Hello, I’m Hyeonseong Cha, a programmer and Creative Director of God Save Birmingham.
We’ve been working hard on God Save Birmingham since we first introduced the game last year. Today we’d like to tell you a little more about it and share our plans for 2025.
A short description of God Save Birmingham would be, “a zombie apocalypse survival game in a medieval European town”. When I first played survival games like Don’t Starve or Project Zomboid, I found it difficult to survive even a single day, and the experience of overcoming such a difficult environment was very memorable and satisfying. My hope is that we can create a game like that, and bring a similar experience to fans of the genre. So when you step into the world of God Save Birmingham, you’ll find yourself in a truly desperate and challenging scenario.
[One of game’s unique characteristics is an aim-based strike system.]
[Battles with zombies are intense, but the other survival activities won’t be any easier.]
Zombie apocalypse settings are one of my favorites across any media. But while there are a lot of different games that feature zombies, they’re not often that classic slow-walking kind that I like most. The terror they create as the horde closes in… the tension as a crowd of them grabs hold and goes in for the bite… These are the thrills I love most about the genre. It’s tricky to capture that type of enemy and bring them to life in a game, but we’re embracing that challenge head-on.
[Another unique feature: our zombies’ procedural grappling system.]
One of our goals from the beginning was to recreate an entire town in a virtual space, and build apocalyptic survival gameplay around it. We’ve put a huge amount of time and care into achieving the right historical feeling and geographic scope. Sometimes that’s meant compromising on our loftier ambitions (as we’re a pretty small team), but we’re confident in our ability to deliver a setting with the kind of depth and size players have come to expect.
We ultimately chose to recreate a medium-sized city in medieval Europe and researched a bunch of them. In the end, Birmingham in the 1300s fit the criteria we were looking for.
You may have seen Birmingham or other communities like it in other media with a more fantastical tone. But what we’re trying to present is something that reflects a grounded, realistic picture of day-to-day life in that time and place. In our research, we’ve strived to be as faithful as possible to the location and appearance of the various churches, manors, village centers, and other infrastructure that existed in Birmingham in real-life history.
We’re also working to recreate the typical household items, food, and tools of the time accurately (or as close as we can get within reason), to really convey the textured feeling of what it would be like to try to survive a disaster scenario back then.
[A bed of straw offers a comfortable place to rest.]
We’ll be releasing a video soon to share what we’ve been working on, and we’re planning to showcase the game through game shows or other channels so people can have a chance to experience it for themselves. We believe there are a lot of people out there who are both fans of zombie fiction and nerds for medieval history, like we are. And while the game is still in a pretty early stage, we’re really looking forward to the day when players can get their hands on it, explore the world we’ve built, and share feedback that can make God Save Birmingham even better.
I’m happy to finally share a bit of our thoughts and plans for the game, and we’re working on some other ideas for how we can keep players up to date with the game’s development. We still have a lot to share with you, so we’ll be back soon!
[Cologne, Germany, during Gamescom 2024 – In the Cologne Cathedral, with a grateful heart.]
Thank you,
Hyeonseong Cha, Creative Director
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/3073940/God_Save_Birmingham/