Zombie Melee was a co-op multiplayer top-down shooter prototype I worked on over a decade ago. It never got to be a full game release, and remained more of a playground for ideas and learning — especially around networking, gameplay and design.
The inspiration
As a kid, I was obsessed with Zombies Ate My Neighbors. The goofy weapons, spooky suburban levels, and the thrill of trying to save all the neighbors before they were killed. I always thought, what if this was an co-op over the internet?
The idea
The idea was simple: grab some friends (or strangers), pick your favorite device (PC, Mac, Android), and fight off waves of cartoonishly animated zombies together. The world is a dark and forested, with eerie graveyards and an overrun town at the center. You rescue survivors, level up, and collect goofy weapons to blast your way forward.
It never got to a fully polished state, but it had a certain charm — and it taught me a ton.
Stuff I did
- Gameplay Design & Animation Systems: I built a basic animation system for players and zombies, including melee and shooting attacks, aiming logic, and hit detection.
- Custom Multiplayer Backend: I used SmartFox Server to handle matchmaking and game logic. It was my first real experience writing custom server-side logic to support things like player joins, XP tracking, and item unlocks.
- Cross-Platform Play: One of my goals was to make the game run across PC, Android, and eventually iOS. Unity 3.x made this sort of feasible at the time, and it was fun (and frustrating) trying to keep it working.
- Level Design & Worldbuilding: I used the Valve Hammer Editor and Softimage (RIP) to model environments and characters, and built a little spooky world full of abandoned shacks, foggy woods, and cursed graveyards.