Damn, ZombiesThe Corporate Undead
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Announcement

Closed Beta is Live!

An Employee — the basic corporate undead — in lanyard and untucked shirt, walking forward.

The compound is open to outside staff. Damn, Zombies is in closed beta, places are going out in batches, and the list is the way in.

We have been playing this on our own for long enough that we have stopped being able to see it. Every one of us knows which corner to back into on round 12 and which pull off the crate is the one you regret. That is exactly the knowledge that makes us the wrong people to judge whether the first ten minutes make any sense at all.

So this beta is not a demo with a form attached. We are handing the compound to people who have never seen it and asking them to tell us what actually happened — where it dragged, where it was unfair rather than hard, which weapon you never bought twice, and the round you stopped having a good time on. All of it goes into making the place feel richer: more worth learning, more worth going back into, and more like somewhere with its own logic rather than a set of waves with a shop in it.

Because there is no win condition, there is no ending for you to reach and report back on. The run ends when the survivors do. What we want to know is what the run was like on the way there.

We are, frankly, excited to show it off

There is a lot in here we are proud of. The horde is dangerous because the corporate hierarchy makes it work together — the Executive puts bodies in front of itself, and they are rigged. The sky is the clock, so you can read how much trouble you are in by looking up. Fourteen weapons, six perk machines, a crate that is telling the truth about one pull in fourteen, and a boss waiting on rounds 7, 15 and 23.

None of that is worth much if nobody has hit it from the outside yet. That is what this round of the beta is for.

And a challenge, if the ordinary run is going well

If you get comfortable — and some of you will get comfortable faster than we would like — here are three runs designed to take that away from you. They are honour-system rules rather than game modes. Pick one, keep to it, and tell us the round you reached.

Challenge runs

Three ways to make it worse

Nothing in the build enforces any of these. They are rules you keep, which is why each one is a single sentence you either honoured or did not. Tell us how far you got.

  1. 01

    Melee Only

    Hard

    Never fire a gun. Buy what you like off the wall, but the only thing you may swing is a melee weapon.

    What it does to a run

    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.

    The 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.

  2. 02

    No Perks Mode

    Harder

    Walk past all six machines. Not one perk, for the whole run, at any price.

    What it does to a run

    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.

    The 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.

  3. 03

    Only the Trophy

    Unreasonable

    The Employee of the Year and nothing else. If the crate does not hand it to you, you have not started yet.

    What it does to a run

    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.

    The 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.

How to get in

Places go out in batches, and it is all run on the Discord server — join it, say hello, and watch the game-updates channel. No form, no mailing list.

Join the Discord