Undead Express by Zaphire

[raw]
made by Zaphire for Ludum Dare 53 (JAM)

In "Undead Express" navigate a zombie-infested city, rescue civilians, and deliver them to safe zones. Keep your car fueled and intact while evading relentless undead hordes. Successfully dropping off civilians upgrades your car, helping you withstand the zombie onslaught. Are you up for the challenge? Start your engine and find out!

How to play. Drive around looking for civilians, once you spot them slow down and pick them up. Drop civilians off at Dropzones. You can repair and refuel at dropzones. You can get car upgrades by dropping of civilians.

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Ratings

Overall 1014th 3.111⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Fun 934th 3.037⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 951th 2.907⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Theme 915th 3.5⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Humor 810th 2.72⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Mood 748th 3.352⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Given 66🗳️ 10🗨️

Feedback

Gnum_
02. May 2023 · 14:46 UTC
MORE LAGS
Cylvlpak
02. May 2023 · 14:51 UTC
Interesting idea, unfortunately the friezes make it hard to feel the mechanics. In the same spirit!
Merrow
02. May 2023 · 15:05 UTC
Nice, this has a lot of potential! I like the effort you already put into the map. Zombies and civilians are hard to tell apart, but maybe that's on purpose? Got stuck with the car turned sideways at a lantern at some point.
Shiiigear
02. May 2023 · 15:11 UTC
This could have been a great game with some LODs and optimisation. I liked the idea but I couldn't enjoy it because of lags.
Thanks anyway for the submission !
Samoussa
02. May 2023 · 15:13 UTC
I get the spirit of your game, unfortunately like others said, I wasn't really able to enjoy it because of performance issues :(
Dominic Graziano
02. May 2023 · 15:13 UTC
nice controls and a solid concept. the framerate dropped dramatically anytime I looked at the many particle emitters, but it wasn't unplayable. Probably just needs optimization in that area :)
Dexort
04. May 2023 · 21:48 UTC
Controls only by left stick is a bumer. Nice concept, nice artstyle. Car feels like a toy, but as a toy it bumps into every curb, which is painfull sometimes.
OldDog
07. May 2023 · 15:11 UTC
nice game,while my fps is low,wish for update of this game
D3kryption
10. May 2023 · 06:26 UTC
The graphics are top notch!

The game looks like it could be absolutely awesome.

I'm not going to repeat the same FPS thing as above, but do you know why it was dropping? I'm curious :D
Pouyan ShekariKiani
11. May 2023 · 14:53 UTC
I liked the controller of the car and the camera, also crashing into zombies was really fun lol and them chasing me afterwards haha.
Sempra
11. May 2023 · 16:41 UTC
I really liked the mood, even with the lags, and i'm impressed to have a nice car game in a jam. Very enjoyable :) Would look after a optimized version :eyes:
Nastasya
15. May 2023 · 11:53 UTC
Amazing design! Everything is cool, the mood, the controller and so on. It was interesting to play.
Good job! Like from me:)
quadtree
17. May 2023 · 08:54 UTC
Excellent graphics, and the vehicle physics were pretty amusing. It did seem a little odd that there were often zombies at the safe spots though. Also, I did end up getting stuck a couple times, I think maybe some kind of unstuck feature would be nice.

The first time was when I arrived at a safe spot and a zombie managed to get under the car and sort of prop it up on its two wheels. The second time was when I managed to ram one of the front spikes into another vehicle.

Still, overall, nice job!
Thiago Nascimento
17. May 2023 · 20:06 UTC
Nice car physics, altough it is a little hard to control. I miss some thrilling music
xsangyhix
17. May 2023 · 21:01 UTC
I like how you've build a whole world. I have definitely felt a need to explore. Unfortunately the car is hard to contorl and many sidewalks are an inpenetrable wall. This is particulary infuriating if you are all but out of fuel and centimeters away from a dropzone.
drazil100
17. May 2023 · 21:02 UTC
One of the better car physics I have seen all jam. Most people have the center of mass too high on the vehicle which results in easy flipping. I still managed to get turned completely upside down though so a reset mechanic would be appreciated. It could even take a fuel cost to try and flip your vehicle.

Another issue I had was that I got a couple zombie children stuck under my vehicle at one point and had no easy way of getting off of them. Some way to fend off against them in such a situation would also be appreciated.

I liked the overall aesthetic of the game and the controls felt solid. Good job!
STUDIO ENDEVA
17. May 2023 · 21:21 UTC
Really enjoyed this one but it did freeze a bit. Good game nonetheless!
cheesepencil
17. May 2023 · 21:26 UTC
The difficulty was mostly due to the poor performance, but the colorful art and cute style was neato. I drove around for a while and managed to pick up a passenger, but I never did discover where to drop them off.
Link270
18. May 2023 · 03:28 UTC
Cool concept and it looks decent, but it was basically unplayable for me unfortunately :\
ScrapMetal
18. May 2023 · 16:23 UTC
Dang!! This looks super fun! Even at a glimpse, the way the car suspension works looks so great!! But unfortunately my PC isn't powerful enough I guess :sob: I'm running at around 5fps, which isn't enough to even control the car well. I'm not sure why, it looks like a low poly style. There must be some odd thing tanking performance. Which sux, because I really want to play this one!