Happy Holidays from everyone here at Team ZR! We’ve released a suitably celebratory bonus mission called Life Day, and you can find it right now at the end of the Season 4 missions list!
If you have a Pro Membership, you can download Life Day right now! Otherwise, you can use your free weekly unlock to download it for your holiday running.
Thanks to everyone who has played, supported, discussed, geeked-out about, and stayed fit with Zombies, Run! this year. We can’t wait to show you the incredible new things we’re cooking up for 2016!
2015 has been a tremendous year for Zombies, Run! – we released the fantastic Season 4, held our first Virtual Race with 2500 runners, and more than doubled our downloads to over two million. To top it all off, we made our apps better than ever with improved music playback, free Training Plans, Interval Training on Android, and Apple Watch support.
Not bad at all, we’d say! And now that we’ve squashed so many bugs thanks to our devs, QA, and beta-testing community, we’re able to embark on developing even bigger features than before – like our Training Plans.
Here’s what we’re aiming to add or improve in the next two months – as ever, it’s an aspiration, not a promise! Development is unpredictable, so we do sometimes slip behind our roadmap a little way, but this is the plan for the next two months as it stands:
iPhone
Achievements
Apple Watch improvements
Training Plan improvements
Enhanced Statistics
Contextual post-run stats
Android
Achievements
Training Plan improvements
Enhanced Statistics
Run countdown
ZombieLink
Codex
5k run compatibility
GPX export
Our 2016 Plan
2015 saw us launch Season 4 and completely rebuild the app. We’ll be honest – there were a lot of bugs to begin with, but today Zombies, Run! has never looked or performed better. We’ve reduced crashes, made the app easier to use, and added a ton of audio and running features. The app is in fantastic shape and the rebuild means it’s much faster for us to develop new features.
For our main app, 2016 is all about gameplay. Among the areas we’re interested in are the base builder, social/multiplayer features, and walk tracking.
Don’t worry – we aren’t going to wipe out your existing Abel Townships! Those will remain and simply get better. But we know a lot of players are motivated by improving their base and we think we can make that much more fun, particular if you do it with your friends.
Next year’s Virtual Races will get bigger and better, with more rewards and more excitement. We’ve been blown away by the demand for our Spring 2016 Virtual Race, and we’re planning to hold two or three over the course of 2016.
In 2016, we’ll also be completely rebuilding our 5k Training app, based on the brand new, battle-tested ZR engine. It’s likely that for both ZR apps, we’ll be requiring iOS 8 or higher; so if you have an iPhone 4s or above, you’ll be fine!
There’s much more that we have in store, like our upcoming book for Penguin, but we aren’t ready to share everything quite yet…
Four Years Young
ZR is almost four years old. That’s like 40 internet years! In many ways, we aren’t an upstart app any more – we have well over 2 million players, and hundreds of thousands of people run with us every month. These are numbers we only dreamed of when we launched.
But here’s the thing. If you ask a random runner or gamer if they’ve heard of Zombies, Run!, they might say yes – but they probably won’t have tried it. And if you ask a random stranger, chances are they won’t even have heard about it.
That means it’s still early days in Abel Township. There are millions more people out there who don’t realise that running can be exciting, exhilarating, and most of all fun. We want them all to become Runner 5, just like you!
As promised, the eagerly awaited Training Plans are now available for all ZR players on Android – for FREE!
Ever wanted a way to schedule your runs across multiple weeks? Wanting to train for a 10k (maybe the upcoming Spring 2016 Virtual Race…) but need a little extra guidance? Simply grab the latest update from the Play Store, and check out the new Training Plans option on the Missions screen.
Once you enrol in a Training Plan, you’ll be given a weekly schedule of runs. After completing a qualifying run on the correct date (by meeting its time or distance requirement), you can tap a switch which marks it as complete in your Training Plan schedule.
We’ve included two 10k plans to begin with: 10k Beginner and 10k Intermediate. These are 7-8 week plans intended for those who can already run a solid 5k and want to train further. There is also a Half Marathon Beginner plan, for those comfortable with running a 10k who want to progress.
A city full of zombies A rogue general with a nuclear bomb The biggest race of your life
Prepare for an explosive 5k/10k race set in the first days of the zombie apocalypse! Join up and get a pro-spec Race Tee, bonus training missions, a race bib, finisher’s medal, and access to our private community forum.
You choose the distance. You choose the route. We make it awesome.
Race dates: 30 March to 11 April 2016
What’s a Virtual Race? A Virtual Race takes place in a location and time of your choice. You can walk, jog or run wherever you may be, and at any time during the race week, for a 5k or a 10k distance. It’s an awesome way for all Runner 5s around the world to run as a community, and get exclusive real-world awards!
Introducing your Race Tee
This is, without a doubt, the best tee we’ve ever made – and it’s only available to Virtual Race entrants. Even better, this tee plays a crucial role in the race mission itself…
Bonus Training Missions
Getting up to speed for a race is a great way to train. We’ve made it even better with two bonus missions to set the stage and get your pulse racing.
Three Ways to Join
All options include a Finisher’s Medal, Race Bib, Certificate, Badge, and access to our private ROFFLENET community forum.
Get gift entries for friends and family, plus twin combo packs (save $10!) are also available.
Here’s what our 2015 Virtual Race runners said
“As much as your game motivates me, this race has trumped it. I am hooked on virtual races now.”
“I loved the whole thing, thoroughly enjoyable, well done!”
“Thank you for a fabulous app and a great race!!!”
“I loved the forum it helped get me excited for the big day!”
“Thank you for creating a compelling story that made me get off my ass and do my first 10K!”
It’s all gone a bit holly-jolly at Six to Start headquarters. Partly because we’ve put up our office Christmas tree and begun feasting on mince pies whenever we can, but mostly because of all the wonderful things that have been happening in the Zombies, Run! universe over the past few weeks.
Six to Start News
Even though Season Four has long since had its finale, the past few weeks at Six to Start have seen everyone beavering away busily on our favourite running game. We brought you a virtual race, training plans, Apple Watch support and a sneak peak at our Virtual Race for Spring 2016. But, as ever, the best things about ZR have been produced by all of you! Take a look at some of them below the readmore.
General Fandommery
Our new favourite fanblog for Zombies, Run! is Incorrect Zombies, Run! Quotes, which attributes quotes from other works to characters from ZR. With invariably hilarious results. Minor spoilers within for character names / implied character traits up to the end of Season Four, but well worth a browse if you can!
Sam Yaos has been creating hilarious specialist coffees based on ZR characters, inspired by popular ZR AU idea “Cafe Abel” where everyone works in a cafe because of course. I think my favourite is the Salty Canadian, for so many reasons.
The Unofficial Zombies, Run! Podcast: Podcast Detected has released its latest episode, which is all about everyone’s favourite post-apoc-doc: Maxine Myers. As always, a must-listen for all you Runners Five.
Fanfic
Here are some of our favourite fics from the past few weeks:
Zombies, Run! 