Team Ohai followed this architecture and created the click based games called Vampires/Zombies/Slayers/Werewolves. The objective of the games are simple, recruit as many of your friends as you can to become a more powerful being while ranking up and fighting your way to the top of the leaderboards. This is fun to do however it becomes a bit daunting because of the repeated amount of clicks you must perform day in and day out with resulting in little momentum of skill levels.

Ohai’s answer to the boring aspects of the click based game is a flash based MMO called City of Eternals. Currently, the game is still in its early Alpha stages and is perceived as an add-on to the click based game however you can expect a stand-alone version in the near future or at least that is what the developers at team Ohai have lead me to believe. Essentially there will be two versions within facebook, the hip joined click based vamps with CoE and then CoE on its own. Don’t worry, people from both version will see each other in the same world.

City of Eternals is really an MMORPG in nature. Essentially everyone plays the same role and performs all the same missions resulting in the same outcome however along the way you can trade & sell with other players, make items and rank up in skill level for every aspect of the game. You can even create groups in which all members get the same experience as you do and vice versa. More recently a minion concept has been introduced in which you assign your friends to do time based quests (the friend doesn’t actually have to do anything) which will gather booty and occasionally rare items like a fanny pack that adds two extra slots in your inventory or Ohai’s (most valuable currency in CoE). Minions, much like grouping will earn you experience points while you are way. In my experience, this is the only way to rank up minions at this time and I believe there is still a lot of work planned around this functionality.

Unfortunately the game doesn’t allow combating with other players however I assume in the near future it will. You can also expect features like the addition of slayers, werewolves and zombies. Currently, the game is solely based on vampires and this is probably because of the larger following of the genre and the constant blockbuster releases of vamp movies. Too get the latest news on City of Eternals, check out Ohai or the Vampires Digest.

As a little bonus to this article, I have created an evolving world map of CoE so that you can see how large the game is and refer to it on the occasion you decide to join me in my quest for world domination in the New Valencia.

Do you hear that shuffling? The low moans and dragging feet? It’s time again for GenCon’s Zombie Walk, one of the most popular and hilarious events at the convention.

Last year’s walk was a lot of fun. I chronicled my adventures and posted them to YouTube. There were lots of imaginative zombie costumes, including Zombie Elvis, the Head Crab from the Half-Life games, and a family of zombie activists. I was really impressed.

Robin was kind enough to answer some questions about the event. Enjoy:

1.) Tell me about the Zombie Walk. How, why, and by whom was it started?

The originator of the GenCon Zombie Walk was a friend of mine, Paul Cooper. He had been to other conventions that featured a zombie walk and had a dream that the GenCon Zombie Walk could be the biggest walk he attended.. Paul came to me with the idea in 2007, about three months before GenCon and asked if I would help make it happen. We started talking it up on the GenCon boards before the convention. Matt McMillan from Canada got on board and offered to help us promote the walk at the convention. He walked around a hot Indy in a complete zombie Hockey player outfit to promote out first walk!! We had about 60 people show up at our first “unofficial” walk in 2007 complete with our own Shaun and Ed. (from Shaun of the Dead)

We registered as an official event in 2008 and Shaun and Ed again lead the group in their shambling. Surprisingly we had almost 200 zombies!! Due to a job loss Paul wasn’t able to attend but thankfully Matt was back this time as Undead Elvis (his girlfriend was also along for the ride as an undead 50′s chick) and the Peryton Gamers stepped up to help the newly formed Z.I.T. (Zombie Institute of Technology) wrangle the zombies last year. This year members of the GenCon Un are join us in the zombie Wangling.

2.) What about Twilight Creations?

TC is Todd and Kerry Breitenstein. The company is probably best know for their game Zombies! So you can see why we went to them when we were looking for someone to help promote and sponsor the game! They have graciously sponsored us all three years of our existence by giving us booth space to promote the Walk as well as providing awesome prizes for the costume contest.

3.) How can other gamers join, and when/where does your event take place?

Sign up for GenCon and get a ticket. The event is free and is open to everyone, though we encourage everyone to sign up for the con! The walk proper begins at 9pm but the pre walk festivities begin around 8:30. The zombies begin to mingle and try not to eat anyone *G*, we have mobile makeup people to help those last minute walkers who want to fit in and thanks to our generous sponsors we have a costume contest where the best dressed zombies get cool prizes!

4.) Can you tell me a little about the header image on the site?
http://perytonpublishing.com/zombie/index.htm The monsters in the drawing were on our promo poster for last year… I will see if I can obtain a copy of this years…

5.) Any additional information you’d like to add, such as contact info or a website?
If anyone is interested in help out or just joining us in the walk they can contact me at noirnevara@yahoo.com, through the GenCon boards where my handle is noirnevara

Motor City Comic Con featured table upon table of talented artists, whose styles ranged from comic book to airbrush to portrait. One such artist was Mike Calandra, a man who is certainly not afraid to dabble in watercolors, Eddie.

