Why Zombie Pirates?

Jul 28th

The Dust Devils just came back from a show in Seattle called Casual Connect where we signed a deal to publish our upcoming game Zombie Pirates. Needless to say we're excited, and we'll put out a press release with all the details in a few weeks. But I'm guessing you came here because you're interested in zombies and pirates.

So let's answer the number one question we designers are always asked: where do we get our ideas from?

In the case of Zombie Pirates, it came from a variety of sources. I like miniatures games—the nerdy kind where you push painted plastic or metal miniatures around a table-top. There are historical miniatures games, fantasy games, and even some that simulate naval battles.

One of my favorite was a ship-based game by Games Workshop called "Man o'War." The ships had great variety—everything from fairly traditional sailing vessels to sea dragons pulling giant arks. It also had monsters and hazards such as storms or rocky shoals. Man o' War brought a massive amount of imagination and change to naval battles—which were traditionally historical with little variety—and it stuck with me for decades after it went out of print.

I was swimming one day and for whatever reason started thinking about naval battles, Man o' War, and zombies. (I think about zombies way more than is healthy for a man my age!) Zombies led to thinking about an incredible game by PopCap called Plants vs Zombies. That, in turn, led to thinking about how much fun it would be to take the charm of Plants vs Zombies and combine it with the imagination and variety of Man o' War. Within seconds I could picture building a stalwart fleet to defend against zombie pirates, ghost ships, giant monsters, and roving hazards such as storms and whirlpools. Hmmm. "Zombie Pirates." The title pretty much says it all.

The story came next. I knew our look was going to be fairly cartoony because that's the specialty of our lead artist, Jeff Perryman, so I wanted the hero to be big, bold, and larger than life. He would always be smiling—hence the name Smilin' Jack. Personality-wise, we drew inspiration from Gaston from Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Jack's gal pal, Esmeralda, was much trickier and took us a few tries to get right—but I think Jeff Perryman finally nailed her look and now she's gorgeous. The duo needed a pal, and the steampunk mad scientist Dr. Theopolis was borne.

The characters grew on us quickly and we decided to do a comic book based on their adventures, illustrated by the amazing Richard Clark. We'll be handing that out free at PAX Prime and GenCon, and will eventually have it up on our website as a free PDF as well. The story we told there really helped us round out the characters and the world, and I think is a fun little tale that you'll enjoy all on its own.

The comic also helped us realize that like a good television show, Zombie Pirates would have different episodes featuring different villains and storylines. For our first game, the story quickly became The Curse of the Red Widow. This idea came to me a bit more originally. I had an image in my head of a brave but doomed captain fighting for his life, his ship, and his wife as he was surrounded by bloodthirsty pirates. His wife was taken prisoner but the captain went down with his ship—a cinematic expertly crafted in the game by Mike "Don't Skip My Movies" Jones.

Like many of my tales, death was only the beginning. The captain's love was so strong that he returned from Davy Jones Locker to rage upon the world and seek his lost love. In his wake rise legions of undead and stranger creatures such as rotting megalodons, murder birds, and plague ships—all bound to the zombie pirate captain's unstoppable will.

Smilin' Jack O'Hurlihan, Esmeralda, Dr. Theopolis, and their fleet don't consider themselves heroes, but as Jack himself said, you can't plunder the world if you don't save it from the zombies first!