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Pandemic Express – Zombie Escape is a different sort of multiplayer zombie shooter. It starts with a group of 30 players, who must make their way to a waiting train in order to escape a zombie uprising. The catch is that one of them is already infected, and they're eager to share the brain-eating undead love with everyone else.
It's not as simple as tag, though. Zombies have special abilities that will help them on their hunt: They can mark human players to make them visible to other zombies, and can throw each other around for increased mobility. Humans can equip various sorts of weaponry to fight back, and will have the opportunity to acquire more firepower as they go, but even with that zombies have an edge: They get unlimited respawns, and every time a zombie dies, it comes back with an increased chance of gaining an "ultra" ability that makes it even more dangerous.
That should ensure that Pandemic Express – Zombie Escape remains a mobile game of evasion, rather than a hold-the-line, last-stand defense—although that's going to happen anyway. Reaching the train is not the end of the action: Once everyone is aboard and the train starts moving, zombies will begin respawning in front of the train instead, and the survivors will have to stand their ground and fend off the infected attackers until the train clears the station.
It sounds a bit battle royale-like, and like it could be a lot of fun: Zombie shooters are great but a faux-permadeath survival experience with humans on both sides of the bloodshed is where the real action is. Balancing could prove tricky, but that's what an Early Access release is all about.
Speaking of which, that is set to happen on May 2, which is also when the currently-underway alpha test will come to an end. More information about Pandemic Express – Zombie Escape is up at pandemicexpress.com, and you can lay eyes on some raw (but exuberantly narrated) gameplay video courtesy of Baron von Games in the video down below.