Mike’s work features striking models in a variety of themes and poses. He focuses on science fiction and fantasy, and has provided artwork for Heavy Metal magazine, Art Scene, and numerous commissions including The Night of the Living Dead memoir. He specializes in dark, sexy motifs, and that is what caught my eye.

I purchased two pieces from Calandra Studios: one entitled “Cthulhu’s Bride” which bears a forlorn woman entangled in a macabre snare of tentacles, and an infamous scene from the original Night of the Living Dead featuring, what I like to call, the Gentleman Zombie as he gazes viciously up at the camera after his first kill.

I urge you to stop by Calandra Studios’ website for a peek at some of Mike’s amazing artwork.

It was a fantastic weekend of comics, artwork, and media guests at the Motor City Comic Convention this past weekend at the Rock Financial Showplace in Novi, Michigan. Amidst the vendors, I spotted a table showing a low-budget indie horror film called Zombie Apocalypse. Of course, I had to check it out!

The table was set up amidst artists and comic vendors. They were showing their independent film on a tiny television, and were selling copies of their DVD and an accompanying comic. The funds, the filmmakers revealed, are going toward producing a sequel.

I love independent horror. Often it is funny, silly, and creative. Zombie Apocalypse, in particular, contains in jokes that Michiganians (or Michiganders) will instantly recognize, and it was filmed completely in this state.

Hopefully these guys will be able to raise the money and produce their kickass sequel.

Catch the trailer and buy the DVD here:

http://www.zombieapocalypsemovie.com/

Regular readers of Villaintech are familiar with my preoccupation with zombies. I’m particularly fond of the fast ones, ala Dawn of the Dead, or the rage-infected in 28 Days Later. Left 4 Dead, therefore, looks to be a very promising thriller of a game.

I am most intrigued by the set-up of the game. It is a four person multiplayer cooperative shooter, and the squad must fight its way through an army of running zombies. But the most interesting aspect of gameplay is the collection of four mutated zombies, each with their own particular brand of awesomeness. These four “super” zombies are also player controlled, which is unusual, but highly fabulous, especially for a zombie sympathizer such as myself.

A fansite for the game provided these very handy descriptions of the four zombie players:

The Hunter –

The Hunter is a normal looking infected that wears a dark, hooded sweatshirt and leaps from the shadows upon unsuspecting Survivors to maul them.

The Hunter is able to pounce great distances to land upon the Survivors and proceed to shred their flesh from bone. In order to do this attack, the Hunter must crouch or crawl until the pounce is charged up. The Survivor is held helpless and the Hunter cannot end this attack until the Survivor is killed or the Hunter is knocked off. The Hunter may also use this leap to barrel into a Survivor and knock them backwards, possibly off of a ledge. This attack has no cooldown.

The Hunter is able to wall jump to reach areas that would be otherwise unattainable.
The Hunter has the ability to regenerate health, allowing him to escape and rest up for another attack.

The Smoker –

The Smoker is an average sized boss infected covered in growths and boils and has a fifty foot long tongue as its primary weapon. He also releases clouds of smoke.

The Smoker’s tongue is fired at the head of a Survivor and wraps around their neck. The Smoker can choke its victim from above by hanging them from its tongue. A choking Survivor is unable to move or attack until another Survivor rescues them. During its tongue attack, the Smoker is helpless, even if it misses. This attack has a cooldown.

When at a more horizontal angle from the victim, the Smoker can use its tongue to pull a Survivor towards itself, moving the Survivor away from his or her team. Further, this action poisons the Survivor. The longer the Smoker pulls the Survivor, the more the Survivor’s health is poisoned. If the Smoker completely pulls the Survivor to itself, all of the Survivor’s health is poisoned. Poisoned health slowly ticks down until a medkit is used.

When the Smoker is shot he releases an obscuring cloud of smoke, limiting the Survivor’s vision. A smoke cloud is also released around the Smoker with every tongue attack.

The Tank –

The Tank is a giant beast with an abnormally muscular upper body who relies on his health and strength to pummel the Survivors and lob debris. It is only playable several times throughout a campaign, as this boss is considerably more powerful than the other infected.

The Tank uses its speed and large amount of health to close the distance and slam the Survivors with its massive fists, knocking them back and doing a lot of damage. If the Survivor is knocked down, the Tank can bash the Survivor until they are dead.

The Tank can smash cars to send them flying towards the Survivors. If there is no car around, the Tank will rip a chunk of earth from the ground and toss it.

The Tank is able to smash through certain areas in walls to surprise the Survivors.

When the Director chooses to spawn a Tank, a player is randomly chosen to play it. The Tank has a frustration meter that forces it to find the Survivors. If it does not find the Survivors in this time, the player loses control of the Tank and the computer takes over.

