I can guarantee you that a zombie survival game called God Save Birmingham wasn’t on your 2024 video game announcements bingo card. Set in 14th century England, it tasks you with fending off the rampant zombie hordes of a population that has succumbed to a mysterious case of reanimation. Perhaps it’s because there’s no Maccies or TK Maxx in the local Bull Ring yet.
As the only Brummie who hasn’t become a zombie, you’ll have to do things you’d expect from a survival game: forage for food, craft tools and weapons, hunt for food, and build a nice little shelter to hole up in. Birmingham itself apparently has markets, boarded-up blacksmith shops, and St Martin’s Church in the iconic Bull Ring market.
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While I wouldn’t say the trailer above shows any of it, the game is aiming for “physics-based mechanics” that will help you outsmart the horde. The Steam page mentions being able to stack furniture to create barricades, use low fences to trip zombies, or simply mutilate them to make them more crawling and less running.
The game is being developed by Ocean Drive Studios, who initially started with a team of two before growing to a team of six. Their plan is to do some beta testing before going into Early Access for a few years. We don’t know when it will go into Early Access, but they plan for it to include “a quarter of the entire city” to explore. So the first year of Early Access will be spent finishing up “the city itself” and its “survival challenges” before the next year is spent “creating light, story-driven elements.”
To be honest, survival games are tiring me out these days. I’m tired of building things out of wooden boards! But I have to admit that I’m fascinated by a game set in 14th century Birmingham, a place I have no family ties to but have visited a few times, for a wedding, a meeting with friends and because the city hosts one of the most prestigious badminton tournaments in the world. Maybe this is my way of following the city’s history? By sitting at my computer and building little fences to trip up zombies.
You can follow the game’s progress on Steam.
