Our own Alex Ramirez, sits down with Ollie Barder the Senior Designer behind the PS 3 exclusive Burn Zombie Burn! for a short exclusive interview.
GDN: What are some of the movies that inspired the designs for most of the levels?
Ollie: Well, the Woods is based on the cabin in the woods from Evil Dead 1 and 2. The second level, Graveyard, is a reference to Night of the Living Dead. Suburbia is based around Amityville and the Military Base is from Day of the Dead. The final level in the game, the Secret Lab, started out as being a reference to the zombie pods from the Resident Evil 2 film but ended up being more science-fiction themed. All the levels tried to infer a geographical narrative as well, with the player making their way from the woods into the heart of the research facility that supposedly birthed the zombies themselves (though there is also a possibility of extraterrestrial involvement as well, but I can’t go into details on that yet).
Some of the weapons were also inspired by films as well, with things like Cricket Bat being from Shaun of the Dead and the Lawnmower and Shotgun coming from Brain Dead and Evil Dead respectively.
GDN: We all know that a zombie game isn’t complete without a shotgun, but what are some of the other weapons we can expect to see in Burn Zombie Burn!?
Ollie: You have various other guns, like the Uzi and Gatling but the game also features weapons that aren’t based around basic ordnance. So the chainsaw and lawnmower expect a more personal zombie slaying touch from the player. We also have a Dance and Brain gun in the game, that are used to break up the flow of the zombie horde and control their movement in a more tactical manner.
