Video Game / No More Room In Hell

"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth."

— Tagline for Dawn of the Dead (1978), which is where this game got its title from.

No More Room In Hell is a Half-Life 2 co-op mod released in 2011 by Matt "Max" Kazan. It was eventually released as a standalone mod on 2013, available for free on Steam.

You play as a survivor in several maps belonging to two gamemodes: completing objectives to be extracted by the military in "Objective", or holding out and surviving for a fixed amount of waves in Survival. Unlike many other zombie FPS survival games on the market, this one stands out in its realism: ammo has weight, there are no icons on the HUD except for ammo, and firearms use real ballistics such as bullet drop. Combine this with other server mods such as friendly fire and Nightmare mode, and you have a recipe for a very, very tense game of survival.

The sequel, No More Room In Hell 2, went into early access in 2021. A playable beta is scheduled to be available on October 31st, 2022.

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This game provides examples of:

• A.K.A.-47: Averted. All firearms are given their proper names, except for the Orion Flare Gun, which is simply titled "Flare Gun". Even the ammunition packaging are clearly branded with real life names, e.g. The .22lr ammo is packed in a Winchester Wildcat .22lr box, the .308 in a Federal PowerShok .308 box, the .45 ACP in a Wolf .45 ACP box...
• Ate His Gun: There's a key binding that allows you to turn your gun on yourself. If you're infected, it prevents your corpse from reanimating and attacking your teammates. Just make sure you have a round chambered in your gun...
• Awesome, but Impractical: The MP 5 and MAC-10 automatic weapons. On one hand, they boast the highest mag capacity at 30 rounds, and are chambered in common pistol ammo. On the other hand, they take up 1/3 of your inventory, lack the "focus" mechanic that allows you to headshot any zombie if you stand still for 3 seconds, and in the case of the MAC-10, cannot be toggled to semi-auto, which means you could fire off a large burst of ammo without intending to.
• Bayonet Ya: The SKS can spawn with a bayonet, which replaces the Pistol Whip animation with a quick stab with the bayonet. This makes it a fairly effective melee weapon.
• Boom, Headshot!: See Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain below. More pronounced in "Realism" mode: even the otherwise weak .22 Long Rifle and 9mm Parabellum will one-shot any zombie if it's a headshot.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Melee weapons, when compared to firearms. Considering the rarity of both firearms and ammunition, as well as the amount of inventory space both take, melee weapons are the best all-purpose weapons as they are more common and have infinite durability, while firearms are only useful for clearing out hordes when you're cornered/surrounded and for taking on multiple runners.
  • The PSE Deer Hunter Compound Bow compared to other ranged weapons. Because arrows in this game are indestructible, provided that the arrow hits a zombie/surface that's not out of bounds, it can be retrieved, potentially meaning infinite ammunition. A good survivor can clear out an entire horde with a bow and a single arrow.
  • The shove. It does no damage to the zombies, but can stop a zombie from biting or attacking and create some distance between the survivor and the zombie, allowing for a counterattack.
• Carry a Big Stick: Blunt weapons don't deal as much damage as bladed ones and tend to be heavier, but have a higher chance of staggering the target like a shove.
• Chainsaw Good: One of the available weapons is a chainsaw with two attacks: a simple swing that doesn't consume fuel, and a powered swing that can shred a horde of zombies in a single swing.
• Charged Attack: Holding the fire key with a melee weapon charges up for a stronger whack, though it tires you up a lot faster than a quick swing. For handguns, standing still in iron sights for three seconds puts you into focus mode, which makes any headshot an instant kill, and has a greater chance of knocking back zombies.
• Chew Bubblegum: One of James' taunts, with a 'fucker' tacked on the end for extra emphasis.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Normal jerry cans, used to explosively set an area on fire when shot and burn zombies, are red. Mission-critical jerry cans, which are used to blow up certain walls/blockades, are yellow with two red stripes, have a note stuck on them which says "Notice this" with a smiley face, and, for good measure, are indestructable until brought to their designated walls/blockades.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: Surprisingly Played Straight, despite all the other realistic elements. Whenever the Winchester Model 1892, Mossberg 500A, and Remington Model 870 are drawn, they all have their lever/pump worked far enough to eject the current round in the chamber. This is also done with the MAC-10, but that's more justifiable due to it being open-bolt.
• Drop the Hammer: One of the melee weapons available in the game is the sledgehammer. Like the fire axe, it is two-handed, takes up a lot of inventory space, and drains stamina quickly, but is still considered one of the best melee weapons in the game because it can usually kill a zombie with a single hit. There's also a claw hammer for putting up barricades. It too can be used as a weapon, albeit an rather ineffective one.