The Boomer –

The Boomer is an obese methane-filled boss infected covered with boils whose main form of attack is projectile vomit, but also explodes when shot.

The Boomer’s vomit is released in one large attack, and in the right circumstances can hit more than one target. The vomit obscures the vision of its victims, and also acts as a pheromone to both existing infected, and causes more to be spawned and attack the victims. This attack has a cooldown.

If the Boomer drops from a high enough height, it will “pop” and blood will spread to any Survivors in the immediate area, having the same effect as a vomit attack would.

When successfully shot at, the Boomer explodes which covers any nearby Survivors with puke.

(AWESOME.)

The story is your basic city-plagued-by-virus routine. You, along with three other uninfected survivors, must blast your way out of the city. The four survivors are Bill, veteran of the Vietnam war, Louis, an assistant manager at the local Circuit City (soon out of a job), Zoey, the teenage daughter of a wealthy family (who, judging from the preview clips, has the ability to kick a lot of ass, Buffy-style) and Francis, the tattooed biker dude.

Where are they headed? To the countryside? That is my favorite question to ask of this genre. In the remake of Dawn of the Dead, the survivors make for an island in the middle of a lake, only to find that the island inhabitants have been infected. While the survivors of Left 4 Dead do have guns and ammo, the real question is…where can they go?

The game is set for a November 18th release for PC. I’ll post a review as soon as I get the chance to play this baby.

Imagine yourself hanging around one night with three to five friends, all of you bored and somewhat drunk, but in the mood for an old-school board game. “Last Night on Earth” just might be the game to satisfy your needs…if you don’t mind zombies.

This was one of two games that I was interested in purchasing after GenCon. The first was a fabulous beta version of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” which we play-tested with an interesting GM. And by interesting I mean strange. But the game itself, though fast-paced and a little convoluted for my tastes as a novice gamer, showed a lot of promise.

The only problem was that “A Song of Ice and Fire” didn’t have zombies. That was when we passed by Flying Frog Production’s booth in the back corner of the exhibit room. A man in a lab coat, brandishing a stethoscope, introduced himself and asked if we wanted an autograph. It took me a few seconds to realize that the kindly white-haired gentleman in front of me was also featured directly to my left in some pretty gnarly photo-art.

It was ultimately the art that caught my attention. Everywhere I turned at the convention, people were peddling high-fantasy winged monsters and bare-breasted fighting women in chain mail panties. I just wanted something a little more realistic (as realistic as a zombie apocalypse can be, I suppose). So we bought it, not really knowing how the game was played. Doc Brody, who we discovered later is an NPC in the game, did a hell of a job with his little pitch because games were flying off the shelves.

What follows is a detailed description of game play and characters. If you do not want to be spoiled on the game, do not read further. I’ll just let you know that “Last Night on Earth” is well worth the $45, and will provide hours of entertainment.

Game Play:

The game can be played with 2-6 people, but most find it’s best with 4. On our first few attempts it was my fiancée, my younger brother, and myself. One person played the zombies, and the others divided up the heroes, with two characters each. The game is played with a board that has interchangeable panels with different building depicted on them. The center square is an open field, unless you play the advanced games, and then the center square can be flipped. But we weren’t quite there yet.

The object of the standard game is to kill 15 zombies in 15 turns. The zombie player gets a sundial, which counts down until sunset. If two characters die, or the sun sets, the heroes lose.

Everyone has dice, which they use to determine how many squares they can move, or who wins in a fight. The zombies get a stack of zombie cards, and the heroes get their own deck. This is probably the first real incongruity of the game; zombies get many more cards than humans. On each zombie turn, the zombie player draws cards until they have a maximum of four in their hand. Humans can negate their move action if they are in a building to loot the room, but they can only draw one card at a time. That pretty much sucks, because it means that weapons and perks are hard to come by for the humans. To counteract this, many players establish the house rule that, at the beginning of the game, ten cards are discarded; this is useful because some characters can draw certain weapons from the discard pile.

Zombies also spawn very easily, which can make it difficult to escape from certain places because heroes are not allowed to move through walls, nor squares occupied by zombies. If you hadn’t guessed, the game appears (upon the first half-dozen plays or so) to be stacked against the hero players. It is thrilling and frustrating at the same time. This forces the players to want to keep playing until the heroes eventually win; that’s one of the fun parts of the game. It is highly re-playable because everything is so mix-and-match. No two games feel the same.

Characters:

Playability is one fun aspect of the game, but I think that the characters are the best part. Each character has pros and cons, and it’s difficult to win the game until the players actually figure out how the characters’ abilities fit together. I’m going to rank the characters from least awesome to most.

Johnny – High School Quarterback.

