Zedtown Asia: Battle For Singapore’s Media Preview

The Singapore National Stadium will be transformed into a post-apocalyptic battleground come 26 October, with Asia’s first-ever live-action zombie survival game, Zedtown Asia, taking place at the venue.

Game was created in Sydney

The game, which had originally been created in 2012 by three avid gamers from Sydney, Australia, Zedtown, has since seen thousands of players battle it out across Australia and the United States, at iconic venues such as the Sydney Football Stadium and at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

And the Singapore edition will be the 34th instalment of the game, an immersive survivor versus zombie gaming experience which is being billed as the largest “real-world” zombie survival game.

Explained Andrew Garrick, co-founder and managing director of Zedtown, “We are delighted to bring this ever-popular zombie survival live gameplay to Singapore, at one of Asia’s most iconic stadiums.”

Also continued Garrick, “Zedtown Asia: Battle For Singapore, promises to be our most unique instalment yet and we can’t wait to witness all the action that our Singaporean survivors and zombies have to offer.”

Singapore becomes a State of Emergency

The game premise reads as follows: Singapore will be put in a simulated State of Emergency where zombies have taken over and survivors are being called upon to fight the undead creatures in order to make it to the last remaining sanctuary.

Invited to a media preview session

I had recently been invited by Zedtown and the Singapore Sports Hub to a media preview of the Singapore game. And at the preview, I got to experience for myself, a brief 25-minute simulation of the game, which will last three hours on the actual day.

I brought two friends, Andy Pang and Tan Ziyu along to the session because battling zombies is always more fun when it is done with friends.

Short briefing on gameplay

Prior to unleashing the zombies at us, invited media and guests underwent a short briefing inside the quarantine zone, on what the gameplay would be about, the rules and regulations, and what we could expect.

The Zedtown gameplay is strongly reminiscent of popular zombie-themed video games such as Call Of Duty and Dead Rising 4.

In the game, everyone would be issued with a unique dog-tag symbolising our in-game life, and start out as survivors. We are randomly assigned to a faction, with each member having specific skills and objectives.

For the media game, there were two factions, Blue and Red. My two friends and I were assigned to the Blue faction.

Along the way, through the Zedtown app which we were tasked with downloading prior to the session, we would be given quests, missions, tips and updates, with the Zedtown app tracking participants’ progress and achievements along the way.

There are two different ways that we can ‘kill’ the zombies, with a Nerf blaster or with a pair of rolled-up socks. Because I did not bring any socks along with me, I ended up borrowing one of the nerf blasters thoughtfully provided by the Zedtown organisers.

Unfortunately, because the undead can never truly die, both the nerf blaster and the socks would only temporarily stun the zombies, which means that they’d have to head back to their zombie base to regenerate, immediately after which they would be able to ‘kill’ humans again.

Just before setting the zombies on us, the Zedtown organisers asked the eager participants how many of us thought that we would survive the zombie apocalypse.

And quite a number of brave people raised their hands.

It’s zombie time

I was still digesting the briefing and trying to work out an appropriate strategy when the doors of our quarantine room were unlocked and we were suddenly swept straight into the game itself.

Gulp. I wasn’t ready.

I followed my Blue faction leaders and raced towards our safe base, the only place that is immune to the zombies.

Through the whole way, which had felt like forever, I made sure that I never lost sight of my faction’s leaders.

We had to dodge what felt like countless zombies along the way.

As we ran for our dear lives, this was when my friends and I had our first glimpse of what we had just let ourselves in for.

Said Ziyu, “I love how realistic the zombies were and the team spirit portrayed by fellow humans.”

Get the payload!

Then we scanned the QR code to officially check into our base – meaning that the game had just started.

And our first mission was to get the ‘payload’ – which was a box of crucial items that would guarantee the safety of our faction base.

Fortunately for me, my faction leaders were alert and on the ball. As fast as they could, they raced towards the payload and we managed to seize it before the other team even managed to get so much as a sniff of it.

As we frantically pushed the payload towards our base, keeping it away from both the Red faction and the zombies, I think that I have definitely not run this fast in a long time. I may be a runner, but I’m more of a marathoner rather than a sprinter.

Fortunately for us, we survived that, and with the payload intact too.

Constant QR code scanning

To signify the success of our first mission, every member of the Blue faction had to scan the QR code on the payload, which I did obediently.

While I did not have any issues with the scanning of the codes throughout the course of the game, Andy did, however.

Said Andy, “A manual way to record and scan the QR code would be good, because some phones may have problems with the scanning.”

I would subsequently find out that scanning of QR codes feature heavily in the Zedtown game.

In fact, throughout the course of the game, Zombies also have to scan a survivor’s dog-tag if they managed to turn a survivor into a zombie.

Catching a breather

With our successful retrieval of the payload, we could breathe and relax for a short while at least, at our faction base, with the zombies going after the more vulnerable Red faction.

This had been apparently because their failure to capture the payload from us had caused the protection of their base to degenerate and break down – thus the attack of the zombies on them.

Zombies are after us!

Unfortunately our breather was short-lived. Once all the Red faction members had been caught and zombie-fied by the undead, the zombies came after us.

To protect our base and guarantee our survival, we ventured out in small groups, equipped with our nerf blasters, to fight and kill the zombies.

The moment that we were ‘tagged’ by a zombie, we would, likewise, turn into a zombie ourselves.

While some of us had been fighting off the zombies, the rest stayed behind to protect the payload from any members of the Red faction who had managed to survive and were not yet turned into members of the undead.

At the beginning, I opted to go into a defensive role and protect the payload, but when more reinforcements were needed, I decided that I should help my faction members, so I ventured out of the safety of my base in full attack mode.

My Nerf blasters was useless

The nerf blasters, however, with their rubbery bullets, were quite useless. The one I had chosen could only load one bullet at a time, and each time I aimed and shot, I had to run back to my base to quickly load another bullet in, before going out again. It was quite frustrating.

Looks like I should really have chosen a bigger blaster that could load several bullets in at one go.

Nonetheless, thanks to all my running and marathon training, I managed to survive the Zedtown zombie apocalypse – at least until the last few moments of gameplay when the protection of our Blue base finally broke down and the number of zombies had increased tenfold.

It was a fun workout!

I was panting and sweaty when the 25-minute game was finally called to a close.

It had been a blast and I had really enjoyed myself thoroughly. At the same time, it was a great workout session, with players required to do a lot of running and escaping.

So for those who are interested to come down to play the actual game, do make sure that you wear comfortable workout attire and a good pair of running shoes if you are planning on surviving the apocalypse.

Likewise, both my friends also had a smashing good time too.

Said Ziyu, “I had a lot of fun. It was very exciting and it made me feel like a child playing catching games. It was a nice sneak peek to the actual event.”

And agreed Andy, “It was a great idea to simulate a zombie scenario game because there are not much of these types of events happening here in Singapore. Too bad the game was 25 minutes only, as that felt too short. A longer game would be more fun.”

Room for improvements

However Andy thought that in terms of the tagging mechanism, this had some room for improvement.

He said, “Sometimes the zombies may say that they tapped us but there is no proof, so they might have just missed. It would be better to tie a ribbon to the survivors so that if the zombie gets hold of the ribbon, the survivor would turn into a zombie. Otherwise it is very hard to account for.”

I did feel that Andy has a good point in this regard, too.

A Final Post-Game Debriefing

Upon the conclusion of the game, we then headed back into the quarantine room for a debriefing and some refreshments, to replenish our energy after the fun but exhausting workout that we’d had.

As well, during the debriefing, we were asked again whether we thought we would survive a real zombie apocalypse.