melee) — 22 damage every 0.60s, 1.6 m range, — magazine/reserve, crate only. Longest melee reach and the widest sweep in the game. Never sold. - Employee of the Year (Melee) — 15 damage every 0.45s, 1.25 m range, — magazine/reserve, crate only. Pays you 20 points a hit, which is the only reason to keep swinging it. - Facilities Shotgun (Ranged) — 70 damage every 0.85s, 6 m range, 6 / 48 magazine/reserve, crate only, 1,500 points to restock. The most damage in the game, and gone past 2.5 m. Crate only. - IT Support PDW (Ranged) — 11 damage every 0.07s, 22 m range, 40 / 320 magazine/reserve, crate only, 900 points to restock. The fastest thing in the game and the weakest round. Crate only. - Sales Rifle (Ranged) — 23 damage every 0.11s, 34 m range, 30 / 240 magazine/reserve, crate only, 1,300 points to restock. The all-rounder. Pierces one at 30%. Crate only. - Performance Review Rifle (Ranged) — 53 damage every 0.54s, 48 m range, 20 / 140 magazine/reserve, crate only, 1,600 points to restock. The only scope in the game, at 22°. Full power to 34 m. Crate only. - Synergy Beam (Ranged) — 30 damage every 0.30s, 90 m range, 40 / 738 magazine/reserve, crate only, 1,800 points to restock. Pierces five bodies at 70%. Half as likely out of the crate as anything else. - Intern SMG (Ranged) — 15 damage every 0.09s, 26 m range, 32 / 256 magazine/reserve, crate only, 1,000 points to restock. Cheap, quick, and through a magazine before you noticed. Crate only. - Executive Letter Opener (Melee) — 62 damage every 0.50s, 1.3 m range, — magazine/reserve, crate only. The one melee weapon worth having, and it never needs a magazine. ## The economy Doors: eight of them, 2,500 points each, flat. The only purchase that hands the buyer nothing — what it buys is somewhere to go. A door opens once, for everybody, permanently, and opens the room behind it to the undead as well. Perk machines: six vending machines, 7,500 points each, one of each per survivor ever. - Speed Boost ("MOVE FASTER") — +20% movement. The same figure as Health Boost on purpose, so the choice is fast or hard to kill rather than arithmetic. - Health Boost ("STAY UP") — +20% maximum health. And the difference handed over immediately, rather than left for you to heal into. - Fanny Pack ("CARRY MORE") — Double reserve ammo, every gun. It changes the gun's capacity, not the rounds in hand — so it holds through a restock and applies to every gun bought after it. - Performance Bonus ("HIT HARDER") — +25% weapon damage. Applied at the one place every point of damage passes through, so it is the same figure for the shot, the swing and the blast. - Just-In-Time ("JUST IN TIME") — Every reload, twice as fast. A rate, not a capacity: it halves the reload on the next magazine and on every weapon you pick up afterwards. - Ninja Certification ("BLACK BELT") — Double swing speed, +20% melee. Stacks with Performance Bonus for ×1.5 on a swing. It is the reason to take an axe into round 20. The LOST & FOUND crate: 950 points a pull. Seven weapons spin over the lid like a slot machine. One pull in fourteen is "the troll" — the box shuts and relocates, and you get nothing. ## The sky, and the moon The sky is the round clock. Nobody announces the round; you look up. - Round 1 — Midday. 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. It is the only stretch of a run where you can afford to walk somewhere rather than work out whether you have time to. - Round 8 — The 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. 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. - Round 16 — Blood 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. 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. - Round 24 — Eclipse. 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. 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. ## Questions ### 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. ## Challenge runs Self-imposed rules for the closed beta. Nothing in the build enforces them. 01. Melee Only (Hard) Rule: Never fire a gun. Buy what you like off the wall, but the only thing you may swing is a melee weapon. Effect: There are four of them and only the Fire Safety Axe is ever on the wall, at 750 — the cheapest thing in the compound. The other three come out of the LOST & FOUND crate or not at all. Ninja Certification doubles your swing speed, and this is the run it was written for. Catch: It is not purely a handicap. Gunfire carries and pulls the horde toward you; a melee kill does not. Played well, the compound stays quieter than it has any right to be — right up until something surrounds you. 02. No Perks Mode (Harder) Rule: Walk past all six machines. Not one perk, for the whole run, at any price. Effect: Perks are 7,500 each, so this is the run where you are never short of points — everything goes into weapons, ammo and doors instead. What you give up is the +20% health, the +25% damage and the halved reloads that the later rounds quietly assume you bought. Catch: The wall stops saving you around the round the horde stops arriving in ones. Without Health Boost you die in fewer hits than you are used to, and the mistake that cost you nothing on round 9 ends the run on round 16. 03. Only the Trophy (Unreasonable) Rule: The Employee of the Year and nothing else. If the crate does not hand it to you, you have not started yet. Effect: 15 damage a swing at 1.25 m of reach, which is the weakest thing in the game and the shortest arm on it. It is also never sold, so the run begins with however many pulls at 950 a go it takes to find one. Catch: It pays 20 points a hit — the only weapon that pays anything for connecting. That bonus exists so you can earn your way off it. This challenge is refusing to. ## News - 2026-08-26 — Closed Beta is Live!: The compound is open to outside staff. We are handing out places in batches, we want to know what breaks, and we have three challenge runs for anyone who thinks the ordinary one is going too well. (https://damn-zombies.com/news/closed-beta-is-live) ## Beta The closed beta is running and places go out in batches, free. It is handled entirely on the Damn, Zombies Discord — https://discord.gg/RkuDGfB9mJ — which is where builds are announced, where places are handed out and where bug reports go. There is no signup form and no mailing list, and no email address is collected.