From Sunday, September 27th to Friday, October 2nd, Stockton’s Live Action Gamers held their biannual Humans Versus Zombies (HvZ) game. Over 100 players registered for the game online, most of which were designated “human.” Three of the players became the OZs: the Original Zombies, tasked with infecting the rest of the players by week’s end.
On the first night of the game, with the picturesque blood moon hanging overhead, three human teams set out: blue, white, and purple, of which I was a member. It began as a basic game of “Capture the Flag…”, however, as the players wandered out into the woods, the OZs slowly began revealing themselves. Hidden among the ranks of the human players, they jumped out and tagged their unsuspecting teammates, decimating over half of blue team and a large chunk of purple team by the night’s end.
The gameplay mechanics for HvZ were simple. Each player wore a yellow band – on the upper arm if the player was human, and as a headband if they were a zombie. Throughout the course of the week, gameplay would continue, with the only safe havens being buildings, classes, and sports practices. Zombies tried to tag humans; humans stunned them with NERF guns for 10 minutes before making their escape. Each night there were different missions: collecting supplies, discovering new locations, and so on.
Unfortunately, by Friday there were only a handful of humans remaining…in no time the zombies had won.
I thoroughly enjoyed HvZ: I played as a human for two days, and returned once to play as a zombie after I’d been “turned.” As a human, I was constantly on edge – there could be zombies anywhere! On the way to dinner, or heading to class, or while going to meet the rest of my team for a mission, I could be targeted. After becoming a zombie, though, things became a bit less…entertaining. Humans I knew I had tagged insisted they hadn’t been; someone hit me in the face; we hid in the bushes for over half an hour waiting for an ambush. While the idea behind HvZ was a good one, the execution could have been a bit better. Perhaps next time they could find a way to make the zombie experience more exciting. All flaws aside, I am certain of one thing: that come next semester, I’ll be out there doing it all over again.