IT SOUNDS like every gamer's ultimate fantasy: a real-life, video-game style adventure in a medical research lab overrun with zombies.

Come Halloween, October 31, thousands of Melbourne fans will be able to live the dream, shooting actors playing the living dead in a building on the city's outskirts, which will be converted to a giant video game ''set''.

Zombie masters (rear, from left) Ben Powell, Drew Hobbs and David Leadbetter watch with satisfaction as their grisly minions assail the car of Sunday Age photographer Craig Sillitoe. Credit:Craig Sillitoe

Patient-0 is the creation of three friends with backgrounds in filmmaking and IT, who say they are treating the project like a film shoot. ''We will have a cast, location, set directing, crew, camera technology,'' said David Leadbetter, a freelance television and film producer. Staging an event of this size does not come cheap, and while entry tickets cost $125, there is also the cost of building the set, hiring actors, hair and make-up to consider. Through a crowd-funding platform, Pozible, the group has raised nearly $200,000, an Australian record. Almost 2000 tickets for Patient-0 have been sold, including one gamer coming from Phoenix, Arizona.

The game will run for 10 hours a day, and if it's a success, the group plans to take the event on tour across Australia. ''People have been saying, 'I have waited my whole life for this, thank you','' said Leadbetter. ''We are offering the gaming community and horror genre community something they have been thinking about for a long time.''