The Zombie Apocalypse is Upon Us!

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Today on PSN a shambling mass of rotting corpses have appeared and are threatening the safety of the human race on Earth. You can do your part to fight back the zombie hordes in our new game, Zombie Apocalypse, developed by Nihilistic Software and published by Konami. For $9.99 you’ll shoot loads of zombies with one to four players fighting cooperatively in an online enabled zombie kill fest.

When Nihilistic first sat down and thought about creating a downloadable title, we immediately wanted to do it in the horror genre. We’ve got a lot of zombie and horror fans here. Not to mention some hardcore fans of old-school shooters. Combining the two felt logical and Zombie Apocalypse was born.

Zombie Apocalypse 1

Thematic inspiration was drawn primarily from classic zombie films of the 70s and 80s. Two films in particular are ZOMBIE (aka Zombi 2) by Lucio Fulci, and Nightmare City by Umberto Lenzi. The first level in Zombie Apocalypse is set in an airport which is a homage to Nightmare City. If you haven’t heard of either of these films and don’t mind some bad acting they are both incredible zombie gore fests. They are definitely not for the squeamish!

The game design was inspired primarily by two old-school shooters. The first was Robotron, a classic and innovator in the dual-stick shooter genre. In fact, the internal codename for Zombie Apocalypse during development was “Zombitron”. At the beginning of Zombie Apocalypse’s development, we held an internal Robotron tournament to get prepared. The second was gamer favorite Smash TV. We built upon the gore and arena combat of Smash TV by adding environmental hazards into our arenas that will tear zombies to shreds, blow them up, or light them on fire when you blast zombies into them.

Zombie Apocalypse 2


Zombie Apocalypse is all about survival and scoring big. When playing with friends either on the same console or online, the team is working toward a shared score. So to do well and hit the top of the leaderboards you’ve got to work together. Here are three PlayStation Blog-exclusive tips for hitting as high of a score as possible, applicable to either single or multiplayer:

  • The survivor characters all have chainsaws that you can pull out at any time. Use the chainsaw to grapple by pressing and holding the L1 button to score an instant kill on a zombie and to increase your score multiplier by three. Just be careful to not use the attack in the middle of a group of zombies, as it leaves you vulnerable for a moment as it ends. Try to lead a lone zombie away from the group then chainsaw them in half.
  • Make use of the environmental hazards. For example, blast zombies with your shotgun into the wood chipper in the Logging Camp level. Each hazard kill gives you an additional 5,000 points on top of the points you would have scored otherwise.
  • Use the zombie bait grenade not just to kill a bunch of zombies but to lead them to environmental hazards to score more points. In the Graveyard level you can throw the bait into the open grave and then shoot zombies directly into it to put them back to rest and get your hazard bonus.

If you reach the point where you think you can easily handle a Zombie Apocalypse and want an even bigger challenge be sure to unlock Hardcore Mode, one of our six unlockable game modes. Hardcore Mode restricts each survivor to starting with just one life and no extra lives are granted. That means you’ve only got one chance to try to score big on the special Hardcore Mode leaderboard. To unlock Hardcore Mode, complete seven consecutive days (missions) in the normal game mode without dying. Additional unlockable modes include Blackout Mode, where all the lights turn off except for one small light per player, and 7 Days of Hell Mode, where the survivors are tasked to survive through a week of sepia toned zombie mayhem.

Zombie Apocalypse Queen Zombie Apocalypse Kamikaze

So hit the store later today and get Zombie Apocalypse for PS3! But we are not just developers — we’re givers too! So to celebrate the launch of Zombie Apocalypse we will be giving away 25 codes for the game on the PlayStation Twitter feed. But make sure you’ve read this post, as there might be little pop quiz via Twitter! So keep your eyes peeled to Twitter later today after our PlayStation Store Update goes live!

Hope to see you online fighting back the zombie invasion with me!

Zombie Apocalypse 4

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234 Comments

16 Author Replies

  • Is there a way to check the reply order on Twitter?

  • oh man. you have to do it by twitter? i don’t have a twitter account…

  • I tried posting and it said the page did not exsist

  • P.S- Thank you very much Mark Cooke

  • I won, yay. Thank you.

  • @139 Not everyone goes there you know, i don’t know anyone that use it either so sorry for being so ignorant.

  • For those asking if you can see who replied in what order:
    Only they can see replies, and in what order they came. They don’t show up for public viewing. If you won, I would imagine they will probably @reply to you, so you’ll get the code on your twitter home page for only you to see.

    For those complaining that their link is broken:
    Look, it’s not their fault you guys don’t know what you’re doing. That wasn’t a link for you to click to reply to them – it was a phrase. They were saying to reply to them with the answer by @replying, in other words, posting @SonyPlayStation with your answer on your twitter home page – this sends a reply to them directly.

