A few months ago we shared the story of a team of developers and an author creating a post-apocalyptic game for mobile phones that used your running efforts as a main component of the adventure. The developers utilized Kickstarter to raise over $72k in funds to create the game Zombies, Run!

The team didn’t waste any time and quickly developed the game and pushed it out to the itunes app store. It’s currently available for $7.99 but I’ve seen them drop the price to under $4 a couple of times. I was lucky enough to buy it during one of these sales and recently took the app out for a spin.

Initial Thoughts

The game wastes no time getting you right into the mix of things. I don’t want to ruin the experience by giving away too much but within a couple minutes of starting the story and your run you’ll be in the middle of action. This is great because I feel the likelihood of people continuing to use such a game/app really depends on how much it engages with you. Unfortunately after such a quick start, I didn’t feel that the app continued to do a great job of keeping you involved.

After hearing the initial portion of the story and escaping a few zombie chases I found myself running for long distances with nothing from the App. Zombies, Run! does include the ability to listen to music through the app but unfortunately for me it just calls your local playlists. I prefer to listen to Pandora or other online radio services while running so that the music I hear is random and this didn’t combine well with the app as the music would distract away from the experience. I quickly ran “silently” and found myself wondering too often when the game/app would prompt me with something while I was out on an hour long run.

In Game Items

One of the reasons to get out and run from Zombies is to collect items. While running, the app will periodically notify you that you’ve collected a new item. It may be a pair of batteries, a book, some special item, etc. But besides collecting items I didn’t find too much to do with them but view them in my supply list. I understand it’s supposed to help build up the “town” that I’m working to protect but it would be great if each of the items had their own unique story or were something I could use to barter with to receive other benefits.

Maybe these will come more into play as I continue to utilize the app. I’ll be sure to post an update if I discover anything else in the future.

Workout Results

Besides my infatuation with Zombies, I was looking forward to this app because I hoped the incentive of “running from zombies” would push me harder in the middle of workouts. Zombies, Run! does an excellent job at pushing me. I’m not sure of their algorithm for determining when new zombies should be closing in on you but it seemed to me that they were almost always approaching as I started to slow down a bit. Instead of slowing my run down when I got tired, I instead heard the the sound of zombies and this pushed me to run harder and faster. Even if it was just because of fake zombie sounds, it did help me push myself.

Don't Wait to See if the zombie chasing you is friendly.... zombies are not your friends!

I haven’t yet “failed” to escape a zombie chase but I am curious as to how that impacts the game and the storyline. I’ve been told that zombie’s aren’t friendly…

Conclusion

Overall, I think this app is interesting and fun to use. I will admit that I won’t be using it as often as I hoped as my running setup doesn’t exactly fit for use with this app for everyday use.

One of the great things about mobile apps is that they can be updated and improved and easily distributed to buyers. I hope that the team behind Zombies, Run! utilizes this option and continues to improve on what is a good start of an app to help people enjoy a storyline while exercising.