It’s that time again! Time to see what the Zombies, Run! community has been cooking up. We’ve got another packed edition of the community round-up this month, including the much-anticipated arrival of Zombies, Run! T-shirts, hoodies and posters allowing a bunch of you to perfect your Runner 5 Halloween costumes.
Here you can see just a small selection of people who have been receiving their Zombies, Run! T-shirts and hoodies. Click on their pics to visit their Tumblr blog and see for yourselves what they have to say about them. (Spoiler: They kind of love them!)
Did you enjoy #StayAliveOctober? Then you’ll definitely want to check out #NoStoppingNovember. It’s… well, it’s basically the same thing, but one month later. Which makes it the perfect opportunity to take part in a global Zombies, Run! campaign, courtesy of Tumblr user Run Like A Zombie.
Halloween has come and gone for another year and we wanted to highlight a particularly excellent Runner 5 outfit. Tumblr user Izziegs put together a fantastic Runner 5 costume. You can see more pics here, or by clicking on the image below. Nice work, Izziegs!
Next we have a great piece of fanart by Tumblr user Crownleys, showing her interpretation of the Doctor Girlfriends.
Tumblr users Lindleyjo and sleepyempress have put together some unofficial Zombies, Run! Cards Against Humanity decks. You can find instructions on how to access these over at Lindleyjo’s Tumblr. We’d love to see some of the results, so please send them over to us!
Don’t forget, if you’ve created some Zombies, Run! art (or anything else!) you can send it straight to us for inclusion in the next Community Round Up. Just email it to Jem@sixtostart.com.
Q: Where do you go to buy zombies?
A: The Google Play of Apple App monSTORE!
To celebrate the most thematically fitting day in the Zombies, Run! calendar, we’re doing a half-price Halloween sale on both Zombies, Run! and Zombies, Run! 5k Training until Monday 3rd November.
It’s that time again! Time to see what the Zombies, Run! community has been cooking up. We’ve got another packed edition of the community round-up this month, no doubt spurred on by the epic conclusion to Season 3. You’ve outdone yourselves!
Fawndolyn Valentine who, apart from having an incredible name, runs website HoneyInMyGears.com, has sent us this great piece of university coursework. It’s a comic based on Season One episode nine of Zombies, Run!: A Voice In The Dark.
If you like what you see from the snippet above, make sure you check out the rest of the comic over at Fawndolyn’s website. It’s a great take on the episode, showing Runner 5’s inner monologue during the iconic Season One run. We’ve all been there.
The fanart keeps coming in! Here we have Anna Lundstrom’s (StopFailing on Deviantart) great take on Runner 5. A nice colourful outfit helps you forget you’re living in a zombie apocalypse. Until you get home to the barbed wire fence and start washing the blood and guts from your clothes. Still, until then it’s a beautiful dream.
Back to the Tumblr mines now, with an awesome picture by Coyotewhispers. Not only does Runner 5 have a hint of Lara Croft about her, but she’s joined by a super fuzzy dog friend.
Or perhaps it’s the dog who is the true Runner 5… Four legs would certainly make avoiding zombies a lot easier.
From a canine to a feline, Runner 5s come in all shapes and sizes. This cat, owned by Tumblr user WitchAryllia, became possibly the littlest member of Able Township when she joined her owner on her Zombies, Run! mission. We’re happy to see that the game is being used not just to exercise humans, but their pets too. Zombies, Run! is nothing if not an equal opportunity app.
Kalimak fanart
We started with a comic depicting the events of A Voice In The Dark, and here we have a piece of fanart by Tumblr user Kalimak which shows the events that took place just before. “Take Evasive Manoeuvres” shows the ambush of Runner 5 during episode eight of Season One, drawn in a great sketchy black and white style. We love it!
It wouldn’t be a Zombies, Run! community round-up without a piece by TheWondersmith. Here we see a portrait of Janine and her gold aura. It’s stunning work, as always. Looks like something you’d expect to see on a propaganda poster. “Able Needs YOU” style. Great stuff.
Finally we return to Podcast Detected, the fan-run Zombies, Run! podcast. We featured them on the community round-up a few months back and now they’re looking for some help in order for the project to survive.
So check out the Indiegogo page and see if you can donate a little bit of money to keep your favourite Zombies, Run! podcast on the air. Thankfully it seems the team has enough already to continue for a while, but giving more will mean more stretch goal prizes for the community!
As always, if you have something you’d like to submit for the community round-up, make sure you send it over to Jem@Sixtostart.com. We’re looking forward to seeing your submissions!
Runners, check your app store! We’ve updated Zombies, Run! to version 3.2, which makes it fully compatible with iOS 8. Not only that, but those of you with the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus will notice the app has a newly optimised layout for your device. There are also a number of minor bug fixes and improvements to your overall experience.
For many of us October means the drawing in of nights, colder weather and a welcoming back of the spookier side of life. As if in celebration of all those things, Tumblr user Run Like A Zombie has put together a community fitness program called #StayAliveOctober.
