Role: Principal Designer
Years: 2016
Projects
Team
Via: Rocksauce Studios

Dead Last

A pixel-art Zombie-Horror game built for the iPhone and IPad that never ends.

Overview

Dead Last: No Escape came about when my Director of Development, Jason Bender, showed me a really addictive gameplay demo he'd come up with. Using the dog and ducks from Nintendo's Duck Hunt, the dog got his day in the sun as ducks swarmed around him. Eventually the sheer number of enemies on screen was too many to handle, but I found myself tapping and tapping, faster and faster, trying to beat my score!

Immediately I saw the vision: a zombie game where you try to stay alive as long as you can, racking up higher and higher scores, and unlocking goodies throughout the adventure. Dead Last was born.

Dead Last gameplay in the school cafeteria: a lone survivor on a table surrounded by a horde of zombies, with kill count and timer along the top. — Fig. 1: The cafeteria, where Anden fights off zombie lunch workers and jocks.

Tap or Die!

Aliens attack! The governments of the world retaliate with nuclear weapons, but destroying the mothership coats Earth in a toxic green mist. Billions die, and within days the dead rise from their graves, an unexpected mix of alien chemicals and Earthbound bacteria.

Dead Last had three main characters, each with their own weapons and levels. Everyone starts with Anden Sureshot, a 12 year old boy armed with nothing but his slingshot and stale tater tots. Sally Sharkslayer, a surfer caught on the beach, fights with the trusty trident she wears for a hand. Agent Ross, a covert government agent, takes on aliens, doctors and soldiers back from the dead.

Dead Last gameplay on the beach: a white-haired survivor on a towel ringed by purple zombies and muscle-bound beach zombies. — Fig. 2: Sally Sharkslayer on the beach.

Four color character illustrations: a boy with a slingshot, a zombie lunch lady, a special agent with a pistol and a zombie scientist in a lab coat. — Fig. 3: The cast, from Anden to the zombie lunch lady.

Pixel-art sprites of an agent, a boy, a zombie soldier and a gold skull coin on a flat gray ground. — Fig. 4: The pixel-art characters and the skull coin.

Free to play, fair to play

Freemium was our model, but I wanted nothing locked entirely behind a paywall. You could buy upgrades, levels and characters, or play long enough to earn them. Either way we won: money in hand, or more time in the app and more word of mouth.

You earn tons of badges for total zombie kills and skill runs, like finishing without power-ups. Mid-game, an alien ship swoops in. Destroy it in time and you're granted power-ups like multi-shot and machine gun.

A grid of round achievement badges beside gameplay against gray aliens on grass, under the line 'Thousands of enemies. Tons of achievements.' — Fig. 5: Badges for kills and skill runs, and the aliens.