I may be an unemployable loser, but at least I get to take part in amazing zombie games. Last night I helped out with the latest
Fire Hazard extravaganza on Hampstead Heath.
Almost every player had dressed up to some extent. Since part of my job was to look out for people who'd tripped and injured themselves, the fact that everyone was covered in blood (and later on also shambling and moaning) made it a bit tricky to spot real casualties (I don't think we had any). There was a genius zombie bride (who ironically went on to have a massive row with her boyfriend because he dropped something he was supposed to be looking after for her).
kevandotorg looked quite convincingly like he'd been sliced about the face. There were even a couple of guys in proper latex makeup.
It almost went horribly wrong because our usual play area had been taken over by some kind of goddamn Hallowe'en "walk". What's scary about a walk? Who goes on a walk when they could be fighting for their very survival?
Luckily we managed to pull off an emergency relocation to a back-up site. We were all on a comms net of cheap but effective walky-talkies, otherwise the whole thing would have been a disaster.
The first game is called Nightwatch and it involves the players sneaking past guards who have torches (who in the zombie apocalypse fiction are enforcing a quarantine zone). I am a guard for this, which is very enjoyable as I get to berate the players, threaten them with execution, sneak up on them with the torch off and then suddenly dazzle them, scare players who are hiding by getting really close to them and acting like a videogame guard ("What was that? Hmmm, probably nothing"), and generally be mean to people and have them love every minute of it. You know, like sex.
This time round I had a toy gun with a laser "sight" attached to it, as well as the torch. So when players were reluctant to obey orders (they often freeze when caught and hope that you're talking about someone else), I could say "Yes you! You with the blue top and the red dot on your chest". Some of them even put their hands up! What was nice in game design terms is that when I was pulling my usual dick move of turning off the torch and waiting for people to start moving, they could still use the dot of the laser to see roughly where I was and where I was looking.
Next time: night vision goggles.
Later on in the pub I spoke to two girls who had leopard-crawled for ages across the open ground to my right to reach safety. I could see that there were people out there, but every time I played my lights over them, they froze, so I thought I would let them pass.
The actual zombie apocalypse bit also went well. I was a safety steward for this bit. My favourite part was when two human survivors, who'd spent most of the game hiding out of bounds, refusing to believe my advice to head back to the start point and help assemble the "zombie cure", because they thought I was a zombie trying to trick them!
The humans started off more heavily armed (with Nerf guns) than in previous runs, but as a bit of clever balancing, we forgot to put out most of the ammo, so pretty soon the humans were nearly defenceless and there was a nice exponential growth until the zombies were in the majority.
Everyone seemed to enjoy it, apart from the bride and her groom, and another couple who had failed to read the emails or apply any kind of common sense so the woman had turned up in pointy boots which hurt her feet.
Most disturbing feedback from the feedback forms was "Nice game. Nice girls". What would have made the game better, disturbing man? "If we could have had sex with the girls". Thanks, we will be sure to arrange that as a bonus round next time.
(Actually, the girls
were pretty nice. I was disturbed by how sexy I find low-budget zombie make-up, the type with black smudges around the eyes and white skin, so you look like a goth who's overdone it a bit. I guess that just means that I find goths sexy, which is no surprise to anyone. Still, had better make sure I don't turn into
this guy - I already look like him.)
There was a reviewer from Time Out there, apparently. I am keen to see if he enjoyed it as much as most of the players did. This time next year, we'll all be zombillionaires!