• Dual Wielding: You can wield a one-handed weapon on your right hand and a Maglite on your left hand, allowing you to kill zombies and navigate through the dark at the same time. Unlike other games, there's no downside to this aside from the Maglite taking up space in your inventory.
• Dwindling Party: Almost bound to happen every round unless the team is full of professionals who really know what they're doing. If the respawn is toggled off, then this trope will most likely be played utterly straight (and sometimes it may end in a Total Party Kill).
• Flare Gun: Can be used to signal a helicopter to airdrop supplies in survival mode, or set zombies on fire, which after a few seconds, will burn a zombie to a crisp. There's a chance that a zombie on fire will start running, though.
• Guide Dang It!: This game does not hold your hand AT ALL. There's no tutorial, little to nothing is explained, and there are few to no accomodations made for player convenience^note for example, the only way to know what kind of ammo fits into what guns is learning through experience and memorising what the ammo boxes are by their packaging. You really do need to look up a guide to have the first clue of how to play. As the game is a realistic zombie survival horror experience, this is entirely intentional.
• HA HA HA—No: One of Captain Munky's 'No' lines.
• Hold the Line: Essentially the whole point of the survival maps, which task survivors to hold off waves of increasingly large zombies, occasionally receiving a supply drop from the national guard. Unlike most zombie survival scenarios in games however, survival maps are very much winnable; get to wave 9 or 10 and an escape will be made available to the survivors (or in the case of one map, rushing to shut off all the zombie access points).
• Infinite Flashlight: The Maglite. It's way better than the lighter for combat and navigation and can be dual-wielded with a one-handed weapon of any sort. It will also never run out of power. But unlike the lighter, it has to be found and takes up inventory space (about the same as a small melee weapon).
• Interface Screw: The lower you are on health, the more black and white your screen gets. When you're bleeding, the borders of your screen will flash red. If you're infected, the borders of the screen will display red veins that slowly take over your screen the closer you are to succumbing. Gene therapy has a 12.5% chance of blinding you, but only for 30 seconds.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: One of Captain Munky's taunts is "No more room in hell is a documentary, and it's filmed in real time!", while one of Harry's taunts is "He he he, looks like my video game skills are gonna come in handy today!"
• Little Useless Gun: Played with. In normal gameplay, it takes more than one headshot from a 9mm or .22 gun to kill an adult zombie, but such weapons tend to have a large magazine capacity, the ammunition is more lightweight than most, and focusing (aiming down the sights without moving for 3 seconds or more) makes them able to one-shot a zombie. Averted in "Realism" mode, where a headshot with any gun is a kill.
• Machete Mayhem: One of the best melee weapons in the game, and the best one-handed melee weapon. It deals less damage than the fireaxe and sledgehammer, but drains stamina less quickly and can be used in conjunction with a Maglite, making it useful for dark maps (which is to say, pretty much every single offical objective map).
• Nuclear Option: Happens on nmo_cleopas if you don't get to the extraction helicopter quick enough.
• One Bullet Clips: Much like with the Dramatic Gun Cock, this is Played Straight, despite the other bits of realism in the game (though this one is more obviously for the sake of gameplay). Unlike other examples, the game tracks the rounds inside the chamber, and each weapon has a different reload animation depending on whether or not said weapon has one in the chamber. If the gun is completely dry, your character will load the gun with a fresh mag, and cock it normally (in the case of shotguns, a round will be placed in the chamber, and then the ammo will be loaded in the tube mag); otherwise, you will replace the mag with a fresh one, or top off the mag for tube fed weapons, and the extra shot counts. In an addition, holding "reload" makes your character check how much ammo is in the mag and there's a separate key binding to unload the gun.
• Quick Melee: In the form of a shove that makes the zombie stagger a little distance back. It deals no damage, but can stun a zombie for a little breathing room, stop them from retaliating in melee, or break grabs.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": One of James' 'No' lines.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: The absolute best way to wreck a zombie is by blasting its head to bits, either with a strong melee attack or a bullet. Weaker calibers may need more than one application.
• Respawning Enemies: On Objective maps, zombies will continuously respawn in certain areas, typically the large open areas which are occupied by hordes. This makes attempting to clear out such areas pointless, and you need to instead focus on clearing a temporary path to push through instead.
• Shout-Out:
  • As mentioned above, the name of the game is a reference to Dawn of the Dead (1978).
  • The whole survival map nms_notld is a reference to, you guessed it, Night of the Living Dead (1968). Additionally, the national guard will occasionally exclaim "They're coming to get you, Barbara!", which is coincidentally also the name of the achievement obtained by surviving the aforementioned survival map. (The achievement image doesn't even attempt to hide it, consisting only the words "NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD".)
