Zombie Evac

I recently finished a 5k obstacle course with a friend of mine, except there was a twist. This was a zombie evacuation course. I'd heard, from my friend Ankur (whose excellent blog is well worth checking out), that it is an exciting glorified game of tag. This is essentially true: you have three lives, which are taken whenever a zombie snatches away a cord from your belt. But this was also such an under-sell! It was fantastic, really, and I think it was so good because of they got some critical elements of game design right, which I'll try to outline here:

Actors

The zombies did just the most brilliant job acting their parts. With gory make up and loose, ripped clothing, they shuffled, moaning, aimlessly. When approached they would usually scream and chase the runner, but sometimes they just sniffed, as if smelling the fresh meat available and were roused only to chase the second or third to pass them. This element of unpredictability kept the adrenaline high.

Beyond this, though, what is truly wonderful about having real, human actors, in any activity like this, is the ability to interact with them in unstructured ways. Actual skirmishes, with people actually responding to your attempts to dodge by them, make the experience dynamic and thrilling, but on some level they also produce more complex opportunities than a game of tag. The first such opportunity was presented to us when a soldier suggested we smear ourselves with zombie blood. Slopping the rich, red goo over my arms, face, and chest I continued onwards to find three zombies in a densely wooded grove. Changing tactic I groaned an shuffled forwards towards them. The first ignored me. The second ambled towards me without much interest. The third seemed suspicious and I chose this moment to break forward and speed clear. In my zeal I didn't see the fourth member of their party lying prone (with an injured leg) in the leaves ahead, and he snatched up at me removing my first tag and lifeline. Damn, it so nearly worked! This set-up gave me a sense of agency - it was up to me to decide how to play this game, and after playing it one way you might wonder what would have happened if you made a different choice. Even now, I wonder if maybe I should have kept up the pretense all the way.

But this was a structured plan, essentially handed to the player by the organiser. That's fine, but it doesn't necessarily make it feel like it's your story. Later on, though, I found another opportunity. I had dashed through a medical camp, over a fallen tree, and around a zombie in a tight space. My friend and team-mate, running just behind me now found himself alone trapped between the fallen tree and the zombie; in these one-on-one encounters it's very difficult to get past. Seeing Spencer (my friend) in peril, the zombie playing a cat-and-mouse game, Spencer trying to spot an opening, I turned back, clapped my hands loudly and yelled "HEY. HEY!!!". My diversion worked, the zombie spun to look at me, and Spencer found the instant he needed to dash past. Responding to my loud noises, though, both this zombie, and the three ahead made a bee-line for me, and I found myself with no option but to just sprint and hope. Eventually sliding way of course through the wet mud I got away, and the tactic had paid off. What a rush! I had had a genuine, dynamic, evolving interaction with the other actors in the game. This is unstructured play.

Besides the tactics of these skirmishes, however, the designers had used the actors to communicate with the runners in a very different way. The screaming, the unpredictability, the chasing, these are all aspects of the thrill, but there was also an effort to communicate horror. About half way through the course we found ourselves evading zombies dressed as doctors and police officers. These are people that represent the support-system, the foundation, of our society and the community in which we seek shelter. This choice of dress is a hint that maybe the community to which we flee is no longer there - perhaps there is no salvation to be had. These are the creeping thoughts of horror. Further on, we found ourselves confronted with a zombie-child. A child is not difficult to evade, and so adds no special thrill or fear. But the child doesn't serve that purpose. There can be, I suspect, no horror deeper in the mind of a parent, than the thought of losing one's own child. For other, the idea of an evil-child is somehow intrinsically creepy (for example the exorcist).

Live actors make a huge contribution to this kind of game, but to establish the mechanics of the game, the thrill, the chase, and the tactics, they needed the help of some mischievously designed obstacles...

Obstacles

While there were plenty of the standard fare (climb over this wall, crawl under this netting, etc.) the obstacles were so well executed because the designers had noticed that it is not the obstacles themselves that are important, per se, but the scenarios that are created by the interaction between the zombies and the obstacles.

This was made dramatically clear to me when at a pathway, walled with high metal fences, we encountered a zombie ambling ahead. The path split ahead and the zombie, having not yet noticed us, was shuffling away from us down the left tine of the fork. Spotting the opportunity I beckoned the nearby runners and we, five of us, all sprinted easily past to the right. Finding a fenced off dead-end I realised the peril I had caused for all of us. So it hit me, here, that the designers had likely instructed the zombie-actor to lay this trap, but it didn't jar with the authenticity of the moment which seemed just as if a zombie had been wandering aimlessly.

Another trap laid by the designers used a clearly visible zombie to focus our attention so that we found we were easily ambushed by another hiding zombie before we got there. On other occasions we saw the zombie and, before charging in, carefully survey the landscape and obstacles, prudently planning our path. After settling on a route we spring forward, dash past the zombie, over the obstacle, and, thinking ourselves free-and-clear find that we are charging head first into more zombies with too much momentum to stop.

Even when we could see the zombies  hiding in coffins and behind trees before we were spotted, the designer had now posed to us a question: do we sneak or do we run? In other words, the designer had presented a meaningful choice and thereby given us a sense of agency. This is so important in the design of any game, the guys over at extra credits produce a whole episode on it.

But even actors and obstacles, carefully collaborating can produce only a series of well-crafted skirmishes. Exciting though these may be in isolation they do not, alone, complete the picture...

Pacing

Ostensibly being evacuated to a safe zone, the designers also got right this critical, yet easily overlooked, piece of the puzzle: pacing. The course is not just a series of skirmishes with zombies and obstacles to overcome. The course represents a narrative of exodus from a horror which threatens to trap you, the runner, and this cannot be achieved with tightly packed cheap thrills. A zombie-girl in onesie pajamas screaming into your face might well get the heart racing, but it needs to happen at the right time. Much of the course was in the forest, so when not traversing an obstacle we  found ourselves attentively scanning our surroundings for any zombies hiding behind trees or in ditches. This meant that the intensity of the experience tended to fluctuate over short periods of time.

As the course progressed the obstacles got more challenging (The penultimate obstacle required dashing through a small building with multiple rooms full of zombies, with no way around, and runners funneled through the doorways). The obstacles were also closer together towards the end, so while you tried to conserve your sprinting legs you had to sprint more while also making calculated decisions about how far to run past each zombie before slowing down to catch your breath. This meant that as the course progressed the frequency and intensity of the thrills increased, climaxing in a mad dash past six or seven zombies to crawl under a metal grill and into the safety of the quarantine zone.

This pacing feels very close to that described, again, by extra credits.

In Summary

The course was great. While the torrential rain of the previous night helped intensify the experience by robbing us of even our physical stability, what made the experience such an incredible success was that the designers got both the short-term and the long-term design feeling right. The tactical skirmishes were well thought-out, the actors were convincing, and the course got more intense as we found ourselves beginning to get tired and weaken. So the course was exciting and thrilling, but it also believably placed us into a narrative of an increasingly desperate exodus. If you think you might like to try it for yourself, why don't you check out their website.