We’ve come a long way since we started Zombocalypse 2 for Flash 4 months ago. Our programmer Chevy has done a phenomenal job of making everything come to life, while Yowan and JP have made sure the UI and Art is full of personality and is as sexy as ever. It’s difficult to fill you guys in without revealing too much, and the only way you’ll get something out of me is if you see me in person. Apologies to all of you in South America, Africa, China, etc.

“But wait John, what’s Gold? Why are you on the road to Gold? Why not be on the road to finishing the game?”

Ah, great question. For those not in the know (or not in the game industry) Gold basically means:

“Gold master is the final game’s build that is used as a master for production of the game.”
- Wikipedia

It means the game is finished and the Gold copy will be used as the final build for replication and retail sale. So yes, we are almost done with the game!

Idea + Vision + Action = Reality

As the designer and producer, I’m responsible for the vision and design of the game. So I make crap, and describe the hell out of what I envision for it, and my team makes it beautiful.

For example, they take my amazing sketches below (They’re my drawings, I can call them amazing if I want to!):

And turn them into this:

Or I attempt to design UI and describe it’s functions in words:

And they make the original look like it was done by a 7 year old:

What’s even more incredible is when I can only use words to describe what I want, and allow breathing room for the receiver to add in their own ideas. This means more back and forth, which equals more time, which equals more money, but it also means that I trust in my team to pull it off. And got damn do they pull it off. This is all I literally said to our illustrator Michael Kessler:

“Would you be able to do something similar to the attached concepts as well? It would be great to have the main character’s back and slight angle of his face to the player, with zombies coming from the front in an expansive city scape + with orange hues. The main character should be in the lower right of the main menu.

I’ve attached some concepts for reference, but ultimately I leave it up to you! The main menu art is very important at the entire portrayal of the game, so please pull out all the guns on this one ”
- John

And after a few revisions and approvals, this happened:

Michael Kessler, thank you my good sir.

Ultimately, working with teams all comes down to trust. Of course, I’d first find and recruit the creme de la creme, the cream of the crop, the potato cream. For the project teams I put together, they have to be talented, diligent in their work, and absolutely love what they do to the point where they’re just crazy. I’ll post about trust later this year when I reflect what it’s like to be in a producer / designer role.

Right now we’re pretty much almost at Gold and only have this much more to go:

• Achievements & achievements screen
• Map screen
• Costume selection menu
• Preloader
• Main Menu Screen (Options, Credits)
• Results screen
• Pause menu
• A few animation fixes
• Tutorial level
• Game flow
• Final Game Balance
• Global Online High Scores (cuz I know all you Zombocalypse fans are competitive)

I’ll be posting more updates as we go, with little leaks here and there of gameplay so keep checking in! For now, enjoy a snippet of Zombocalypse 2′s firepower. Have fun trying to figure out what the weapons are

Cheers!

John