Space Pirates and Zombies 2 is the sequel to MinMax Games’ fun little top-down space exploration game. The follow-up adds, amongst other things, a fancy new third-person combat viewpoint, and a Strategic Starmap upon which the game’s randomly generated story plays out.
It’s also, obviously, got lots of zombies in it. Spaceship flying zombies, which are even more dangerous than the fast-running kind. Here’s a new pre-alpha trailer with one such undead infestation in process.
“Clever viewers can also make out the new Strategic Starmap feature in the course of the video,” say the developers. “Rich and detailed enough to be a game on its own, the Strategic Starmap is where five factions battle for control of the galaxy. Players and AI captains alike can join factions, fight for territories, and take up arms against the zombie menace.”
The full game will contain 200 AI captains competing for survival alongside the player, each of which will join on of the game’s five different factions, either aiding you or trying to take you down. They’ll be up against bandits, unsavoury types just out for themselves, and a zombie threat that will gradually swarm across the galaxy.
“For SPAZ 2 the real major interaction is Captain to Captain,” explains MinMax. “That is why there are 200 of them and they each have a unique personality and face and can do everything you can do. There are rarely heroes in a zombie movie, just bands of survivors, who usually end up having to turn on each other. You are meant to get to know at least some of them, love them, hate them and feel bad or good when you see them as a zombie. So Captains are the Characters we get to know.”
Developers Andrew Hume and Richard Clifford, who together make up MinMax Games, are very open with their fans during development, and you can keep an eye on their progress on the game’s Steam community page.
Space Pirates and Zombies 2 looks like a snazzier, deeper version of MinMax’s original concept. That’s enough to get me interested. It’s set for release in the first quarter of 2015.