Video Game / Zombi

Would you ever need a walkthrough, go watch Dawn of the Dead.

Zombi is a grid-based Survival Horror Adventure Game developed by Ubisoft in 1986 and published in June for the Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64. A port followed for DOS in March of 1988 and, after a ten month delay, a remake hit the market for the Atari ST, the Amiga, ZX Spectrum, and again Commodore 64 in December. In the history of video games, Zombi stands out for three reasons. For one, it is the very first game that Ubisoft put to market. For two, it is an unacknowledged but obvious adaptation of Dawn of the Dead and unofficially but technically the very first video game adaptation of the Living Dead Series. And for three, Zombi was the first game in which the protagonist team is controlled individual by individual instead of as a single unit.

Gameplay in the original version of Zombi relies on a graphical verb interface with eighteen icons,^note Move, Enter vehicle, Exit vehicle, Equip, Pick up, Put down, Use, Push button, Consume, Open, Close, Change protagonist, Sleep, Wake another up, Pause, Close game, Save, Load all located at the bottom of the Heads-Up Display. A clock and direction cube are on the right and character data is to be found up above. Zombi being Dawn of the Dead: The Game, the map consists of several floors in a shopping mall and the immediate outside surroundings. The world is in monochrome and interactable objects are highlighted in color but they lack descriptions. Neither conscious protagonists nor living enemies appear on screen. The presence of an enemy is indicated by their portrait showing up next to the protagonists' portraits. If so, bare-handed combat occurs automatically unless either the enemy is passed by or an equipped weapon is used. Killed enemies and protagonists or sleeping protagonists do appear on screen in color; killed enemies can be picked up, killed protagonists can be picked up or inventory-looted, and sleeping protagonists can be woken up or shot.

The DOS port changes around a few things. For instance, the active protagonist cannot shoot themself or their sleeping companions anymore, although shooting awake companions remains an option. There's also a significant quality-of-life addition in that the direction cube is updated to show which directions are available, which makes navigating a lot easier. Presumably because of the restructuring of the control scheme, the DOS changes were not brought over to the remake of the following year. This remake rigorously condenses the verb interface to four icons: Save, Close game, Load, and Use. The discarded commands are covered by "Use" and point-and-click mechanics. The remake furthermore adds music and brings color to the graphics, though in doing the latter removes the way color highlights the interactable objects.

There are four protagonists — Alexandre, Sylvie, Yannick, and Patrick — who have marginally different stats. Each of them can carry four objects at once and their overall health is divided between a F-meter for health, a H-meter for rest, and a S-meter for hunger. For any of these to be drained is fatal. All characters are expendable except for Alexandre, who, being the only one who can fly the helicopter, must survive the game for the good ending.

The manual relays the events of how the quartet ended up in shopping mall in the form of a mini-comic. On the 15th of April of 1986, the USA has been overrun by the undead. A group of six survivors down in Berkeley are planning their next move. They decide that their best bet is to try to outrun the zombie hordes outside and see if they can make it to the abandoned helicopter at the hospital. One survivor, an older man, knows he doesn't stand a chance and stays put. He gets killed when zombies enter the house. Of the other five, Stephane gets killed while checking the map, but the remaining four make it and get the helicopter going. However, the tank isn't all that full and they have no choice but to land on a shopping mall and see if they can survive the zombies wandering about and find more fuel.

There are two other games in Ubisoft's 1980s lineup that are comparable to Zombi. The first is Masque, a 1987 adventure title also remade for the Atari ST in 1988. The Zombi and the Masque+ remakes were simultaneously announced for early 1988, although Zombi didn't make that release window. 1988 is also the year Zombi's thematic sequel was released: Hurlements. Almost the entire gameplay setup from Zombi is lifted over to the other game and its marketing highlighted that the two games share a producer. Despite its significance in getting Ubisoft off the ground, Zombi fell into obscurity after 1990 until the release of ZombiU two decades later in 2012. Audiences took an interest in the similarity between the promising new survival horror title and the game Ubisoft launched with, although the company's official statement is that any likeness is a coincidence.

