Why do aliens always end up in the USA? Why does Godzilla only attack metropolises? And why do zombie apocalypses never take place in my city? That's changing now, because Infection Free Zone, a survival game, is appearing in early access that uses real-world data from OpenStreetMap. This way you can bring the brain eaters to your own front door and of course you can also simulate emergency situation Z in your own backyard. Because of course we all have a secret plan in our drawer about what we would do in the event of a zombie apocalypse. You too?
Of course we could also set up our headquarters for the apocalypse in Tokyo, New York or London, after all the entire world is open to us. If we believe zombie films, that would be a really bad idea on the one hand and boring as hell on the other. Nobody wants to see Times Square and Westminster Abbey again. We would rather try our luck in Germany.
10:19
Infection Free Zone | PREVIEW | My neighbor, the zombie
The Theresienwiese in Munich is overrun by thousands of bums. Well, that happens once a year even without an apocalypse, so we don't need it digitally too. The Berghain in Berlin is known as the toughest door in the world, which can also withstand zombie attacks. Nevertheless, there are figures floating around inside who are allergic to sunlight and twitch wildly around. So I'd rather go to Hamburg. Great freedom sounds tempting for a new beginning. But the dead mile is quite difficult, especially at night. So we don't want to rest in peace here either.
Our headquarters should survive the apocalypse. There should be a bright glimmer of hope on the horizon. And above all: it should be an impregnable fortress. So we just build it into an actual impregnable fortress. More precisely: the Veste Coburg in Upper Franconia on the border with Thuringia. This is a medieval castle complex that has never been taken in battle in its thousand-year history. There is a park around it where we can find a lot of wood and we can go into the nearby town to loot it.
Incidentally, the correct topography is not adopted, otherwise the castle would also be on a mountain. So the world in Infection Free Zone is completely flat. However, the game correctly recognizes the fortifications and even labels them as medieval castle walls. It's amazing how well the game takes on the boundaries of buildings. But of course they don't look like they do in real life. This is best seen in our “medieval castle”, which consists of prefabricated buildings and warehouses.
Source: PC Games Later in the game we can also get broken down cars back on track and race around in the old carts. Of course, we travel much faster on roads than cross-country. The map data provided by OpenStreetMap also correctly draws real-world streets. The cars' route-finding AI then prefers to use roads to get to their destination. Once there, the carts' route-finding process starts to stutter a little. Like a dog that spins around like a helicopter before sitting down, the cars like to drive in circles for a few laps before reaching their destination. The developers still have to work on that.
But before we race around in our new old sleigh, we first have to build our base. This is where the first special feature of Infection Free Zone comes into play. As a rule, we don't build completely new buildings like in other building games. We have to use existing houses and assign them to new tasks. So of course our settlement needs accommodation first. Since survivors of an apocalypse are more frugal and there are generally not many people left, it is enough to just take over parts of buildings. This is particularly advantageous in large cities, as we don't want to renovate an entire high-rise building for just 20 people.
After all, we have other things to do too. We have to take care of the food supply, for example. To do this, we are using another building as a soup kitchen and planting fields as soon as we have found seeds for grains and vegetables. Later we will convert one building into a hospital and another into a warehouse.
In order to have enough raw materials for the construction work, we send our survivors to chop wood and have them loot metal from wrecked cars and street lamps. If we have enough time, we can even demolish entire houses and obtain bricks in addition to wood and metal. We need them, among other things, for our defense systems and walls. We are also allowed to build a few buildings from scratch, such as the radio tower, which we use to alert other survivors to our settlement or simply to communicate with our squads.
In addition to expanding our safe zone, in the game we are mainly busy sending small task forces around the map and looting everything that is not on the tree by the count of three. Infection Free Zone analyzes the map provided and categorizes commercial and residential buildings so that, for example, you can find food in real supermarkets in the game. We find gasoline in a car repair shop and weapons and ammunition in police stations. And we need all of that, because when it gets dark, we have to be prepared!
next page next page