Want to Try Undying, a New Zombie Survival-Horror Game?

If you like survival games, and touching stories, I have something for you. To celebrate Undying leaving Early Access and entering 1.0, you can grab a key for this third-person survival horror game on Steam starting on December 7th, 2023 as part of IGN Plus.

IGN Plus Monthly Game: Undying

Undying is a zombie survival horror game which follows the tale of Anling and her son, Cody, as they struggle to survive in a zombie-infested area after Anling has been bitten. Manage your sleep, stress, and health to stave off turning and take every opportunity to teach Cody how to survive.

From fighting off zombies to salvaging survival resources and repairing items, he’ll need to know as much as he can to survive and carry more of the burden as Anling fades away. Will you try to shoulder the burden yourself, or give him opportunities in which he can succeed or fail? Will you be able to comfort him in the face of the horrors of the zombie apocalypse? Which explanations will you choose to help him understand betrayal by other survivors? Your choices will shape the person he becomes, and your likelihood of survival.

Undying Developer Interview – Kun Wang (Producer of Undying & Vanimals Founder) & Jin Chan Yum Wai (Game Director)

For this interview, I spoke with Kun and Jin about their survival horror game, Undying. Taking on contract work to keep the studio afloat, balancing Early Access audience expectations with their own artistic instincts, and even Jin getting stuck in Australia due to the pandemic, the team has been on a long journey. What originally started as a gift for Kun’s 8-year-old son, inspired by The Walking Dead, has blossomed into an anticipated survival experience which carves out a unique space in the genre.

The team met with Diablo’s David Brevik, who suggested the ‘stress/fatigue/injury-induced zombie infection progression’ system Undying now has, which adds a greatly increased sense of urgency to the game, and the team also included multiple difficulty settings to ensure that people who want to enjoy this survival game more casually can still do so.

I hope you enjoy the game, and this excerpt from our interview. Cheers!

Brian: What inspired the team to make Undying?

Kun: For over a decade, I always dreamed to make a game like [The Walking Dead]. Like that world. But I thought that if I do make some game like that I’m probably not going to make it look similar like [people] killing zombies, or using like badass weapons, or against other [people]. So I’m thinking something very different, very contradictory. That means the player can be very weak, versus the very fierce wild environment outside. [An] apocalypse.

So at the very beginning, I thought about a woman, wounded. And she wakes up in the ruined relic and [remembers] she had a child, and [is] looking for her child. That’s how we started with this idea. And when we seriously started thinking about how the project could be, we figure that that will make the game too lonely. Like, one woman as the main character, looking for her child. So we decided to bring her child from the very beginning with her, but the idea of them get bitten by a zombie is was not changed at all. So that was where, ‘Undying,’ the original idea, came from.

Brian: One thing I think is interesting, and I don’t remember seeing elsewhere, is tying how long you have until you turn to how tired you are. Thinking back [on other zombie media], it seems like once you get bit, a timer starts and at the end of that timer, it doesn’t really matter what you’re doing, you’re turning. And so I thought it was interesting that [in Undying] if you’re really stressed, hurt, or weak, you’re gonna turn faster, so you’ve got to take care of yourself and make sure you’re getting rest, so you can stave this off.

Jin: Yeah, obviously we wanted to you to be able to play it for a while. So we were trying to figure out how… Maybe each of us actually think of it differently. The way I think is… you don’t turn until you’re dead. So sort of like you can treat an infected bite from a dog, you can be really sick for a while. So that’s played into it. So, as Anling gets tired, her body metabolism isn’t going so well and she starts turning more… So using [an element from The Walking Dead] as inspiration, a little bit, but knowing that after she’s been bitten, she’s sick but you can manage it for a while. So I think that was what we did. And we tried to keep that rule the same, amongst even the NPCs that get killed… Once they die, that’s when they actually turn.

And then obviously, there’s a little element of Anling’s love for Cody is what’s holding it back a little bit. But yeah, it was a good mechanism that we came up with to be able to have the turning process be slower and give Anling time. I actually did pitch… we talked about this at the very beginning, and I actually pitched to Kun. ‘Maybe we make it a couple of days, and then she dies, and the game takes place over a couple of days.’ Because a lot can happen in a couple of days. We went back and forth with ‘what’s more fun?’ I think, ultimately, that made more sense with a narrative game where we told a strict storyline. And so for this one, this was the option we came up with.

Kun: Yeah, and also, the mother’s dying, and the kid is growing. So they they need time. It needs time to get rolling.

Jin: Yeah, we also thought [about] those things that people talk about the mother’s strength when their kids are in danger, like mother’s lifting cars and stuff like that. So that was an element of it as well.

Brian: Is there anything that each of you would tell players, who are about to jump into Undying for the first time?

Jin: For me, I would say take it slow and soak stuff in. There’s a lot of cool stories that we’ve hidden throughout the world. It’s quite detailed. We’re so proud of all the work of the artists have done… So I would say take your time. You know, we have that ‘easy mode’ for a reason, so don’t feel like you need to rush it. And, for those [dialogue option] answers, just be true to what you think you want to answer.

Kun: I will say, [get] ready to be a good mother. [Kun laughs]. So most recently, I’m thinking we can have this new feature added into the full release, that we call the ‘common wall’ or ‘Cody wall,’ [where] people can leave one sentence to their mother. We encourage them to do that. So most of time, you’ll probably feel awkward to say something very emotional to your mom.

But now in the game, you can say that, and people will watch it. So this is like a common wall in the game. There’s something we’re thinking to add, and the base tech is already there. The whole game is a single player game, until you enter into the wall UI, [then] the game is an online game. But that’s just one minor corner of the game. But in general, this is what I’m thinking; by playing Undying, no matter how much they beat the game… I would like to [raise] your internal love, or memory of the time that you were with your mother. I think it’s across language, across culture, across ages. I think it’s eternal, and universal. That’s what I wanted to tell the player.

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Brian Barnett writes reviews, guides, features, & more for IGN & GameSpot. You can get your fix of his antics on YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Bluesky, & Backloggd, & check out his fantastic video game talk show, The Platformers, on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.