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Zombi contains examples of:

• Abandoned Hospital: In the comic, the protagonists make a run for the abandoned hospital in hopes of using the helicopter still parked there. Four of them succeed.
• All Bikers are Hells Angels: Once the mall has been cleared of zombies, an attempt to make contact with the outside world alerts a unit of Hell's Angels to the building and its loot. They unblock the south entrance and occupy the ground floor. If a protagonist comes down, the bikers will attempt to beat them to death.
• All There in the Manual: The manual contains a comic about how the four protagonists ended up in a zombie-infested mall. Without it, one might assume it's the same way the four protagonists in Dawn of the Dead came to live in the mall, but that's not quite the case. As per the comic, the group originally consisted of six people. A man named Stephane and an unnamed elderly gent perished when the group made a run for a hospital's helicopter to escape the zombie infestation. After that, they only landed atop the mall because the helicopter ran out of fuel and they need to find some, not because they want to make the mall a longterm residence.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: If a protagonist gets killed by a zombie, they'll be dead-dead for a hot second and then rise as a zombie themself. If a surviving protagonist goes to the place their companion was killed, they'll encounter them as an unseen enemy and end up fighting for their life. If the zombie-fied protagonist is killed, they'll leave behind a human corpse.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • In the original version, objects that can be interacted with stand out as being contrastingly colored in a monochrome environment.
  • In the DOS version only, when the direction cube is active another image below it shows which directions all are viable. This is useful to spot rooms that are always behind the protagonists and to avoid walking into the zombie hordes outside.
• Bag of Spilling: In the comic, the protagonist group starts off with three guns. They lose two while escaping the zombies and another one gets damaged, leaving them without weapons when the game starts.
• Beware the Living: The zombies are dangerous, but fairly manageable in one-on-one confrontations and they aren't smart enough to unblock the mall's entrances. The bikers are quite a bit stronger than the zombies and they unblock the south entrance to lay claim on the mall. They're bad enough that no zombies wander back into the mall while the bikers are around.
• Binocular Shot: There's a binocular in the eyewear store that when used reduces the field of view to two overlapping circles. Used anywhere but on the roof, the binocular view overlays the regular view. On the roof, the binoculars actually get properly used to look at something in the distance.
• Bland-Name Product: The game takes place in a shopping mall, so it's almost inevitable that some references to real-life brands are mentioned for flavor. Among the stores to be visited are an eyewear company named Rissac and a fast food restaurant named MacGropak. The former is a parody of the company Lissac and the latter a parody of McDonald's.
• Boom, Headshot!: Various pieces of media found in the mall insist on shooting the brain to end a zombie. This is ostensibly what happens when the player one-shot kills a zombie or biker in the original version. In the remake, the only way to one-shot kill a zombie or biker is to shoot them in the head.
• Bottomless Magazines: The rifle, revolver, and pistol never have to be reloaded and can put an endless amount of bullets into any and all targets. The two drawbacks are that there are only three guns for four protagonists and the necessity to fatally shoot the zombie before they've made their way over, which happens rather quickly. Of course, an injured zombie is still easier to take down in a fistfight than one who hasn't got a bullet lodged in their flesh.
• Devoured by the Horde: Any protagonist who walks into the horde of zombies surrounding the mall supposedly gets eaten by them. They do, in any case, not rise up as a zombie the way they do when killed by a single zombie.
• Enclosed Space: The USA is dealing with a zombie apocalypse and while nowhere is safe, staying indoors is safer because there are far less zombies to deal with if any at all. After confiscating a helicopter, the protagonists find themselves out of fuel and make an emergency landing atop a mall. Their entire hope is fixated on finding fuel inside the mall, because the zombie hordes in the surrounding landscape are too dense for anyone to get past.
• Fetch Quest: There are a lot of zombies in the lower three floors of the mall. Close to one per grid, with some grids being zombie-free while others have two or even three. There are about sixty grids. After the entrances to the mall have been blocked off with trucks and all zombies inside have been killed, a fetch quest occurs. Just like in Dawn of the Dead, all zombie corpses need to be collected from all over the mall and put away in the cold room in the basement. Unlike the film, the shopping cart and the transport trolley, items in which other items can be stored to reduce inventory usage, cannot be used to collect the zombie corpses.
• Gardening-Variety Weapon: Right next to the gun store is a tool store, which goods can be used as melee weapons. There's an axe, a hammer, and a screwdriver suitable for this purpose. Curiously, there already appears to be blood on the axe and on the hammer.
• Gas Siphoning: The protagonists get a chance at fuel for the helicopter when bikers take over the mall. They leave a van of theirs outside with little protection and the protagonists siphon its fuel with an empty gas can and a hose pipe.
