- Role
- Audio Editor, Copywriting, Marketing
- Year
- 2016
- Client
- Agency, Gaming
- Industry
- Entertainment, Horror, Video Games
- Team
- Skills
Dead Last: No Escape iOS Game
A pixel-art Zombie-Horror game built for the iPhone and IPad that never ends.
Game Intro
Of course the game intro isn't where we started, but it's a great way to kick-off a case study! Dead Last: No Escape came about when my Director of Development, Jason Bender, showed me a really addictive gameplay demo that he had 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 would be too many too 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 the user tried to stay alive as long as they could, racking up higher and higher scores, and unlocking goodies throughout the adventure. Dead Last was born.
UX Design
Great gameplay only gets you so far, right? There's a lot of UX and UI that goes into making a game that's actually usable. I set-out to come up with a simple explanation of how the various game aspects could work well together.
Freemium was our model, but I wanted nothing to be locked entirely behind a paywall. Users could either buy upgrades, levels and characters or they could play the game to eventually earn enough to purchase those things. Either way, we were happy with the results - money in hand or growing the time-on-app for advertisements/word of mouth.
Tap or Die!
Aliens attack! The governments of the world retaliate with their nuclear armaments, but, destroying the mothership leads to Earth being coated in a toxic green mist. Billions of humans died, but within days, the dead rose from their grave, the by-product of an unexpected interaction of the alien chemicals mixing with Earthbound bacteria.
Dead Last featured three main characters, each with their own weapons and levels, distinctive to the part they played in the larger story. All users were given access to the main character, Anden Sureshot, a 12 year old boy who is forced into his school's cafeteria to battle hordes of zombie lunch workers and jocks, armed with nothing but his slingshot and stale tater tots.
Two unlockable characters filled out the game, available for purchase directly or through earned in-game currency. Sally Sharkslayer, a surfer who was caught unawares on the beach, destroying the undead with the trusty trident she wore for a hand after a fateful shark attack. Then there was Agent Ross, a member of a covert government agency, caught at the crash landing of an alien ship, destroying throngs of non-stop aliens, doctors and soldiers back from the dead.
Gamers could earn tons of badges, based on how many total zombies they had killed or skill-runs like not using power-ups or POWS. During the gameplay, an incoming alien ship swoops into the scene. Destroy the ship in time and be granted power-ups such as multi-shot, machine-gun, and more.