A safe haven for all.
Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven is spin-off of the Interactive Fiction game, Zombie Exodus, written by Jim Dattilo and hosted by Choice of Games' user submitted label Hosted Games.
The game begins shortly before the Zeta Virus spreads out of control, with the player character forced to do whatever they can to survive the outbreak. The game is designed to be much more open-ended and customizable compared to the original game. Players can now customize their character's name, appearance, occupation, skills, hobbies, and challenges, which range anywhere from owning a pet animal, to being an alcoholic, to having recurring psychosis-like delusional hallucinations.
The game can be found here.
Part 2 of the spin-off was released on March 2018. Part 3 was released on March 2022
This game provides examples of:
- Action Survivor: Many of the survivors the protagonist can meet, including the protagonist, if they have high combat skills.
- Actual Pacifist: The player can choose to be this and they gain an achievement if they finish the game without killing any zombie or living being. It's pretty difficult to manage, however.
- After-Action Patch-Up: If the player character has even a minimal knowledge of medicine, they can cure their own and other characters' wounds.
- Ancestral Weapon: Starting with a high close combat skill allows the player to choose a Civil War era cavalry sword that was passed down through their family as their personal weapon.
- Anyone Can Die: Due to the apocalyptic nature of the game, some of the game's characters can be killed very suddenly, including some possible deaths at the player character's hand.
- Apocalyptic Log: Your character can find some of these, such as a woman's diary and a video of a journalist reporting on the zombie outbreak before being attacked by her zombified cameraman, which she kept around to catch his transformation on tape.
- Celebrity Survivor: Two of the people that can join your character's group are a reality TV star and a news reporter. The player can also be this themselves if they choose the movie star or professional wrestler profession at the start.
- Crapsack World: Society is collapsing, many people are resorting to theft and raiding to survive, and hordes of the infected roam the streets, killing or infecting anyone who can't escape them.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Reilly is a young man who is strongly implied to have a criminal past (this is confirmed if the player chooses the "Bank Robber" profession, in which case Reilly will be their accomplice) and has a pretty bad temper. He's also really protective of his mother Nora.
- Foreshadowing: At the end of Part Two the survivors are forced to leave their camp because of the Silverthorne militia, a violent group of ex-soldiers. Hints of their existence and activities could be found beforehand in radio transmissions, news reports and a dead woman's diary.
- Gay Option: The game features many possible love interests of either sex.
- Gentle Giant: Jamie, the player character's friend, is 6'10" and one of the nicest characters of the story. He's also quite intelligent.
- Hormone-Addled Teenager: Downplayed, but if your character is a teenager they tend to be attracted to people more easily and they often want to do things to be noticed or liked by others.
- Humans Are Bastards: The protagonist can come across many murderers, bandits, and thieves, and may become one themselves.
- Ignored Vital News Reports: Downplayed. The player character knows about the Zeta virus outbreak, but they can choose to ignore Jaime's email with more information about it. They also go about their day as usual until they met zombies for the first time.
- Interactive Fiction: The game is entirely text-based, with gameplay based on the character's skills, player choices, and past events.
- Jack of All Stats: Certain backgrounds, such as homemaker, college student and teenager initially give the player character some points in most skills, without specializing.
- Laser-Guided Karma: You can be the karma in Peter Makarov's case. You can shoot him in the shoulder after he and his father loot Tommy's home. If you secured the perimeter he steps on a nail when trying to break into your home. If they succeed, he then gets stabbed in the thigh from your trap if you set one up.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: See Wendigo below. Has Woody really seen one or was it merely an early victim of the Zeta virus? Or is the legend of the Wendigo somehow tied to the zombie outbreak?
- The Many Deaths of You: Most deaths in the game contain a short summary of your character's final moments.
- The Medic: This role is an option for your character if they have a background in healthcare (obviously), science, or even just some skill points in Medicine.
- Militaries Are Useless: Standard trope for the genre. The military completely fails to contain the infected within the first 48 hours from the start of the game. Many members of the military go rogue and become actively malicious, joining militias and killing anyone who stands in their way.
- Multiple Game Openings: The second chapter of the story varies according to the profession the player chose in the first chapter. The character can also opt to go on a date instead of working. However, the morning always ends with them encountering zombies for the first time and narrowly managing to return home.
- No FEMA Response: Averted initially, when FEMA sets up camps outside infected cities and tries to distribute food, water and essential medical care. However, the camps are overrun by the infected or by desperate survivors in a matter of days and in at least one case, a militia takes control of a camp and kills any FEMA worker who tries to resist.
- Point Build System: Depending on how the player customizes their character, they can have a variable amount of points to use to upgrade their skills and their traits.
- Post-Apocalyptic Dog: The player character can have a pet as a challenge. It also has its perks: pets help the player character's mental health and certain dog breeds can be trained to alert humans of dangers and defend them.
- Pragmatic Hero: The player can choose to be one by taking the most logical or convenient course of action while maintaining a relatively high morality. There is an achievement for those who end the game with high pragmatism.
- Science Hero: Player characters with a background in medicine or science can decide to find a cure or vaccine for The Virus and to do so they collect specimen from zombies. Hackers can try to set up servers based on ARPANET's principles to help survivors communicate.
- Sociopathic Hero: The player character can choose to be this, killing living people and stealing from them. There are achievements for those who end the game with low humanity and morality.
- Sticky Fingers: Kleptomania is one of the challenges that the player can choose.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Characters with the Delusions challenge will often experience stressful visual and auditory hallucinations, which they firmly believe to be real.
- Wendigo: Woody, an anthropology post-graduate, believes he has encountered one shortly before the outbreak while living in a Native American community. It bears a striking similarity to those infected with the Zeta virus.
- Wild Teen Party: If the player character is a teen they attend one of these at the twins' home. Zombies then proceed to crash the party.
- Yet Another Stupid Death: The game features an achievement for attempting to attack a trio of armed soldiers with nothing but a taser or pepper spray, with predictable results.
- Zombie Apocalypse: The plot of the game focuses on the Zeta virus, a fast-spreading illness with no known cure or vaccine, which causes those infected to go insane with rage, develop horrific features, and attack anyone around them.
