Pretend You’re Alive to Make It Through Dinner in This Surprisingly Difficult Zombie Game
The Chinese Room is about a zombie who has to convince a triad that they are alive in order to steal their secrets, but acting human when you are not is hard! The game was made for the game development competition, Ludum Dare 37. This competition was first held in April of 2002 with Ludum Dare 0, and it is still going strong. The Participants have to make a video game within a given theme in 48 hours and a really cool part of this competition is when the participants create time-lapse videos of them developing the games.
In The Chinese Room, you must use your controls to act as human as possible. You have to remember to do things like blink, breathe, and even force your heart to beat. If you fail to do these things often, then an alarm goes off and the people you are trying to trick will slowly realize that you are a zombie. At the start of the game your character wakes up with a to-do list that is posted on the right side of your screen. There’s a woman at the table who knows you, even though you have no idea who you are and you have to pretend to know what she’s talking about and even answer her questions, without giving yourself away. The hard part is trying to do all that while simultaneously remembering to keep breathing and blinking. A writer for another website was able to actually play the game:
“The real challenge of The Chinese Room is basic human interaction. I barely had enough time to read and react to the dialogue in between remembering to breathe and blink. At one point, I realized I was supposed to be eating, filled my stomach and then heard the alarm. In a panic, my interrogator telling me ‘You look like you’ve had a stroke,’ I pressed the button that made me s##t myself. I’m great at parties.”
The Chinese Room is available for download here. Do you think this game sounds intense? Plan to download and give it a try? Let us know how it goes in the comment section below and while you wait for it to download, you can follow us on Twitter! Into Zombies? Check out these articles below!
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