Zombies, Run! fans are challenged to run as often as they can during the month of October, with regular updates to allow for support and recognition from other Tumblr users. As you’d expect, the community has accepted the challenge with aplomb. As if we weren’t proud of you all already.
If you’re interested, it’s not too late to start! Head over to Run Like A Zombie’s instructions post and prepare your introduction (like this one!). And make sure you keep the #StayAliveOctober tag updated with your progress (like this!) so we can see how you’re doing!
We’re excited to announce a new set of limited-edition T-shirts and posters, just in time for Halloween, available on our pop-up Teespring store!
Our amazing artist, Estee Chan, created the designs, available as tees, hoodies, and even on sweat-wicking athletic gear! The zombie horde is on your heels and no-one is safe. Can you stay ahead of the pack and bring hope to the people of Abel Township?
And back due to popular demand is the ‘blood spattered’ Runner 5 tee, which makes for a fantastic (and let’s face it, pretty easy) Halloween costume!
Finally, we’ve created a limited-edition Zombies, Run! 3 poster!
Check out the Zombies, Run! Teespring store for full details on all of this gear, including sizing and colour info.
Be quick, though: these designs will only be available until October 14. After that, there’s no guarantee we will be offering them again!
This is it. The epic finale to Season 3. The final episodes are now available to download and play. As ever, you can get your mitts on them through the Zombies, Run! app.
The last missions of Season 3 are named “Mambo Number 5” and “Sacrifice”. As usual, no spoilers, but we’re eager to hear what you think of them! Don’t worry, there are more adventures for Runner 5 to come. We’re in the early planning stages of Season 4, so stay tuned for more info as development continues in the coming months.
To get access to all previously released missions, you just need to purchase the relevant Pass from the Store. But surely you’ve already done that, right?
If you haven’t visited the Zombies, Run! Blog in a while, we have some recent posts you’ll definitely want to check out. Lead writer Naomi Alderman has written a guest post talking about plans for Season 4 and writer Matt Wieteska also discusses what it was like to write Radio Mode.
A few words from co-creator and lead writer Naomi Alderman:
So we’ve hinted at it and mentioned it, but now it’s time to make it official: yes, Runner Five Will Return for Zombies, Run! Season 4.
We’re just starting to plot out what exciting adventures Runner 5 will have in the next season, so there are really no spoilers to give. But you know, there’ll be terrifying enemies, horrifying scenarios, and of course heartbreaking moments to continue our tradition of Crying While Running. And there’ll be zombies. You may think you’ve beaten them down, you might believe that you’ve laid them to rest, but remember: you can’t kill something that’s already dead.
I’m thrilled that despite the wonderful success of her novel Smiler’s Fair, I’ve managed to twist Rebecca Levene’s arm*, and she’ll continue to be my right-hand woman for Season 4. And many of the writers from Season 3 stay onboard. I’m very sad that Matt Wieteska’s retired from writing radio mode, but I’ve got a few surprises coming up on that front, and we’ll have plenty of announcements of exciting guest writers to come over the next months.
We’re all so looking forward to getting stuck into Season 4, and I think it’s fair to say that Runner Five’s journey has only just started. There will be the walking dead, their flesh falling from their bones as they come for you with outstretched arms. There will be Sam being concerned and Janine being badass and Doctor Girlfriends… well, you’ll see. Above all, there’ll be mission upon mission when the only appropriate thing to do, the only possible thing to do, is: run.
*basically blackmail, OK. I know what she did for the CIA in Cuba back in 1965.
Warning: This post contains spoilers for the entirety of Season 3 Radio Mode!
Procrastinating from writing this blogpost, I decided to do a bit of digging through old files to try to find the very first bit of Radio Abel I wrote (scroll to the end of this post). It’s dated to exactly three years ago (coincidentally, to my 26th birthday), and contains this apology in the margin: “a first stab, a bit too sentimental maybe, but you get a bit of a sense of the banter / tension between them”. I guess that just about sums up this post as well: “a bit too sentimental, maybe, but you get a sense of the banter: The Story of Radio Abel”.
If you’re reading this, you’ve heard the final parts of this season’s radio mode, and you’ll know that this is goodbye. After three years, I’ve decided to give Jack and Eugene the happy ending I’ve been longing to since their first transmission and let someone else take over the airwaves around Abel Township. I’m a fanboy at heart, and I could no longer resist the temptation to send them into the West. The boys and I are off the air for good.
It has been a real privilege to write these characters for the past three seasons, and to work with such an incredibly talented group of actors in bringing them to life. Amy, Felix, Nathan and Rhys are the reason that radio mode ever made you laugh, if it did, cry, god forbid, or feel anything else at all under the sun. Working with them has been a joy since the beginning and I can’t ever thank them enough for everything.
Whatever else I thought when we started working on the radio stuff, I’d never imagined how warmly it would be received, and whatever else has happened in the past three years, the community’s reaction has been a constant source of light in my life. Thanks to everyone who’s listened to our dumb radio show, whether you liked it or not, and whether you’ve told us about it or not. Without an audience, we’d be nothing other than five people in a soundproof booth talking to ourselves.
