Zombies, Run! - Radio Abel

Project Details

As one of the originating team on 'Zombies, Run!', I was writer and narrative designer for the game's 'Radio Mode', to which the app switches if the player is still out running after their main story episode has finished. Focusing on lighter-weight content, with very few causal connections to the player's progress through the series, the aim was to maintain players' fantasy of being in the world of the game while giving them space to cool down (physically and emotionally) from the more intense main episode.

Within this structure, I wrote 'Radio Abel', which ran for our first 3 seasons and centers on Jack and Eugene, a couple who met in the first days of the apocalypse. The two co-hosts broadcast to Abel Township (the player's home base throughout the series) and the surrounding areas, providing vital information about the developing zombie apocalypse, morale-boosting entertainment, and a fair amount of crap jokes. Throughout, the hosts' dialogue is interspersed with tracks from the player's running playlist, mimicking the structure of a pre-apocalypse radio station. This conversation between the hosts' and the player's music proved to be a rich source of comedy in the narrative design of Radio Mode, creating many fan-favourite moments.

I was delighted that 'Radio Abel' became an instant fan-favourite when 'Zombies, Run!' launched, as Jack and Eugene's relationship quickly caught the imagination of the growing 'Zombies, Run!' fandom on Tumblr and AO3. Most importantly, many other young queer people around the world reached out to let me know that they felt represented and validated by 'Radio Abel' - a fact which is still a source of ongoing pride.

In seasons two and three, Radio Mode took advantage of new features in the 'Zombies, Run!' app, which allowed the hosts to respond to the various conditions of the player's run; from the time of day to the state of their in-game township and their progress through the main story. I worked closely with our lead developers to design, write and test this content, which still stands as the most dynamic and complex in 'Zombies, Run!' This first foray into designing conditional and branching narrative would eventually lead to the much longer and more detailed 'Zombies, Run! the Board Game.'

For the three years of its run, directing Radio Abel was an endless delight. I'm so grateful for the work Rhys Jennings (Jack) and Nathan Nolan (Eugene) did to build a relationship worth caring about, and to tell such a long-running story of compassion, optimism and humour in a crumbling world. The season two addition of Amy Rockson and Felix Trench, as Zoe and Phil to the Radio Mode team (characters created by Rebecca Levene) then gave me some of my most enjoyable recording sessions as the five of us parodied The Archers, improvised backing music for fake Golden Age Radio serials, and bickered endlessly about the working conditions in a tiny radio booth.

Six years after the end of my original run on 'Radio Mode' (and Jack and Eugene's retirement to the safety of a Channel Island), I was asked to return to their characters in a year-long special event: 'Jack and Eugene's World Tour'!