This week on the Zombies, Run! book club, we’ll be discussing the third chapter of the book!
In Building a Community, we’re reading about making time for recreation, how to train in groups as well as rustling up rustic meals for our friends.
Join in over in our Goodreads group!
Haven’t got the book yet? You can still buy the special signed hardback edition from our store, or purchase the paperback from Amazon or any good bookshop!
It looks like you made it onto the “nice” list this year, so you’ll find some neatly-wrapped Zombies, Run! updates nestled under your tree.
Beta testers have been putting the new iOS update through its paces, but now it’s ready for everyone to use. We have the all-new mission progress bar which will tell you how far through a story mission you are and how many supplies you’ve collected. We’ve also included improvements to zombie chases and lots of bug fixes to make the app better for you.
Our new Apple Watch app will now stay on display while you’re on a run, so you can check your run progress and supply count at a glance! You’ll also be able to access a list of missions, instead of just the next one, and you’ll see that we’ve added a load of UI and run info improvements.
This update includes general performance and UI improvements, as well as some bug fixes. This means you’ll be getting the most stable version of Zombies, Run!
Finally, we present the entirely non-canonical Ballad of Abel Township Runner Five, just for you:
How does a walker, jogger, glum of boring
Workouts, airdropped in the middle of a
Forgotten spot by Abel Township, by providence
Infested, by zombies
Grow up to be a hero and a Runner?
The fifth-time successor runner without a trainer
Got a lot farther by moving a lot further
By sweating a lot longer
By working with real honour,
By mission end, they placed her in charge of a
Town’s protection
And every day while zombies were tearing people’s hearts out
Away across the land, she struggled and kept her guard up
Outside, she was running to keep the town unparted
The sister was ready to run, fight, become a martyr
Then a madman came, and devastation reigned
Our woman saw humanity drip, dripping down the drain
Put laces on her trainers, headset tight to the brain
And she ran without complain, ignoring the pouring rain
Well, the word got around, they said, “This kid is insane, man”
Bringing back supply collections all ‘cross the hinterland
“New destination: don’t forget the whole kingdom ‘cos
The land is gonna know your name. What’s your name, man?“
Abel Township Runner Five
My name is Abel Township Runner Five
And there’s a thousand miles I haven’t run
But just you wait, just you wait…
The Zombies, Run! book club is entering its second week!
This time, we’re discussing Venturing Forth in our Goodreads group. We’ll be learning how to scout our local area, as well as improving our walking, running, swimming and cycling!
We want to hear your thoughts on the section – so come along and join in!
Haven’t got the book yet? You can still buy the special signed hardback edition from our store, or purchase the paperback from Amazon or any good bookshop!
The Zombies, Run! Book Club is now in session!
For the rest of this week, we’ll be discussing the first section, The Home Front in our Goodreads group. We want to hear what you think so far, and see how you filled out your copy, so head on over to join in.
Haven’t got the book yet? You can still buy the special signed hardback edition from our store, or purchase the paperback from Amazon or any good bookshop!
With the release of our very own Zombies, Run! Book last month, the Township is celebrating with a new Abel Book Club, a.k.a the End of the World Book Club.
Every week you’ll find a new post on each section of the book. We’ll have pictures of how we filled the book in, of the gorgeous art included within, as well as discussions on the Ministry of Recovery’s advice. But, of course, we also want to know what all you Runners 5 out there think!
The book club will be taking place in our GoodReads group, ready to begin reading next week. If you don’t have a GoodReads account, we recommend joining, but you can still read all the posts even if you aren’t registered!
Want to join us by reading along? All you need is a copy of the book! You can purchase a special signed edition hardback from our store, or a paperback copy from Amazon & any good bookshop.
On top of that, we’ll also have interviews with Naomi Alderman, lead writer of the book, and Kascha Sweeney, who provided the illustrations! We want to answer your questions – so Tweet us using the #zrbook hashtag, and we’ll pick out our favourites.
Look at for the first post on November 30th, when we’ll be discussing Home Front, the first section!
It’s been a while since our last community roundup – but don’t think we’ve forgotten about you. We’ve been keeping an eye on the fandom all year, and have loved seeing what Zombies, Run! has inspired. Here’s a smattering of excellent offerings from the community!
It’s been a little over three weeks since we finished our third Virtual Race! With over 5,000 participants, this was our biggest yet! If you wanted to get decked out, but didn’t get the chance to participate, the Fall Virtual Race t-shirts are available in store. We hoped you enjoyed the story, and we sure loved getting pictures of Runners 5 at the finish line – so much, in fact, that we’ve included some of those pictures below.
For other news on what Six to Start has been up to, you can check out our most recent State of the Township post here!
The lovely people who run the fan podcast “Podcast Detected” are looking for new people to join their team so they can get back to releasing new episodes! You can find all the information on their Tumblr if it sounds like something you’d want to get onboard with.
Lizz of Podcast Detected is also looking for someone to take over her “Things my ZR playlist did” Tumblr.
Runner Five Sports Bra Fixation Confirmed by sonybaloney-art
Fix You by muterunner5 – view the rest of the images in this series
As promised, here’s a pick of the pictures people posted on Rofflenet (try saying that ten times fast!).
nlinindoll & David finished the race with their personal bests for 10k!
thedarkgrove finishing up the race with a well deserved cold beverage and the obligatory Curly Wurly
As soon as he finished the Fall race, faadinc was raring for the next one
If you have a picture of you and your medal, don’t forget to head over to Rofflenet to post it!
