Join our discord!

Zombie Net

Zombie Net is a game where you catch zombies, turn them back into humans and get their help fighting off the hordes.

The Creation

We made Zombie Net for the GDS 48 hour game jam hosted by the Game Dev Society at the University of Canterbury. We chose to use the Godot engine for this game as we do most of our projects.

The theme for the jam was 'One of Us'. We felt this was a tricky theme for a 48hr game jam, since it's quite deep and can be a little ambiguous. However Marcel managed to come up with the idea for zombie net while making dinner the night of the theme reveal. The original idea was simple, you use the net to catch a zombie and you get rewarded with another net throwing guy. Your goal was simply to catch as many zombies as you could within a timeframe, very different from the Zombie Net we know now. The next day we started prototyping and hunting for assets. Zombie Net started to take shape and by the end of the night we finished the prototype.

The Evolution

The basic version we built on day 1 lacked entertainment and progression. The basic mechanics were fun but we needed something to  keep players engaged. So on day 2 we decided to add the attacking guys and big zombies. Instead of getting rewarded with a new net thrower when you catch a zombie, a guy would spawn that would run over to the big zombies and kill them, sacrificing himself for the greater good.  Every night more and more big zombies would spawn and you'd need to catch more zombies to survive.

Now we had some more fun in the game, but it still lacked some progression, after 1 round of playing you've seen the whole game. We also needed to find a way to bring back the ability to get more net thrower guys. Our solution was the upgrade shop, where you could buy some upgrades to make it through more nights and also upgrade your zombie catching abilities. 

The Result

We loved making Zombie Net and that is what mattered to us the most. At the time of writing this post we've had 85 plays! Which makes it our most most played game to date, on only it's first 2 days after launch. We felt like our execution of the theme was good, and Zombie Net is a fun game that you can spend a good 20 minutes playing. We're really happy with the way it turned out and we'd like to thank each and everyone of you that has played it, and for those of you reading this post.

Since launch we've also released version 1.1, which balances the progression curve a little and added in some performance optimizations.

Thank you all <3

Marcel and Kenan

Join our discord!

acidratgames.com