Minecraft Creator Developed This Zombie Shooter In Just Seven Days

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

shambles

If I tried getting into the game Minecraft at this point, it would take me less than a week to get completely invested. I would put the rest of my life on the backburner, and split my time between actual campaigns and building a replica of my hometown out of blocks. During that same week, Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson could put together an entirely new game, such as this first person zombie shoot-em-up Shambles, which he designed in approximately seven days. My own aspirations are dulled in comparison.

No stranger to making games in limited timeframes, Persson created Shambles for the 7DFPS (7 Day First Person Shooter) design challenge. While it doesn’t feature multi-branched RPG elements, or giant complicated boss battles, it’s still an impressive feat, and you’ll be surprised just how addictive the game can be. Plus, you can play it from your browser, so there aren’t any downloads needed. Just click the link above and get to blasting.

The game design is simple enough. You run around a city during a zombie outbreak, equipped with a pistol and a limited amount of bullets. The randomly generated zombies drop ammo and health, so it serves you well to destroy as many as you can, even though they just keep coming. There are civilians running around as well. They’re not dangerous, so you might not want to waste a bullet. But you’ll notice the cops, both by their uniforms and because their guns are so much more badass than yours. Those better guns can become yours, though be careful, because, as in real life, shooting at cops make them shoot back at you.

There is no end goal beyond trying to secure a high score that you can show off to your dog. Here are a couple of screenshots to give you an idea of what you’ll be up against.

shambles game

shambles better gun

I’d rather not share how paltry my score was after playing for a few minutes, but I’m sure the more dedicated of gamers will rip this to shreds.

Another entry into the competition was 2091: Jim’s Odyssey, which takes place aboard some space vessel, where you wake up alone and need to locate other people. Good fun for those who don’t care so much about shooting zombies. You can download it here.

On the actual Minecraft side of things, where mods exist for almost any fictional property out there, the zombies also run free. Check out the gameplay video below of some guy playing The Walking Dead Survival!, which may inspire you to play it yourself. Granted, I’d much rather be destroying the people who keep making terrible zombie movies, but still.