Urban Zombie Drill

An extremely simple game of not being eaten by zombies on the city streets. I've been playing this idly since 2004.

Gameplay

Walk through a city maintaining a distance of at least six feet from everyone you meet, and avoid attracting attention. If you get too close to someone, or if somebody looks at you for crossing the street to avoid them, then the horde is alerted and you lose the game.

Either pick a destination and try to reach it alive, or make your unguided way through the city and see how long you last.

If playing with others, you can either play competitively (split up, and the first person to make it to an agreed destination alive is the winner) or collaboratively in small groups. If you're working as a team, whoever is nearest to the zombie gets killed by it; that player becomes a "tame" zombie for the remainder of the game - they are ignored by zombies, can't use weapons and (if you like) can only communicate by groaning.

Optional rules

Weapons: If you pass within a few feet of a "service" vehicle (a maintenance van, a post van, a council truck, etc), or pass by an equivalent building, you gain a single one-shot improvised weapon that you can use to take out a single zombie that's getting too close. If you pass a police car or a police station, you instead gain three one-shot weapons. You can't take weapons from the same source more than once, and you can carry up to five - keep track of them in your head or on your fingers.

Wounds: If you're caught by a single zombie, you're just wounded, and that zombie is eliminated as if you'd used a weapon on it. If you get caught again while you're wounded, then it's game over. You can remove the wound by passing a chemist, an ambulance, a church or a hospital. (If playing competitively, an unwounded player who makes it to the destination beats a wounded player, and a player who has never been wounded beats a wounded-but-bandaged one. There is no cure.)

Hunters: Pick a clear and visible trait that you'd expect to find on around one in ten of the people you see on the street ("wearing a hat", "wearing something bright red", "carrying a white bag", etc.). Any people who fit this description are Hunter zombies - they can't be killed by weapons, and they kill you outright rather than wounding you.

A printable card

It's an easy-to-memorise game, but here's a printable rules card, if anyone wants to spread the word, or work it into a larger event. It's sized to fit on Avery Template L7160 address labels.

History

• A cut-down ruleset was put on a sticker as part of Hide&Seek's Tiny Games for Brighton in 2013.
• The game appeared in H&S's Tiny Games app that same year.
• In March 2020, some governments made the basic game compulsory.

See also

• Open Zombie World, Nicholas Fletcher's UZD variant
• Martian Attack Drill, a similar game played against construction-site cranes
• Counter-Surveillance Drill, another solo street game in the series
• Kaiju Invasion Drill, giant monsters along the skyline