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I remember several years back, while I was still deep in the midst of my Left 4 Dead phase, this delightful piece of artwork made its way to my attention via the various currents of the Internet (click the pic for the larger version):
Possibly just because there happened to be four kids in the picture, my friends and I were left wondering if it represented L4D fan art of some kind, re-imagining Bill, Zoey, Louis and Francis as kids. Except then that meant Francis was a red-haired girl with glasses, which, while a hilarious thought, probably wasn’t the intent. Some digging (because I don’t think the signature and copyright was on the version I saw back then) turned up the artist as one Jason Chen, but other than being a fun bit of imagination, it didn’t seem to bespeak anything more than one guy’s momentary vision.
Shows you what I know. Turns out there was an entirely new video game idea brewing behind this illustration, name of Zombie Playground. Zombie Playground Kickstarted itself just last year, an event which came and went without me or any of my friends realizing it was happening. If I had, I would certainly have mentioned it here. The bad news is it’s too late to contribute to that. The good news is that it reached its funding goal to at least get the minimum version they wanted underway, and if you like you can still donate to the cause through their main site (although without rewards beyond good will). Meanwhile this blog must serve as my poor, belated attempt to correct my own oversight.
The basic idea is the zombie apocalypse as it might be viewed through the wild imagination of a child, where your super soaker is actually a flamethrower and that trashcan lid and whiffleball bat make you king (or queen) of the mountain. Where those weekend karate lessons let you do axe kicks or throw Street Fighter fireballs. It’s exactly the kind of crazy crap I recall making up with my friends on the playground as a kid, barring the fact zombies weren’t really the en vogue antagonists at that time. It was the 1980s, so it might have been ninjas.
Point is, this is a great idea, and so far what I’ve seen of the development diaries and concept art really seems to be running with it in all the best possible ways. If you click on the Kickstarter or main site link you’ll see a lot more of Jason Chan’s depictions of the kids and their foes, which include some obviously inspired by the way stuffed toys or other mundane things can take on sinister features on a dark and stormy night.
That said, they wanted $2 million to really put together the game in a way measuring up to their vision, but managed only a little over $160,000 when the Kickstarter was done. It was enough for the Kickstarter to succeed, but the final game will probably only be a fraction of the tantalizing potential. Enough that maybe some more investors might buy in and let it fully blossom? I think that’s the hope, and it’s a hope I share. There’s a good dose of energy and imagination behind Zombie Playground, and while Massive Black seems fully capable of bringing it to (un)life with the funds they have, the game they could deliver with the funds they want sounds like something that could easily be a classic.