zombie-escape 1.14.4

Top-down zombie survival game built with pygame.

Zombie Escape

The city is overrun with zombies! You fled the horde, taking refuge in an abandoned factory.

Inside, it's a maze. They won't get in easily. But you have no weapons. Night has fallen. The power's out, plunging the factory into darkness.

Your only tool: a single flashlight. A car... somewhere inside... it's your only hope.

Pierce the darkness and find the car! Then, escape this nightmare city!

Overview

This game is a simple 2D top-down action game where the player aims to escape by finding and driving a car out of a large building infested with zombies. The player must evade zombies, break through walls to find a path, and then escape the building in a car.

Controls

• Player/Car Movement: W / ↑ (Up), A / ← (Left), S / ↓ (Down), D / → (Right)
• Enter Car: Overlap the player with the car.
• Pause: P/Start or ESC/Select
• Quit Game: ESC/Select (from pause)
• Restart: R key (on Game Over/Clear screen)
• Window/Fullscreen: [ to shrink, ] to enlarge, F to toggle fullscreen
• FPS Overlay: Launch with --show-fps (implied by --debug)
• Time Acceleration: Hold either Shift key or R1 to run the entire world 4x faster; release to return to normal speed.

Title Screen

Stages

At the title screen you can pick a stage:

• Stage 1: Find the Car — locate the car and drive out (you already start with fuel).
• Stage 2: Fuel Run — you start with no fuel; find a fuel can first, pick it up, then find the car and escape.
• Stage 3: Rescue Buddy — same fuel hunt as Stage 2 (you begin empty) plus grab your buddy, pick them up with the car, then escape together.
• Stage 4: Evacuate Survivors — start fueled, find the car, gather nearby civilians, and escape before zombies reach them. Stage 4 sprinkles extra parked cars across the map; slamming into one while already driving fully repairs your current ride and adds five more safe seats.
• Stage 5: Survive Until Dawn — every car is bone-dry. Endure until the sun rises while the horde presses in from every direction. Once dawn hits, outdoor zombies carbonize and you must walk out through an existing exterior gap to win; cars remain unusable.

Stages 6+ unlock after clearing Stages 1–5. On the title screen, use left/right to select later stages. Open the Stage 6+ description: docs/stages-6plus.md

Stage names are red until cleared and turn white after at least one clear.

An objective reminder is shown at the top-left during play.

Shared Seeds

The title screen also lets you enter a numeric seed. Type digits (or pass --seed <number> on the CLI) to lock the procedural layout, wall placement, and pickups; share that seed with a friend and you will both play the exact same stage even on different machines. The current seed is shown at the bottom right of the title screen and in-game HUD. Backspace reverts to an automatically generated value so you can quickly roll a fresh challenge.

Settings Screen

Open Settings from the title to toggle gameplay assists:

• Footprints: Leave breadcrumb trails so you can backtrack in the dark.
• Fast zombies: Allow faster zombie variants; each zombie rolls a random speed between the normal and fast ranges.
• Car hint: After a delay, show a small triangle pointing toward the fuel (Stage 2 before pickup) or the car.
• Steel beams: Adds tougher single-cell obstacles (5% density) that block movement; hidden when stacked with an inner wall until that wall is destroyed.

Game Rules

Characters/Items

Characters

Name	Image	Notes
Player		Blue circle with small hands; controlled with WASD/arrow keys. When carrying fuel, a tiny yellow square appears near the sprite.
Zombie (Normal)		Chases the player once detected; out of sight it periodically switches movement modes.
Car		Driveable escape vehicle with durability; wall hits and zombie collisions reduce health. If it breaks, you're on foot until you find another car. Ramming a parked car restores health (and in Stage 4 increases safe passenger capacity). After ~5 minutes, a small triangle points to the current objective.
Buddy (Stage 3)		Green survivor you can rescue; zombies only target them on-screen and off-screen catches just respawn them. Touch on foot to follow (70% speed), touch while driving to pick up. Helps chip away at walls you bash.
Survivors (Stage 4)		Civilians to evacuate by car; they idle until approached, then follow at ~1/3 speed. On-screen zombie contact converts them. They only board cars; safe capacity starts at five and grows by five when you sideswipe parked cars, with speed loss based on how full the car is.

Items

Name	Image	Notes
Flashlight		Each pickup expands your visible radius by about 20% (grab two to reach the max boost).
Fuel Can (Stages 2 & 3)		Must be collected before driving the car in fuel-run stages.
Steel Beam (optional)		Same collision as inner walls but with 1.5x durability.

Environment

Name	Image	Notes
Outer Wall		Gray perimeter walls that are nearly indestructible; each side has a single opening (exit).
Inner Wall		Beige interior walls with durability. The player can break them by repeated collisions; zombies wear them down slowly; the car cannot break them.

Win/Lose Conditions

• Win Condition: Escape the stage (level) boundaries while inside the car.
  • Stage 1 and Stage 4 follow the base rule: find the car (already fueled) and drive out.
  • Stage 2 also requires that you have collected the fuel can before driving out.
  • Stage 3 requires both fuel and having picked up your buddy with the car before driving out.
  • Stage 5 has no working cars; survive until dawn, then walk out through an exterior opening on foot.
• Lose Condition:
  • The player is touched by a zombie while not inside a car.
  • In Stage 3, if your buddy is caught (when visible), it's game over.
  • (Note: In the current implementation, the game does not end immediately when the car is destroyed. The player can search for another car and continue trying to escape.)

How to Run

Requirements: Python 3.10 or higher

Install using pipx:

pipx install zombie-escape

Alternatively, you can install using pip in a virtual environment:

pip install zombie-escape

Launch using the following command line:

zombie-escape

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.txt file for details.

This project depends on pygame-ce (repository: https://github.com/pygame-community/pygame-ce), which is licensed under GNU LGPL version 2.1.

The bundled Silkscreen-Regular.ttf font follows the license terms of its original distribution. Please refer to the upstream website for details: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Silkscreen

The bundled misaki_gothic.ttf font (Misaki font by Num Kadoma) follows the license terms provided by Little Limit. Please refer to the official site for details: https://littlelimit.net/misaki.htm

Acknowledgements

Significant assistance for many technical implementation and documentation aspects of this game's development was received from Google's large language model, Gemini (accessed during development), and from OpenAI's GPT-5. This included generating Python/Pygame code, suggesting rule adjustments, providing debugging support, and creating this README. Their rapid coding capabilities and contributions to problem-solving are greatly appreciated.

Thanks to Jason Kottke, the author of the Silkscreen-Regular.ttf font used in the game. Thanks to Num Kadoma, the author of the Misaki font (misaki_gothic.ttf) distributed via Little Limit.