Naomi returns to the blog to talk about some changes that have been made to the player’s interaction with the story in Zombies, Run! 3.

I’m really so excited to be starting to let Season 3 of Zombies, Run! loose on our audience. It’s been months in the planning – we started talking about our plot arcs and returning characters back in October 2013 – and we’ve got some fantastic surprises coming up, both in plot and in the guest writers we’ve managed to snag for this season.

One thing we’ve wanted to do for ages was to introduce a bit of *choice* into the game for players. I know we’ve already got the base builder, and many of our Runner Fives have made amazing and beautiful Abel Townships. I thought it’d be fun to extend this kind of choice just a little bit, and give Runner Five a couple of options about what they’re actually going to do during the game. It’s this kind of thing that makes games-writing so dynamic and engaging.

So, once or twice this season, you’ll be asked to make a decision. We had to think carefully about how to do this – for one thing, you don’t want to be having to stop and press a button while running! And it’s been a design principle from the beginning that we’ll never ‘punish’ the player too much. After all, you’re already out there running, so you’re already a hero!

All this means that you won’t be able to destroy Abel with a single bad decision – but some of the things you do will have knock-on effects later in the game. And I’m excited to hear what you make of what we’ve done!