Zombies, Run! Playlist Creation Contest!

We’ve all had one of those moments. They can be thrilling. They can be scary. They can be hilarious. But one thing’s for certain: when your playlist and Zombies, Run! are working in perfect harmony, it’s pure magic.

We’re all about magic here at Six to Start, so we want more of these moments to happen. Which is why we’re kicking off a brand-new contest today: The Zombies, Run! Playlist Creation Contest!

(Image: Abel Township, later tonight.)

Starting today, we’re calling on all our wonderful Runners Five to create their ideal playlist for each Zombies, Run! mission. Which songs do you want to hear when you re-run “A Voice In The Dark”? What’s going to get your heart beating fastest during the epic finale to Season Two? This is your opportunity to share them with the entire community! Here’s how it works:

Check out this chart. It shows the lengths of every story and side mission in the game, calculated using an average song length of 4 minutes. This is the same length of time as the gaps the app uses to separate mission clips when music hasn’t been selected. This means that, when you play a mission using a non-native music player (like Spotify!), each mission should run to the length listed in our chart.
Create your playlist on Spotify. You’re effectively making a score for the mission here, so think about which songs you want to kick in at which points during the mission.
Make sure your playlist is public (by default, they are).
Right-click the playlist in Spotify and select “Copy Spotify URI”.
Fill out this short form to send your playlist through to us.
Check out all the other awesome playlists that have been submitted!

To provide a little inspiration, I’ve created a playlist of my own for Mission One. Check it out, then show us all how much better you can do by creating your own!

(Image: Me, yesterday, courtesy wikimedia commons)

We’ll be highlighting some of our favourite playlists here on the blog, and will be awarding some awesome prizes to the players who contribute the most and the best playlists.

What’s more, with the launch of Zombies, Run! 4, we’ll be making it easier to discover and share Zombies, Run! themed Spotify playlists from right inside the app. You’re not just making these playlists to get yourself moving, you could be creating the mix that a million people play when they begin their journey to become Runner Five.

So, get to it! The music-lovers of Abel need you!

Zombies, Run! Live Final Update

(Image courtesy V&A Museum – click for directions to the museum)

We’re only three days out from the amazing Zombies, Run! Live at the V&A’s Friday Late, so we hope all you Runners Five planning to attend have polished your axes, changed the batteries in your headsets, and tightened up the laces in your running shoes. We’re super excited to meet you all, and for you to take part in what is sure to be a super fun evening.

This post is a reminder that we will be heading off to a nearby pub after the event is over, for drinks, chat, merriment and squeeing over the amazing costumes people have put together. If you’d like to join us there, please make sure to follow @zombiesrungame on Twitter and check our account throughout the night to find out where we’re going to be.

We can’t wait to raise gates, glasses and spirits with you all!

Zombies, Run! Live: Update

New York based Runners Five: skip to the italicised section at the bottom of this post – we’re coming to visit!

We’re now just over a week out from what is sure to be the best thing to have ever happened in the history of things happening: Zombies, Run! Live at the V&A Friday Late.

It’s all going down a week on Friday (30th January) at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and we’re ridiculously excited to host an amazing event and to meet all of you awesome Runners Five who are heading out to attend.

(Image: V&A Friday Late flyer, courtesy V&A Museum)

In fact, we’re so damn excited to meet you that we’re looking for a couple of Zombies, Run! fans to volunteer to help us out at the event. If you’re interested in being part of making this event go off with a bang louder than [SPOILERS REDACTED], then here’s what you need to know:

You’ll need to attend the event in costume as Runner Five
You’ll need to be able to be at the V&A by 3pm on the day of the event
You need to email matt@sixtostart.com to put yourself forward. Volunteering doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll end up asking you to help, but we can’t ask you to help if you don’t volunteer!
We’ll get in touch with the people we’d like to help out to organise further details.

NEW YORK RUNNERS FIVE

We’re going to be visiting New York at the end of March! Our provisional plan is to host an informal (but super-fun) drinks-and-chat-meetup at a nice bar somewhere in Manhattan on the evening of Tuesday March 31st. We’ll confirm these details a bit later but for now, pencil that date in your diary if you fancy meeting some of the creators of ZR and your fellow Runners Five!

