Kicking off today’s swarm of the undead is Project Zomboid, an isometric 2.5D Zombie RPG/Sandbox game created by ‘TheIndieStone’, a small development team with big plans for their upcoming zombie thriller. The game is currently in its alpha stage of development but its potential to be a smash hit still shines through, with many of the cooler features yet to be added. When starting up the game, you have the option of following a campaign story, or go it alone in your own sandbox world with survival as your only goal.

So there’s zombies and its indie looking, what’s so cool about that? Well the game is much more than just a zombie slaying simulator with numerous features either already included, or planned for the future to give the game an enjoyable experience. Whilst trying to survive against the undead the player will have to contend with finding resources like food and water to simply stay alive, finding weapons equipment to help them fight back the hordes and even gather up materials that allow them to fortify positions in an attempt to make a durable safe-house to rest in. The feature I’m most excited about is Cooperative gameplay, which is planned further down the development schedule, and will see players teaming up to survive the hordes of the undead in what is sure to be an enjoyable blood-soaked venture through the land of the dead.

Project Zomboid is currently in an alpha funding state on Desura and is definitely worth checking out. You can pick up your digital copy of the game (and all upcoming updates) for the low price of £4.99, and help fund the games development at the same time.

The next title to shuffle into the spotlight is ‘No More Room In Hell’ a total conversion multiplayer mod for Half Life 2. The game boasts a left 4 dead style objective system which sees the players teaming up to navigate the zombie riddled streets of each map, in an attempt to make it out alive. Combat plays out through a mixture of melee and gun based styles, but with the correct ammo being a scarce commodity, you’ll always want your trusty hatchet by your side in case of emergency.

The games overall visual appearance is very polished considering its indie roots, and the animations and combat feel visceral and smooth enough to make the experience as enjoyable as it is heart-pounding. One of the coolest features I had observed during my time with this mod was that zombies have a chance of infecting you if they bite you, which causes you to slowly lose health and eventually die. If this happens, you will become reanimated as a faster variation of the zombie horde, posing a bigger threat to your ally’s survival. This of course leaves room for deception, where players will attempt to hide their infection in a vain attempt to stay alive, something I discovered as I was forced to gun down a friend before he turned and tried to make me his next meal.

Overall, the mixture of truly threatening zombies and objectives to work towards truly lend themselves towards an enjoyably tense experience, and with more content to look forward to, ‘No More Room In Hell’ is certainly one to watch for the future.

You can download the mod for free (Providing you own Half Life 2) from the official site. 

That about wraps up this week’s indie spotlight, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to go wash the blood off my hands, barricade the doors and bandage up this wound that totally isn’t a bite ma.......braaaaiaiinnns....