Alright, enough with the soppy stuff. As this is the last you’ll see of them, here is a list of things you probably don’t know about Jack and Eugene:
Eugene came first, and was originally on his own. This was short-lived as writing nothing but monologue was driving me crazy.
His name, embarrassingly, comes from my favourite episode of “Band of Brothers”: “Bastogne” – the main character in that episode being Eugene Roe, and the whole thing taking place in the Woods.
Once it became clear that having a solo radio host wouldn’t work, I did the laziest thing possible to make the earliest scenes into dialogue: I took all of ‘Gene’s self-corrections and interruptions and put them under a new voice: Jack Holden. Eugene’s habit for self-correction is, unfortunately, something we share in buckets.
Jack got his first name because it played nicely with “Gene”, and the “Holden” came from the only British player at that year’s World Series of Poker Main Event Final Table.
Jack’s location on day zero is just a big love-in for this song.
Eugene’s old career is pretty much just stolen right from Nathan’s life. If you haven’t seen any of his food and drink reviews, go now! Any time there’s a foodie reference in radio mode, I’ll write something as a placeholder and then wait for Nathan to give me something better during the recording.
The season two radio clip “Smiling Too” is an original song that Rhys brought in with him one day, having written it on the way to the studio and asking if he could include it in the game.
And finally, before I hand over to Naomi to explain a little bit about how season four radio’s going to work, here are some of my favourite moments from the last three years of recording. Let me know what yours are!
Amy barely being able to contain her laughter while recording “The Ablers”.
Felix dancing while he rapped during “MC Cheeseman”
Richard Bell’s amazing sound design on the first three clips of season two radio.
Rhys and Nathan doing impressions of each other in season one (this bit was entirely improvised between takes – just the boys messing around with each other).
Everyone singing “Running Down To Cuba”.
Nathan’s insanely heart-breaking delivery of the line “They never brought him home”.
Hearing all the community call-in clips and having loads of fun writing responses.
Felix’s face when I played him the clip of a fan proposing to Phil (he had no idea what was coming).
Rhys recording the “Eugene is sick” clips. We had to record this stuff at 5.30am as Rhys was heading off on a tour that day, so it was a very bleary-eyed session, which added to the atmosphere.
All the stupid sound effects in “Runner Zero”, as well as that theme tune! We spent quite a bit of time on these sections, but mostly because we couldn’t avoid corpsing. One of the best things about recording the radio content has been how consistently we struggle to get through takes without laughing.
So, that’s it from me. It’s been an absolute pleasure to bring you Radio Abel for three years. Stay safe out there — Matt Wieteska (@gamecat).
And a word from Naomi:
Well. I’ve teared up, and I’m sure you have too. When Matt first told me he wanted to stop writing Radio Abel of course I did what any good Lead Writer would do and imprisoned him in my basement, got out my lump hammer and mentioned that ‘the operation was called hobbling’. But even in the face of my uncannily accurate impression of Kathy Bates, he remained adamant. And, after some treatment in a state correctional facility, I’ve come to accept his choice.
Over the years I’ve seen enough writers try to take over other writers’ beloved characters to know that it just doesn’t work. The fans can tell. It always feels ‘off’. So Matt’s retirement means Jack and Eugene’s retirement too. The ending he’s given them is beautiful and right: it feels like where those characters were always heading, where they were always supposed to be.
It would be wrong, I think, to try to replace Jack and Eugene outright. So there will be radio mode in Season 4, but we’re going to be mixing things up, trying out some new ideas and new characters, keeping radio mode as a lighthearted counterpoint to the Oh God It’s So Dark And Why Am I Crying of our missions. I’ve got some fabulous writers lined up to write radio in Season 4, and those of you who know how much I love the salty tears of the players will be glad to know that I’m not planning to be one of them!
And a little sliver of comfort for you: though Matt created Jack and Eugene, Phil and Zoe were created by Rebecca Levene, so you might just hear a little something from them every now and then.
Jack and Eugene have been part of what’s made Zombies, Run! great, and I’m sad beyond words to see them go. But Matt Wieteska, with everything from his patient, thoughtful, clever and insightful direction to his skills at game design, to his letting us *use his bedroom* to record Season 1, has been a much bigger contributor to all the success we’ve had, and to the million+ players we’ve helped get fitter. So though I’m sad to see Jack and Eugene go, I’m so grateful that we still have Matt on our team. Thank you, Matt.
A new batch of Season 3 missions are now available to download through the Zombies, Run! app. This is the penultimate drop of Season 3. We’re getting close to the epic finale. Prepare yourselves…
This week’s new missions are named “Natural Anthem”, “Rollercoasters” and “Up”. As usual, no spoilers, but we’re eager to hear what you think of them!
To get access to all previously released missions, you just need to purchase the relevant Pass from the Store. But surely you’ve already done that, right?
If you haven’t visited the Zombies, Run! Blog in a while, make sure you do so! Some great community content and our reaction to the Apple Watch announcement is waiting for you.
Zombies, Run! 