Interview: Burn Zombie Burn

PS3 feature by Nick Akerman, published on Monday 23rd March 2009

With a newly confirmed release date of Thursday 26th March, we sit down with Ollie Barder, designer of Burn Zombie Burn, for a quick chat about how development has gone on this comically horrific title.

First of all, could you describe your involvement with Burn Zombie Burn for our readers?

I worked as a designer on the game, so I contributed to a lot of the level scripting (so what spawns where and when), weapon balancing and level design. I also set a few of the Dev Scores for some of the levels.

What were your aims when starting development on this title?

Well, I joined about half way through the development of Burn Zombie Burn so I wasn’t part of the high concept phase but I believe the aim was to create an arena shooter that built on classic gameplay elements with lots of new ideas infused with a sense of personality and fun that would keep you coming back for more. There were a lot of influences, for example when I was scripting the levels; I was influenced by games like Bangai-O and that stringent risk/reward approach, so that you’re always threading a fine line between life and death. Considering that you’re battling never ending hordes of undead, it seemed like a good functional touchstone.

Players will take control of Bruce; is this a nod towards B-movie horror, and in particular the Evil Dead series?

It is, as are a lot of the levels themselves (the Woods level references Evil Dead). Most of the weapons also reference other great zombie movies - the Cricket bat references Shaun of the Dead and there are plenty of other references hidden away in there.

The sections we’ve seen are classically based on a graveyard, the woods, and even a military base- what where the reasons for these level designs?

From a thematic point of view (as mentioned above), the locations are all classic zombie movie reference. From a functional standpoint, in terms of level design, the level layouts become more complex in terms of the obstacle placement, creating or denying choke points that can be both used by the player or can trap the player. As a result the levels play very differently.

Are you looking at releasing any additional content after the game has landed on the PlayStation Network?

I am afraid I can’t answer this at the moment, sorry.

For you, what is the most entertaining way of killing zombies in the game?

For me, the Dance Gun is the most entertaining, as it forces the zombies to stop what they’re doing and start dancing. It looks very funny and it leaves them prone to attack.

What sets this game apart from other downloadable content?

The game’s sense of humour is certainly one factor but from a gameplay point of view the fact that you can play Burn Zombie Burn casually or in a more hardcore manner means it hopefully will appeal to lots of gamers. Specifically, the way the flame mechanic ties into your score multiplier means that to really rinse the system you’ll have to invest a lot of time and skill into exploring the game’s nuances or, if you prefer, you can just run around and kill zombies.

We’ve seen three game modes (Survival, Beat the Clock and ‘Protect Daisy’), what is your favourite and why?

Protect Daisy, or Defense, as you have to juggle two mutually opposing objectives; score high and keep Daisy safe. Scoring high requires the player to utilise large groups of flaming zombies for the score multiplier but at the same time flaming zombies will hurt Daisy more, so keeping her alive and scoring high is quite involving in terms of the skill required.

Will we be seeing this on the Xbox 360, or even handheld applications at any point in the future?

We will be releasing Burn Zombie Burn on PC in the future but not on XBLA. The reason is simple: Sony saw the game, loved it and wanted to keep it exclusive to their platform.

How do you think the team has performed? Has the final result realised its potential?

Everyone at doublesix did a great job and I’ve enjoyed working on the game a great deal. It’s been a labour of love for many people. We hope everyone else enjoys it as much as we do.

Could you give us an exclusive word on future projects?

Well, we’re working on a South Park game for XBLA but that’s pretty common knowledge I’m afraid. Bar that, my lips are sealed!

Any final thoughts? Why should we buy this game?

Compared to other arcade shooters, Burn Zombie Burn has a great sense of humour and layered gameplay. So you can just run around and use a chainsaw or shotgun on a bunch of zombies and still have fun. That said if you want something more involved the game affords an intricate scoring system for more dextrous gamers.

Many thanks to Ollie for taking time out of his schedule to answer these questions, and to Simon Callaghan, whose hard work found us a slot with the team. Burn Zombie Burn is infecting the PSN from this Thursday, check back soon for our review.