• Gender-Restricted Gear: Sylvie cannot use the rifle, the axe, the hammer, or the screwdriver. She's the only woman on the team and the only protagonist with such a restriction. No explanation is given, though it may be assumed the rifle and the axe are too heavy for her to use and the hammer and the screwdriver bring her too close to an enemy for comfort. This doesn't entirely make sense because she can fend off attackers in a fistfight as well as the others and in the comic she takes out a zombie with a wrench. On the upside, she can handle the revolver and the pistol without issue and a player may never even discover Sylvie's weapon restriction.
• Have a Nice Death: The bad ending screen depicts the four protagonists shambling about side by side as zombies.
• High-Voltage Death: Inserting the fuse in the fuse box in the basement without the rubber gloves on results in insta-death by electricity in the original version. In the DOS version, it takes around four such attempts for death to set in.
• Human Resources: If a protagonist comes across the corpse of a dead companion, they can search the corpse for whatever they have in their inventory. If there is no hurry to get the items, however, it's worth it to pick up the whole corpse as essentially a handbag. All the items on the corpse come along with the corpse for no more than the price of one inventory slot.
• In-Universe Game Clock: There's a digital clock on the heads-up display that starts at 11:15. Every quarter past the hour thereafter, the protagonists get a bit more hungry, but otherwise nothing changes until 22:00. That's when nighttime hits and the screen goes all black. It is still possible to navigate around by memory and if the active protagonist has the lamp it can be equipped to regain visibility. The sun comes back up at 06:00. It is also possible to fast forward by one or two hours (depending on the version) by running the video tape in the hi-fi electronics store.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: All four protagonists are controlled individually, which means that each does battle with the zombies and bikers alone even though their survival odds would improve significantly if they'd gang up on their enemies. The only point where splitting up benefits the group is when the protagonist who has locked themself outside by blocking off the mall can get back inside when a companion lowers a rope from the balcony.
• Life Meter: The F-meter serves as the life meter. It differs between per protagonist how much the meter can be filled up to. Health can only drop from one-on-one encounters with zombies and bikers, because everything else is insta-kill, although later versions also make getting shocked by the fuse box harmful instead of insta-lethal. The F-meter is refilled with drinks, which can be found in the fast food restaurant and in the butcher store.
• Limited Loadout: The protagonists can each carry four items, regardless if that's a key or a full gas can. To make room, they can lay items they don't immediately need on the ground. Only food and drinks can't be abandoned and need to be consumed to get them out of the inventory.
• The Mall: The events of the game wholly take place inside a mall and a small part of its outside terrain. The numerous zombies beyond the mall's borders make it impossible to leave by any means but the helicopter, finding fuel for which is the main objective. The secondary objectives until then are to clear the mall of zombies, get the light working again, and finding food and beds to keep the protagonists healthy.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The primary enemies are zombies. They are all naked and often lack one or more eyes even though that doesn't stop them from detecting humans. They roam in large groups through the USA ever since the infection took hold of the country and among others have destroyed the city of Berkeley. The protagonists become zombies themselves if they die during their search for fuel.
• Pamphlet Shelf: There are three pieces of in-game media that can be perused, but all hold bite-size content.
  • There is a working computer in the micro computer store that accepts only five commands to yield only four answers. LIST informs the user that ELECTRICITY and NIGHT are viable commands. Entering the former returns FUSES and the latter gives the times when it is night: 22:00 to 06:00. ZOMBI DEAD yields the instruction to aim for the head and BYE lets the user log out. This is a very limited use of a computer.
  • Of the books in the book store, only one can be read, offering no more than the line "...Attention la morsure de ces creatures est contagieuse..." or "Be careful the bite of these creatures is contagious."
  • A video tape can be obtained and watched in the hi-fi electronics store. If so, it yields the message "Visez la tête. Visez la tête. Bonus d'arme a feu obtenu." or "Shoot the head. Shoot the head. Bonus of firearm gains." Short as it is in real-life, in-game the clock skips one or two hours (depending on the version) whenever the tape is played, which means that the player gets a condensed version of what the protagonist is actually watching.
• Pixel Hunt:
  • Because the game doesn't automatically switch slots whenever a container is searched, it is very easy not to notice that the closet that contains the empty gas can also contains the rubber gloves. The same happens in the tool store: in the box with the flashlight there are also a hammer and a screwdriver. Unlike the rubber gloves, however, the hammer and screwdriver are superfluous to the gameplay.