Zombies, Run! Live – 30th January

In our blogpost last Friday, along with releasing our awesome “Raise the Gates” Supercut video, we told you all to keep your eyes our for a big announcement to come today. Not one to break our promises, here we are with said announcement.

We’re delighted to announce today that we’re partnering with the Victoria and Albert museum in London to run a live Zombies, Run! event at their Museum Late at the end of this month: January 30th. This is a really exciting opportunity for us to do something different, introduce Zombies, Run! to a whole new crowd of people, and hopefully meet a whole bunch of you Runners Five!

(Image: “Abel Township”, yesterday)

Here are the key details, with more info below:

January 30th, Victoria and Albert Museum, 6.30pm start
3 “performances” throughout the night, each lasting 20 minutes
Open to all ages (but be aware that these events tend to be quite busy if you’re bringing small children)
Free, non-ticketed – turn up early as we can’t guarantee entry!
Come in costume! (But no zombies please!)
Secret but fun, interactive event
Meet the writers, director, developers (and almost certainly actors!) behind the game
Come get a drink with us afterwards! We’ll send a tweet out on the night to let you know what we’ll be up to / where we’ll be.
We’re super super super crazy excited about this and we hope you can come join us for some fun!

The event will take place as part of the V&A’s Friday Late, which is a free, non-ticketed event. This means it’s open to everyone, won’t cost you a penny, and you don’t need to book in advance. However, these events do tend to be very popular and we can’t guarantee entry, so it’s usually a good idea to turn up early in order to make sure you get in!

We’ll be doing three “performances” throughout the night, each of which will last 20 minutes, so there’ll be plenty of chances to take part in what is going to be an experience not to be missed. We don’t want to spoil the surprise by telling you exactly what’s going to go down, but it’s going to be fun, interactive and full of all the things you love about Zombies, Run! While this is an event for people who are new to ZR as much as it is for fans, this isn’t going to be a boring lecture or presentation, we promise.

And, to make this evening as unforgettable as we want it to be, we’re asking for your help. We know that ZR fans are creative, passionate and proud to be Runner Five, and we want the rest of the attendees to know that as well. So we’d love it if you came in costume as your favourite runner, operator, radio host or other character from ZR. There’ll be plenty of opportunities for awesome photos and videos throughout the night and there might even be a chance to meet the actor who plays the character you’ve come as! One small caveat, though: we’d ask you not to come as a zombie – we promise this is for good reasons!

(Image: Some items that might be very useful for your cosplay, via the wonderful decrescendo)

On top of all that, the Zombies, Run! team will be out in full force, ready to chat, take photos and generally have a whale of a time with you all. We’ll be around all night at the event, and we’re also probably going to be finding a friendly pub nearby afterwards to get together for a more relaxed drink, so there’ll be plenty of opportunities to talk Abel, Sam and all things ZR! We’re really excited to meet you all, so we hope you can make it!

Raise The Gates!

It’s a cry that has echoed in every runner’s ears; from Abel to New Canton, Brunswick to Skoobs, “Raise The Gates” is the universal signal to get ready for what’s to come. Which is why we thought it’d would be the perfect sound to ring in 2015.

OK, we’re a few days late. But we also bringing more than just one “Raise The Gates”. We’ve actually got all of them. That’s right. Every single “Raise The Gates” from every single Zombies, Run! story mission. All assembled in the supercut video at the top of this post. We should note that there are minor implied spoilers in this video for the whole of the main story, so watch with a little caution if you’re very spoiler averse and not up to date.

So, Runners everywhere, gather with us and start the year the way you mean to continue it: by Raising Those Gates.

And, for all of our UK Runners Five, this is official notice to save the evening of January 30th 2015. We’ll be appearing with a special free live event a the Victoria and Albert museum in London. We’ll be back in touch on Monday with more details on exactly what’s going to go down, but you won’t want to miss it.