We deemed this character Johnny Dumbass. In every game that Johnny was drawn for, he inevitably died early on. He has two very cool abilities: one is that he always wins on dice ties (zombies automatically win ties otherwise), and he has the ability to “Blitz.” He can run into zombie squares, fight, and then continue his move action. The only problem is that he begins in the high school gym (which happened to be in play every time he was), right next to a zombie spawning point which is usually overrun before he gets much of a chance to do anything. Add this to the fact that two hits and he’s dead, and Johnny pretty much sucks.

Billy – Another High School Jock. Sheriff’s son.

Billy is emo. He has emo hair and constantly gets stuck with the zombie curse of “Teen Angst,” which forces him to roll with one less fight die if he’s in a square with another hero. The only two perks that Billy gets are his extra fast movement (plus 1 to every movement roll) and his ability to heal himself by giving up his move action. If Johnny hadn’t died every game, I’d place Billy as the worst, but he somehow manages to survive. Lucky emo bastard.

Nurse Becky – Umm…Nurse.

Becky wears inappropriately short skirts to work. That said, she can be useful because she can heal one wound from a hero in the same space. She is the only character in the game that can heal another, but she can’t heal herself. This is her only real perk, aside from having three hits (instead of two) before she dies.

Jenny – Farmer’s Daughter.

Jenny’s model is badass because she carries a chainsaw that looks like a giant phallus. She has a few cool abilities, too, though she’s another one of those “two hits = dead” kids. Jenny is a Farm Girl, so naturally, if she’s in the Barn or the Cornfield, she gets to roll an extra fight dice. Another bonus of that is if she’s in the Cornfield, zombies have to roll a 5 or a 6 before they can even find her to try and devour her brains. If the Barn card isn’t part of the board, however, she’s not completely useless; she gets to add a point to any roll to test whether a hand weapon breaks after use. This is helpful if she has the baseball bat, which can become a killing machine.

Sally – High School Sweetheart. (So we’ve got two jock boys, a farmer’s daughter and a sweetheart? No Debate Club or A/V Team? What a shitty school.)

Sally is anti-gun, but she can use a revolver. It’s best if she teams up with the Sheriff, for reasons that you’ll soon find out. The nifty thing about Sally is that she’s a lucky girl; she can force a Zombie to re-roll their fight dice once per fight. Very handy.

Sheriff Anderson – Small Town Lawman.

He is the only character that starts off with a weapon, the revolver. Every time he is in the Sheriff’s station, he can pick up the revolver from the discard pile in place of his move action. This is awesome, because if anyone else is in the room with him, they can pick up the pump-action shotgun from the discard pile (which is a condition of the sheriff’s station), and the place becomes a freaking armory. If Sally is in the room with him, he can simply hand over his revolver and pick up a new one from the discard pile. It’s too bad his son is such a pansy.

Jake Cartwright – Drifter.

This dude is awesome. He’s dressed like Cousin Eddy or Jayne Cobb, and in the cover art he is wielding the badass chainsaw. In addition to having three hits before he dies, Jake is also able to draw two cards on his loot turn instead of the usual one. In a game where heroes get very few cards to use, this is extremely helpful. Plus, he’s just cool to play.

And now, the best character in the game…

Father Joseph – True Man of the Cloth AssKicking

At first glance, it might appear that he would suck because he refuses to use guns. That’s really his only negative. This man has the ability to use the “Faith” card, which equals a permanently extra fight die. Throw a holy baseball bat in his hands, and there’s a possibility that Father Joe is beating down zombies with four fight dice! He’s also not susceptible to the dreaded “Last Night on Earth” card, which forces a male and female hero in the same space to get it on in place of their turns. Father Joe’s above all that sinful hoopla; the man just wants to kill some undead.

I recommend this game. The rules are easy to learn, and there are handy turn cards to remind you how the order of play transpires. The fun comes in the way it all plays out as a B-movie, which is helped by the fact that the art is reminiscent of fifties horror flicks. “Last Night on Earth” is simply a well-done game. I look forward to picking up the expansion, “Growing Hunger,” and am also eagerly awaiting the arrival of “A Touch of Evil,” which is from the same company; both promise just as much fun.

Visit Flying Frog Productions to learn more about their games.

Welcome to the exciting conclusion of Zombie Walk ’08. Right this way…

(^Doesn’t he know you can’t save a zombie’s soul?)

Hopefully you enjoyed my coverage of GenCon. It was such a blast, I can’t even begin to say how much fun I’ve had! If you appreciated the zombie posts, stay on the lookout for my in-depth review of “Last Night on Earth,” perhaps the greatest zombie board game ever made.

Hey there Villaintechians…Villaintechnicians? I’m slowly getting all of my video uploaded from GenCon, and thought I would take you on a little walk with some zombies…

Stay Tuned for the exciting conclusion to Zombie Walk ’08!