  • One of the character models is basically Walter Sobchak from The Big Lebowski. Additionally, the achievement for getting 500 kills with the Colt M1911A1 is called 'Mark It Zero'.
  • Another character model is basically Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, complete with raincoat. The achievement Hey, Paul!, obtained by getting 250 kills with the fireaxe, depicts Bateman holding an axe.
  • The image for the achievement 'Social Responsibility', obtained by killing yourself with a gun when infected, depicts Private Steel with a gun to his head moments before he shoots himself. Additionally, nmo_fema is a dead ringer for the underground bunker from that film as well. There sure are a lot of references to George A. Romero, aren't there?
  • The achievement names themselves contain lots of references:
    • It's Always Sunny in Liverpool.
    • Band of Brothers.
    • Chainsaw Massacre, obtained by getting 250 kills with the chainsaw. The achievement image even depicts Leatherface waving a chainsaw around.
    • One Free Man, obtained by getting 250 kills with the crowbar.
    • Saturday the 14th, complete with a picture of a hockey mask.
    • First Blood, a reference to the Rambo franchise, with a picture of Rambo holding a bow.
    • Katniss. The achievement image depicts, well, Katniss.
    • White Death, which, in reference to the real White Death's achievements, requires you to get 500 kills with the only wooden stocked bolt-action rifle in the game.
    • Hell‘s Kitchen, a reference to the TV drama series starring Gordon Ramsay. Requires you to get 250 kills with the very weak, but fast kitchen knife.
    • A New Day, an achievement that is obtained by completing the survival map "Drugstore" which is based directly on a location from the Walking Dead Telltale series of games.
  • Three of Bingo Bango's taunts are taken straight from Snatch:
    Bingo Bango: I'll cut your fucking Jacob's off!
    Bingo Bango: You're on thin fucking ice, my pedigree chum!
    Bingo Bango: Pull your tongue out of my arsehole!
  • The Captain Munky voice set has a taunt which references Fist of the North Star
    Captain Munky: HWAATAAA! You Are Already Dead.
  • On the map nms_camilla, the National Guard radioman refers to the 'Redeker Initiative' from World War Z, where survivors were supplied and instructed to hold out in fortified locations against the zombie hordes by the government.
• Shovel Strike: There are two types of shovel weapons in the game: the spade and the E-tool. Both are two-handed weapons with medium speed and deal medium damage.
• Sprint Meter: Unsurprising for a relatively realistic zombie game, there's a stamina bar. Sprinting, jumping, and melee attacks will use stamina. Unlike most examples, it's invisible, and drains very quickly, moreso if your inventory is mostly full. The only way to gauge how close to empty you are is that when you're nearly empty, your heart starts audibly pounding and your character starts exhaling loudly, and if you're completely exhausted you are rendered unable to attack with melee weapons, jump, or sprint.
• Ten-Second Flashlight: You always spawn with a lighter that goes out exactly 60 seconds after being lit (which may take a few strikes), has a very limited illumination radius and can't be held alongside a weapon. Holding the fire key makes your character push it forward, presumably a function for igniting things, but it has no gameplay value.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Holding down the 'drop' button will make you throw what you're holding, which can actually be thrown with enough velocity to kill the undead, provided that you actually hit your target.
• Undead Child: There are zombie children. They're tiny and fast and can flank you while you're dealing with a horde, but they're flimsier (one bullet or good melee hit cracks their skulls apart messily), their attacks are weaker and they can't grab a player.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: Unless you find a flashlight, your only source of light in the darkness will be a simple zippo lighter. In addition to the light radius being mediocre, it has several other problems. Sometimes, you will need try several times in order to turn it on to begin with, and when you finally do that, the fire will be put out when you try to run with it. Finally, the fire itself will last for only a minute before going out and requiring the whole procedure to be done again.
• Zombie Infectee: If you're bitten, there's a chance that your vision will start getting a nerve-like red effect on the borders. That means you're infected, and it's a matter of time before you turn, but it's not automatically a Game Over: Phalanx pills reset the timer to 0, and the rare Gene Therapy item not only removes it completely, but also makes you immune to further infection.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The game focuses on a more realistic approach to one of these.
• Zombie Gait: Depends. Most of the undead will shamble, stagger or limp after players, but a select few can run^note the game describes them as being more recently infected; to reflect that, body shots are slightly more effective on them and zombie children always run. A zombie set on fire has a chance of getting a drastic increase in movement speed.

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