I actually signed up for this game and started playing it some time ago, but in a creepy way befitting its role as a ‘social game’/timesuck, kept delaying the actual review until I had seen just a bit more of the content, then a bit more, etc…

So what is ‘Zombie Lane’? Well, it’s like FarmVille, in a way, a browser app/social networking game you can play for free on Facebook. Only here, the focus isn’t just on farming vegetables (though you can do that as well), but rather on surviving the, you guessed it, Zombie Apocalypse.

Naturally and in keeping with similar games, the $0 price-point means that the developers have to make money in some fashion, and so the ‘game’ is designed with a nearly endless set of tedious goals that you can skip past to get to the ‘good stuff’.. if you pay them in real world money.

Mercenary AND prejudiced? Really? Really.

‘Zombie Lane’ follows in the footsteps of ‘Plants vs Zombies’ in attempting to sugar-coat the violent massacre of the Undead with cartoonish graphics and a light, almost absurdist tone.

They’re not fooling anyone, however. The game is rife with exhortations to violence and the goals are often constructed literally to drive the body count as high as possible, incentivizing the player toward ever-great-pogroms against the Differently Animated.

(That’s some real flattery there, Zombie Lane)

Zombies are depicted here as a bundle of stereotypes in the Romero-Russo tradition: trying to eat the Living, apparently fixated on brains, constantly clawing at any barricades within reach to get at the tasty warm-blooded (and therefore apparently upstanding) citizens inside.

(Don’t worry copper, you don’t have much to tempt them in that skull.)

Only.. not so much. In the presence of these supposedly implacable brain-eating Zombies your player character, at worst, gets shoved around a little, which we can’t help but think shows a remarkable amount of restraint on behalf of the Zombies who of course get no such gentle treatment from the player.

(Poor Zombie Waitresses! Not only does the game encourage you to be a thug, it wants you to be a cheapskate as well!)

Once the game has eased the player into the mechanics of point-and-click massacre, it begins to set up an extremely lengthy series of goals to advance (or regress, depending on one’s perspective), any of which can be instantly completed for cash. If that fails to get you to open your wallet, be aware that the game appears to manipulate the items dropped by the innocent Zombies you massacre in order to create artificial shortages that mire you down in one particular task for days, even weeks at a time.

(Getting your Spouse back is a major early game goal. You’ll see this kind of screen a lot.)

To some degree, *some* of these roadblocks can be dealt with by trading items amongst your Facebook friends playing the game, and that’s where the second sinister aspect of Zombie Lane comes into play: the game actively encourages you to spread the infectious time-devouring monstrosity to all of your Facebook friends and acquaintances.

Dastardly.

The larger your network of friends, the greater the chance that someone will have the dropped items you need to advance, and likewise, the greater the odds that you might have something they need in trade. The game comes with a variety of in-game tools to cajole and coerce your friends into playing ‘Zombie Lane’ themselves, and it also ties into other games available on Facebook from the same developer.

It’s an interesting model, essentially tricking players into becoming so enmeshed in a game they don’t actually like to play that they will pay good money to skip ahead and get it over with faster!

(You can pester your friends with updates about how much ‘fun’ you’re having in this awful game)

Thus is their hateful scheme truly laid bare. First, they use Facebook and cartoony graphics to lure bored people (usually wasting time at work) into playing a viciously Living Supremacist game. Then, in order to expand their online Anti-Zombie gathering, they coerce the players into ‘encouraging’ their friends to play the game as well, driving a wedge between Zombie Friendly and less enlightened friends in the process. Finally, they make advancement in the game harder and harder without the spending of real world lucre, relying on the Sunk Costs Fallacy to open up a steady stream of revenue.

Naturally The Zombie Rights Campaign condemns this game, or perhaps more properly, Anti-Zombie Indoctrination Tool, in the strongest possible terms. It encourages very public Anti-Zombie behavior and attitudes, spreads like syphilis and in the process drives a wedge between Zombie Allies and those who sadly have yet to awaken to our noble message, rendering Facebook a Zombie Intolerant Zone in the process.

The Zombie Rights Campaign therefore rates ‘Zombie Lane’ as being Living Supremacist.

Special Thanks to ZRC Pals Michelle Hartz and Jason Hignite for assisting in the full exploration and documentation of the atrocities in this game.

Our gallery of screenshots from this evil game can be seen here.

P.S. One interesting thing to note about Zombie Lane is that it strives to be tolerant and inclusive in general, except of course for the cruel mistreatment of the virtual Zombies. Note that the game allows same-sex spouses without any special tinkering:

Pity they couldn’t extend this tolerance to the Differently Animated.

Tags: Social Justice, The Internet, Videogames

This entry was posted by John Sears on Thursday, August 11th, 2011 at 9:28 am and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.