As you’ve probably noticed, most zombie survival games take a serious approach to making you survive the undead apocalypse.
But by striking a different tone — and a slightly different viewpoint — the third-person single-player / co-op Welcome To ParadiZe (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC) manages to put a different spin on the genre. Not a better one; not a worse one; but one that’s certainly different, which, in turn, makes it rather fun.
While we’ve had tons of zombie stories set in modern times (The Walking Dead), as well as in the future (Dead Space), the past remains a largely untapped setting for stories of the undead. Or at least it did until Raphaël Guiton, Jean-Baptiste Lullien, and Nicolas Raoult expanded their undead board game Zombicide to include a medieval fantasy realm spin-off version called Black Plague.
But for people who prefer to read about the living impaired, instead of playing with them, writer C.L. Werner has you covered. Hopefully with a big sword.
In the following email interview, Werner discusses Zombicide: Black Plague: Isle Of The Undead (paperback, Kindle), the sequel to his previous horror-infused epic fantasy tale, Age Of The Undead.
Like the survival board game Zombicide that it’s connected to, Josh Reynold’s novel Zombicide: All Or Nothing (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) was inspired in part by some iconic zombie movies.
But as Reynolds explains in the following email interview, it was also inspired by an iconic movie that’s not about the living impaired.
To be a good writer, it helps to have a grasp on human nature. Which bodes well for Malcolm Devlin’s weird fiction zombie novella And Then I Woke Up (paperback, Kindle). Though written before the current Covid-19 pandemic, in the following email interiew, Devlin explains how his story wound up being sadly prescient when it came to people’s reactions.
One of the joys of being a kid who reads is tearing through one of those Chose Your Own Adventure books. But like with comics, cartoons, and video games, there’s no reason you have to put those books aside just because you’re not a kid any more. You just have to read ones made for adults. Ones like Max Brallier’s Highway To Hell (paperback, digital), the spiritual sequel to his similarly multiple choice tome Can YOU Survive The Zombie Apocalypse? Though in talking to Brallier about his new book, he admitted that no, it’s not about you trying to survive a zombie apocalypse because you have AC/DC tickets.