This Spring isn’t just about just about launching a brand new set of awesome, heart-pounding, tear-jerking missions in Season 4. It isn’t even just about how we’re polishing, tweaking and improving every aspect of the game.

We’re also going to improve Zombies, Run! for all those poor souls who’ve yet to become Runner 5 — in other words, for new players. We want to shorten the time from “who’s this Steve Yoo person?” to “I AM RUNNER FIVE”. One way is through our “Next Time on Zombies, Run!” preview clips — and another way is by improving Season 1.

This Spring, we’ll be tweaking the order of Season 1 to give new players the best introduction to Abel Township we possibly can. In fact, this change actually partly restores the order in which some of the missions were originally written. Here’s what we’re talking about:

“Distraction” will now come before “Lay of the Land”, so that there’s an opportunity to get used to how the app works with a classic, dramatic mission before we get into the more cerebral world-building.

“Supply Run” and “A Voice In The Dark” now come directly after “Paul Revere”. This lets us spend a little more time getting to know the settlements around Abel before we move into ahem – other plotlines – ahem, and it also means new players get to experience the wonder that is “A Voice In The Dark” a little earlier.

– other plotlines – and it also means new players get to experience the wonder that is “A Voice In The Dark” a little earlier. “The Old Mill” now follows on from “A Voice In The Dark” immediately. This gives us a smoother development of Abel’s relationship with New Canton. Also, as some of you eagle-eared players may have noticed, the first scene of “The Old Mill” references the events of “A Voice In The Dark” as having occurred very recently, so this change restores that little bit of continuity.

“Recovery” and “Tess” move down the order to follow on from “The Old Mill”, introducing the bigger-picture plot only once we’ve already established the main conflict for the season.

Finally, current missions 10 – 15 (”Back to School” through “Scouting Mission”) all move down one spot in the order to make room for the above changes.

That may well be hard to visualise, which is why we’ve made this handy diagram!

We’re excited about these changes, and we’d love to hear what you think. Let us know in the comments!