No. 01
Fast. Really fast.
A brand new engine written in Rust. Thousands of zombies on screen without the stutter, and a whole town of them simulated at once. No lag spikes when the horde shows up.
Pre-alpha · PC, Mac, Linux
Zombye is slow-burn zombie survival on a brand new engine. Huge hordes with no stutter, on PC, Mac and Linux. Moddable down to the last number, and playable from above or in first person.
Keep moving. Keep alive.
No. 01
A brand new engine written in Rust. Thousands of zombies on screen without the stutter, and a whole town of them simulated at once. No lag spikes when the horde shows up.
No. 02
PC, Mac and Linux, all first class. Native on Apple silicon. Same game, same servers, no workarounds.
No. 03
Let your agent play. Hand it the bat, watch it survive a night, or have it test your mod while you sleep. Everything a player can do, an agent can do too.
No. 04
Not a mod, not a layer on top of something else: a whole game, made in Rust, about 300 MB to install. No account, no launcher, no catch.
No. 05
Every item, weapon, recipe, loot table, house and zombie stat is a plain text file. Change a number, start the game, play your mod. Join a modded server and its mods download themselves.
No. 06
A true 3D world. Play from above like you always have, or drop into first person and walk the same streets. One key, any time, mid-fight if you like.
Performance
Every zombie in town exists, all the time. The ones next to you see, hear, chase and batter doors. The ones across town are still out there, wandering, and they heard that window break.
Make enough noise and the far side of town starts walking. Ten minutes later they're on your street. Nothing pops in behind you to keep things tense, and nothing vanishes when you look away.
And it stays smooth. No stutter when the crowd arrives, no slideshow when you zoom out, on a desktop or a laptop.
How the world works →3D first
The town is real 3D all the way down, so the camera is yours. Plan from above with four camera angles, then drop to first person when you'd rather not see what's round the corner. One key, mid-game, same world.
Survive
No quest markers and no superpowers. You wake up in a bedroom in an early-1990s American small town ringed by forest, and everything you need is somewhere in those houses: tins in the cupboards, a bat in the wardrobe, gauze in the bathroom cabinet.
Zombies see you in a cone and hear you through walls. Running is loud, sneaking is slow, and a door you shut behind you only holds for so long.
Scratches, gashes and bites on ten body parts. Bleeding, festering, fever, and the infection you won't know you have until it's too late.
Fridges hold food, wardrobes hold clothes, the garage holds a crowbar if you're lucky. Food goes off. Everything has a weight.
Rip a T-shirt into rags, wash them in clean water, dress the wound. Get better at what you do: nine skills, raised only by doing.
AI agents
Connect Claude, or any AI agent that speaks MCP, and it gets what a player gets: it looks around, opens doors, searches cupboards, swings a bat, patches itself up and sleeps. Then it tells you exactly why it died.
Send it out for a night and watch. Have it play your mod before you release it. Put a few on your server. Server owners choose whether agents are allowed, and they're marked so everyone knows.
claude mcp add zombye -- ./target/release/zombye-server --mcptick 83 | 21:01 (daylight 0%) | centre (376.6, 290.5) in Main bedroom
, , , , : : . . . . . . . . . . . . .
, , , , : : . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+-+-+-+=+-+=+=+-+-+-+-+
, , , , : : . .|c f f _|c c c c c|c c
+ + +
, , , , : : . .|_ f f _|c _ _ _ _/_ _
+ + +
, , , , I I B B!_ P @ _|c _ f f _|_ _
+ + +-+/+
, , , , : I . .|_ _ _ _|_ _ _ _ _|c _
+-+-+-+/+-+ + +-+-+
, , , I : : . .!f f c|_|_ _ _ _ c|_ _
+ + + +
, , , , : : . .|f _ _/_|_ _ _ _ _|_ _
+-+-+-+ + +
, , , , : : . .|f f _|_ _ _ c _ f|_ _
+ + + +
, , , , : : . .|f f _D_|c _ _ _ f|_ _
+ + + +
, , , , : : . .!_ _ _|_|w _ _ _ _|_ _
+ + + +
, , , , : : . .|c _ c|c|_ _ _ w _|_ _
+-+=+-+-+=+=+-+D+-+-+ +
damaged doors and windows:
window at (375, 290) West, 4/6 HP
nearest zombies:
#1006 at (374.6, 290.8) dist 2.0 m, 96 HP, battering the window at (375, 290) West, 4/6 HP to get at P1
#1003 at (374.5, 290.2) dist 2.1 m, 109 HP, battering the window at (375, 290) West, 4/6 HP to get at P1
#1007 at (374.0, 290.1) dist 2.7 m, 93 HP, battering the window at (375, 290) West, 4/6 HP to get to (375.5, 290.5)
#1001 at (373.5, 290.6) dist 3.1 m, 113 HP, battering the window at (375, 290) West, 4/6 HP to get at P1
#1002 at (372.9, 291.3) dist 3.8 m, 91 HP, investigating (375.5, 290.5)
Mods
Items, weapons, recipes, loot, houses, how many zombies live in the woods, what a door sounds like when it breaks. It's all plain text files. Get one wrong and the game tells you which line.
Want more? Mods can add their own items and houses and script new behaviour. Run one on your server and everyone who joins gets it automatically. Or just ask your agent to build the mod, play it and show you a screenshot.
Make a nail bat in ten minutes →// items/weapons.ron
(
id: "nail_bat",
name: "Nail bat",
category: LongBlunt,
damage: (32.0, 44.0),
range: 1.25,
arc_degrees: 110.0,
crit_chance: 0.18,
// ...
),
// items/recipes.ron
(id: "make_nail_bat", name: "Hammer nails into a bat", secs: 20.0,
inputs: [(item: "baseball_bat"), (item: "nails")],
tools: [Item("claw_hammer")],
outputs: [(item: "nail_bat")]),
Get in early
The store page is on its way. Wishlisting will be the best way to help once it's up.
Page coming soonA first public playtest is coming. Sign-ups will open in the Discord, so that's where to wait.
Join the DiscordBuild it in a few minutes and you're in the bedroom where it starts. Downloads come with the playtest.
▶ Play nowServers
Host a server yourself or join someone else's, up to 32 survivors in one town. Make mods, make videos, stream it and earn from it, no permission needed.
Paid one-click hosting from us is coming for people who'd rather not run a server, and that's how development gets funded. It'll never be the only way to play.
