Tusk Games #2: Phant Zombie Apocalypse

Bring on the Phant Zombies!

I took a break from the Tusk project for a few days working on a secret project that will come out soon, but now I got another epiphany about the Tusk games.

It currently boasts two full game types right now, the first being the Elephant Hunt, and the second being the Hunter's Run, but I felt there was an intermediate portion between the two that I may have skipped.

In the first game, the hunter stalks and kills the Mama Elephant, but in the second game the tables are completely reversed and the hunter is being stalked by armed Matriarchy Assassins. There seemed to me to be a spot in between which should show how the hunter is first overcome and made to wear the Phant Mask.

This was Sunday night, and I was talking to Lori when she mentioned going to watch  the Walking Dead show, and suddenly it clicked in my mind what the intermediate game would be.

I was familiar with the storyline of this Zombie comics and TV series (and I even read a very good book based on it called Rise of the Governor), and when I first came into SL in mid-2011, one of the places I went to when I was just a week or two old had walking Zombies which you blasted using freebie guns.

Noobies hate zombies too!

Although I can't fathom the strong attraction to being chased by smelly decomposing walking corpse sausages, I decided there must be something to it, and the intermediate game in the Tusk series would involve gun-wielding players (including the original hunter) being besieged by walking "phant-mask wearing zombies" sent by the Matriarchy.

The zombies in this case would be simple animated bots that gravitate towards players automatically, and when close enough would score points against the player and drain their "energy", while at the same time players could score points by blasting the continuously rezzed zombies.

As before, the Tusk Hunt Engine used for the zombie game can later power stand-alone games in future products, so in one sense, this big Tusk project is laying the foundation for future development at the Depraved Monkey.