'The Drowning" introduces a new kind of zombie

Mike Snider, USA TODAY | USATODAY

There's a new take on zombie apocalypse in the works.

A new first-person shooter game The Drowning posits players into the aftermath of a mysterious catastrophe that includes massive oil spills. Crawling from the muck are humans transformed into killing machines.

"The team wanted non-human enemies that players could mow-down in the hundreds," says Ben Cousins, general manager of Stockholm, Sweden-based studio Scattered Entertainment. "The typical George Romero-inspired zombie felt really overdone to us, so a couple of guys on our team started brainstorming around creepy Stephen King/HP Lovecraft-inspired concepts and we tied it in to people's fears of natural disasters."

The free-to-play 3-D shooter is being designed for mobile devices and due in early 2013. Working on the game are developers whose past experience includes Battlefield, Halo and Far Cry.

The design team's goal with The Drowning is to bring an immersive PC and console-quality experience to the iPad and iPhone, says Cousins, who heads parent company DeNA's European studios. He previously helped create the free-to-play Battlefield games while at Electronic Arts/DICE. "The team wanted to blend two very distinct genres – the rapid game loop, simple controls and the free-to-play business model of mobile games, with the high-end graphics, serious tone, and incredible graphics of console and PC first-person shooters," he says. "Think Blood Brothers meets Resident Evil 4."

Cousins promises a new take on mobile gameplay. "We believe that the 'virtual stick' system used by most mobile first-person shooter games is a dead-end," he says. "The first thing we did was prototype ideas around controlling a FPS on a touch screen with one hand, and using typical gestures like taps and swipes. We've created a system that uses taps to shoot and move, and swipes to look. It's very intuitive and easy to learn but it also rewards patience and skill."

For more on the game, check out the video below and visit the official web site.