The perfect counter to everyone dressing up as zombies for Halloween…
Jill’s Runner 6 outfit is fantastic – full of detail, and her trophy head would strike fear into the heart of any zombie unfortunate enough to encounter her.
pekasairroc dressed up as Runner 5 for her Virtual Race 5k, which she completed around Halloween. We just hope those bright colours don’t attract too many zombies…
Last but not least, runner-five5′s Runner 5 knows her way around that axe, if her blood-stained shirt is anything to go by.
There’s plenty more fantastic fanfiction out there from this year, but this is just a taste. Everyone needs a few happy tales to recover from the rollercoaster of Season 5, and what better than some writing from the fandom?
First up, we have the lovely Tables and Chairs by idiopathicsmile from much earlier this year. A cheerful Jack/Eugene on-shot that takes place before they reach Abel Township, and idiopathicsmile captures their voices brilliantly.
Codex by Cana_banana lets us into the stories behind some of the items in the game. There are only two chapters at the moment, but we can’t wait to see what other stories this writer comes up.
Want some sweetness with your Zombies, Run!? Check out Excursion by ZaliaChimera, which has Simon Lauchlan trying to coax some rule breaking out of Janine.
Stay safe out there!
The ZR Shop has everything you need to represent your township with pride, or get something for the special Runner 5 in your life.
And for a limited time, you can save 15% on your entire order when you spend $40 or more! Just enter the promo code ZOMBIES15 at checkout!
We have a huge selection of merchandise available for Abel Runners, including Athletic T-Shirts, Mugs, Hats and Posters. You can even get your very own signed copy of the Zombies, Run! Book and save 15%!
The sale runs until 30th November, so visit the shop soon to avoid missing out!
Runner Dog completed the Zombies, Run Fall 5k with me today. He looks so much cuter with that medal than I do, I can’t help but let him wear it. He earned it, too!
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Our last State of the Township was at the end of 2015 – of course, we’ve introduced plenty of new features since then (like improved Training Plans, ZombieLink Social, and more), not to mention our book, audio drama, and board game, but we haven’t talked about the bigger picture. Most of that is because we’ve been so busy!
So here’s a quick overview of what’s happened with Zombies, Run! and Six to Start since then. We’ve blown way past three million downloads of Zombies, Run!, and we’re still seeing healthy numbers of new Runners 5 every day. We’ve massively improved the reliability of the apps and ZombieLink; we’re seeing far fewer bugs, crashes, and support tickets than ever before.
And as we’ve expanded the Zombies, Run! universe into books and audio dramas and Virtual Races (now with over 13,000 entrants in total!), we’ve continued the story with Season 5, which has been a real blast to write and record.
Having said that, we haven’t been able to do some of things we aimed to, like improving the base builder, implementing walk tracking and upgrading the 5k training app. There are two main reasons why we didn’t hit these targets: staffing changes and needing to devote more time to behind the scenes work.
Firstly, some developers left Six to Start in the past year. These changes took place on good terms (they still come to our games nights!), but they did lead to some slowdown as new developers need time to learn the ropes. The good news on this front is that we have now doubled our development team compared to the end of 2015, which means we can do much more as we move forward.
Secondly, we’ve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes. For example, we spent a lot more time than expected on bringing Zombies, Run! on iOS to Swift 3 so that it can fully support iOS 10. We’ve been doing similar things on Android for Nougat. While the fruits of this labour may not be obvious, the time we’ve spent now will mean a more stable, longer lasting Zombies, Run! in the future.
That behind the scenes work also includes a brand new project that is separate – but related – to Zombies, Run! It’s too early to talk about what that is, but it draws on everything we’ve learned in the past few years and takes it further ahead. Even better, the time we spend on building it will also directly improve Zombies, Run! itself. Intriguing, eh? We’ll have more to announce next year!
With that all said, I can talk about imminent new features for Zombies, Run!, including:
Further down the line, we have plans for a complete mobile-first redesign of ZombieLink, along with some very neat social features.
If there’s a single message I want to give you in this update, it’s this: other apps may come and go, but Zombies, Run! is here to stay. It’s thanks to you that that’s possible: every one of the tens of thousands of Pro Members out there, along with every single person who buys a T-shirt, book, poster, board game, and hoodie.
You make it possible for us to maintain and improve our amazing, beautiful running game for years to come. We weren’t able to do everything we wanted in 2016, but we’ve regrouped and we’re stronger than ever. Bring on 2017.
– Adrian Hon, CEO and Lead Designer at Six to Start
Since we launched over 1800 people have given us their support and this is your last chance to join them. Our total’s now over £93,000, which is almost double our target. That means we’re already going to bring you a game that’s packed with thrilling audio story and full of zombie-escaping action to bring you and your friends together around the table.
But every extra pound we raise lets us devote more time to making this game the absolute best it can be. As players of Zombies, Run! know, when we devote time to our games, great things happen. Backing now also means you’ll get this one-of-a-kind board gaming experience as cheaply as possible – pre-order and retail players won’t get such a great price!
Want to know what the game’s like to play? Check out this fantastic preview from Thomas Deeny at Purple Pawn gaming. Thomas had some lovely comments and really does a fantastic job explaining the feeling of sitting down to play.
That’s not all – we were featured in Shut Up and Sit Down’s gaming news, with Paul Dean saying “This looks like a great adaptation [of Zombies, Run!]”. Thanks, Paul. We heartily agree
Backing the game isn’t just about bringing the world of Zombies, Run! to your tabletop – it’s also a great way to support Six to Start and everything we do. From this board game to the virtual races or our fitness book, we’re working constantly to bring you new, exciting and rewarding experiences that you can share with your friends. We hope you’ll agree that’s worth getting behind.
Zombies, Run! 