  • I won! Whoo hoo! I never win anything! :D Good luck to everyone else! I hope you win

  • You know you won by getting a direct message from them on twitter. I WON!!!! THANKS PSN AND Nihilistic Software / Konami. You guys are awesome, going to go get zombified now!!! <3

  • To those that won, how did you find out you won? :o

  • thats ridiculous. why they put the link up for the blog anyway. Pretty sure that through people off.

  • same thing happened to me i tried on twitter and it said page did not exist so i posted answer here.

  • man, :( i didnt win, too bad.

  • Yeah, curious also how you know you won. :)

  • I won! I deserve it too. I refreshed the twitter page for 2 hours and already had @SonyPlayStation typed. I bet I was first. Thank you!

  • do they reply by email i have yet to find out if i won

  • If you win they send you a direct message on twitter.

  • i got a direct message on twitter saying ” congrats! your code is: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX”

  • I’ve yet to receive any sort of confirmation, and I had my twitter response in a good 30 seconds before my #2 answer post on here. I’ll be fairly shocked if I didn’t get my entry in on time.

    Oh well, at least there’s a demo.

  • There’s no way I didn’t win. I answered as soon as it went up!

    *tries to wait patiently for Direct Message on Twitter*

  • Is it because I typed “chainsaws” plural? Obviously I was speaking of them ALL having one and thus using the plural form. Oh well…

  • Well the really suck hard, have been refreshing the damn twitter page for about an hour and i get shafted because i don’t know how it worked.. wow so disappointed

  • forget it, i did this too, in twitter there was “1 minute ago” when i wrote the reply to them. if i press home button, then my tweet was wrote 7 minutes later …

  • Thanks again! I won! Thanks to PSN, PSblog, Nihilist and Konami! Going to go get zombiefied now!! See yall on there!

  • Mhh Unlucky im not one of the 25 People wo get One! Can someone of the 25 winnershare this Game with me?

  • Well, that sucks. I replied the correct way no more than 1 minute after their post with the question, and I didn’t get a code. :(

  • are they at least gonna post the winners?

  • check out twitter/sonyplaystation

  • It sure got quiet in here quickly.

  • oh well. i bought it. anyone wanna play this with me?

  • I got a code too!! See you online!!
    Thanks PS, Nihilistic!

  • Ugh! That was so disappointing! I have been watching Twitter for 4 hours ready for it. I replied in less than one minute – only to realize my tweets were “protected” so my reply didn’t go anywhere …. So frustrating! At least there is a demo to try out …

  • WTB Starcraft: Ghost PST

    Although this game looks fun and I’ll be picking it up, I will always remember your studio for SC: Ghost. And the fact you guys are from my hometown.

    Sniff, I miss Marin.

  • Well if the winners aren’t going to be posted could someone over there at least let me know how badly I lost by telling me what # my reply was? I’m stupified about not winning! ARG!

  • Nice!!!

  • Anybody having trouble downloading the full game? I am downloading the demo ok but if I try 2 download the full game it says it’s activating and all of a sudden it up to 100 % in about 1 second and it says it downloaded,but it is not.it is still downlooading rhe demo like it should be slow but downloading but with the full game it does not. What’s up with that? A bug with downloading the full game? Any answers would be appreciated.i want to play online and kill zombies with. Psn gamers.

  • Yea they took my 10 dollars too…..

  • it keeps freezing my ps3

  • @187 the unlock for the game is 6k. When you DL the demo it’s actually the full game, but to be able to play all of it, you need to DL the 6k unlock.

  • I just read about this today in my brothers PlayStation magazine, and knew that I wanted it. After reading this blog post, I want it even more, and am for sure buying it when I get paid. Sounds AWESOME.

  • Not worth owning unless it’s on a disc.

    Why can’t Sony do a PSN compilation on Blu-Ray?

  • like befear said the game keeps freezing when i search for online game or custom match

  • Same here! Freezing that causes me to reset!! I started a thread in the Forums about it.

  • freezing here too.
    this is BAD.
    game looks like FUN but we can’t get through 5 days without a freeze!

  • Overload I’ll try 2 morrow 2 download the full game since I am downloading the demo I’ll let u know what’s up.Thanks 4 ur imput hope 2 fight some zombies with every one

  • Burn Zombie Burn was a great PSN Exclusive. I play it every few day’s it great. I will be sure to get this one! $9.99 is a steal!

    Will there be any ONLINE MultiPlayer for this game?

    It’s a must, Burn Zombie Burn would be even better if it had 4 player MP.

    But if this game has it. It will be great!

    Thanks for the Update!

    -xDRx

  • Well, No answer to my question?

    No thank you then!

  • Heads up Nihilistic, your online mode is broken. Several lockups while looking for games and playing games. Patch, please. Back to the drawing board!

  • Damn this game looks awesome, it reminds me of Saints row 2, Burn Zombie Burn, and a bunch of other games.

    I wanna get this game, and im wandering, can i play splitscreen with my brother online with other players, like Resistance 2 where if you have two controllers you can both play online.

    Is it possible, if it is im buying this right away.

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