  • The monochrome original version uses color to highlight interactable object, but the colorful remake has no system in place to make objects of interest stand out. As a result, items that aren't on the floor, such as the video tape, the box containing the flashlight, and the drink in the butcher shop, are easily missed.
• Product Placement: Left of the stairs on the third floor is a sign asking if "you" are a programmer. A sign next to it reads that if so, contact Ubi Soft. Zombi was Ubisoft's first game and the company was reaching out to potential employees by any means necessary at the time.
• Resting Recovery: There's a furniture store on the ground floor inside which are two beds that the protagonists can use to refill their H-meter. Protagonists automatically wake up after eight hours of sleep or can be woken up by another protagonist. Caution should be taken that sleeping doesn't stall anyone's S-meter from going down every XX:15, meaning that the protagonists can starve to death while sleeping.
• Robbing the Dead: If a protagonist perishes, they'll leave behind a corpse that the other protagonists can loot for their companion's inventory.
• Shout-Out: The original version has a number of shout-outs to which the remake adds some more.
  • On the fourth floor, there is graffiti near the staircase that reads "Punk Not Dead", a reference to the 1981 album Punk's Not Dead by The Exploited. This same line is also referenced in Masque.
  • On the third floor, there's a poster of a cephalothorax holding up a disk. This figure is from Masque, another early game by Ubisoft that got its own remake in 1988.
  • In the original version the east exit has a placard for Clap Ciné, one of Ubisoft's 1986 games that was released as Ciné Clap. In that same location in the remake, there is a placard for Ubisoft's 1987 game Asphalt instead.
  • In the remake, there's music-related graffiti on the staircase on the fourth and second floor. On the fourth floor, the graffiti reads Bauhaus. On the second floor, the graffiti reads The Sisters of Mercy. On the third floor, there is graffiti next to the staircase that reads Oi.
• Shows Damage: There are three possible portraits the heads-up display can put up. The main two are a human face when a character is alive and a cross when they're dead. Additionally, if a protagonist is killed by a zombie, they will rise up as a zombie themself, which the heads-up display illustrates by means of a zombie face.
• Someone Has to Die: To secure the mall, trucks have to be moved in front of the entrances so no more zombies can enter. The driver of the last truck therefore locks themself out along with a horde of zombies and no food or bed. It is possible for the other protagonists to find the rope and hang it from the balcony for the driver to climb back in. Or to be fast enough with clearing out the mall that the bikers come and force the entrances back open. But just as well, the driver may perish outside to keep those inside safe.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: It is possible to open the windows in the tool store and the fast food restaurant on the second floor and walk out of them, which causes the protagonist to fall to their death. Another way for a protagonist to fall to their death is by walking off the balcony on the second floor. As well, it is possible to use a gun on the active protagonist and on their companions. Doing so causes death.
• Team Killer: Protagonists are able to use guns not only on enemies, but also on companions and even themself.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Foremost, any step away from the walls of the mall will get a protagonist mauled by zombies and it's easy for the player to keep clicking in a given direction before registering that they've already hit a corner. Another mean curveball is that protagonists can walk off the balcony or out of open windows and die from the fall, but the game doesn't inform the player that this is what happened. The protagonist just ceases to be selectable, though surviving protagonists can find the corpses outside. Because the balcony can only be walked off backwards, that one is in particular hard to figure out why merely walking apparently killed off the character.
• Tuckerization: The protagonists are all named after people who worked on or for Zombi. Alexandre is named after Alexandre Bonan, who wrote the scenario. Sylvie is named after Sylvie Hugonnier, Ubi Soft's marketing director. Yannick is named after Yannick Cadin, the game's producer. And Patrick is named after Patrick Daher, who handled the graphics.
• Unwinnable by Design: The game cannot be won if Alexandre dies because he's the only one who can fly the helicopter. The game may also end up unwinnable if the zombie horde outside kills a protagonist holding crucial items, because those can't be retrieved then. And in the original version but not the remake, the security room on the fourth floor can only be entered by a protagonist who has the key equipped but it can be exited regardless of the key. Would the player leave the security room key behind in the security room to clear inventory space for the truck keys found there, they'll find out sooner or later that the security room is now permanently locked.
• Wrench Whack: In the comic, Sylvie smashes the zombified helicopter pilot's head in with a wrench to save Alexandre.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Zombies are rising up from wherever there are corpses and few places may be considered safe from their onslaught. Zombies aren't hard to deal with one-on-one and it isn't rare to encounter them by themselves indoors, but outside they are numerous.

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