Interview with Zombie Battleground Game Director Roy Shapira — Part 3: More Gameplay Mechanics
Roy Shapira is the Game Director for Zombie Battleground. He is interviewed by Extranji, an active member of the community, to talk about the process of creating each new card for the game.
This is Part 3 of 3 in this series of interviews. In this part, Roy talks about more of the zombie abilities and gameplay mechanics.
Check out the other two parts here:
Audio Interview (7 min.) — More Gameplay Mechanics
Extranji: So my next question is about the Reanimate ability, which is the Life faction’s rank buff. So the question is, can a single zombie be granted Reanimate multiple times, so then when it dies it gets resummoned twice or three times?
Roy: Well Reanimate is either you have it or you don’t. And if you have it and you die, you’re reanimated and it’s a clean slate — it’s a new zombie. So even if you get it multiple times, you’ll still have it once.
Extranji: Yeah, ok. So it’s an on–off, not a how-many-reanimates-you-can-stack. Haha.
Roy: Exactly. It’s an on–off, and when you respawn it’s a brand new card with nothing on it. So there’s no effect on the new card. Even if it was multiple times, the new card that has respawned —
Extranji: Right, if you give it a Super Serum. Yeah?
Roy: You could. But it’s gone if it’s reanimated. There’s no effect on it. It’s like a brand new baby zombie.
Extranji: Haha. Cute.
Roy: Is it?!
Extranji: Haha!
Alright, next on the list. Boomstick. Boomstick says “2 damage to 3 random zombies in play”. So my initial question was… so it says 3 random zombies in play… will it be able to hit the same zombie multiple times?
Roy: Yes. It will be able to hit the same zombie multiple times, if you only have one enemy zombie or only one zombie in play, it will get all three shots. If it dies in the process, then it dies in the process.
Extranji: Yeah, I like the card the way it looks right now. I think it seems cool.
Roy: The idea right now is, it’s a boomstick. It shoots everywhere. You can’t really aim it. It spreads all over.
Extranji: Yeah, it’s a comeback card. If your opponent has two or three zombies and you’ve got nothing — they just cleared your board — then you can play Boomstick and punish him for it.
There was one small follow-up question for Boomstick, which would be, will it be able to overkill things? Say you’ve got only two zombies on the board — one of them has 2 defense one of them has 4 — will it be able to hit the 2-defense zombie 3 times and not even touch the 4? Or will it 100% kill both of them.
Roy: It will calculate the spread before it does the animations. So it will pick the first target, then pick the second target, then pick the third target. After it hits the first target, if the zombie dies, then it will have just other targets to look for.
Extranji: I see. Well, we’re down to my last question. This went by real fast.
Roy: Yup.
Extranji: So this has to do with rank buffs. Right now, rank buffs, you play a higher-ranked zombie in a given faction and it can buff lower-ranked zombies within the same faction. But in the Alpha, it doesn’t matter what Overlord you’re playing, as long as you’ve got the zombies on the board, you can give them the rank buffs with a zombie of that same faction. So you’re playing Malik — the Toxic Overlord — and you’ve got a Pyromaz onboard, who’s a Fire low-ranking zombie, and then you play Fire-Maw who’s a higher-ranking one. He does give the buff in the Alpha. So I was wondering if that’s how that’s supposed to work.
Roy: Well the idea of rank buffs is to be faction specific. So if you have a General or a Commander of a higher rank from the same faction and you have a lower Minion or Officer from the same faction, it will get the buff. It’s unrelated to the Overlord. So in this case, if you’re dropping a Pyromaz — Pyromaz is a Fire Minion — and then you drop a Fire-maw which is a Fire Commander, the Pyromaz would get the buff from Fire-Maw. So that’s a yes on the Fire.
But the idea is to promote single-faction decks or single-faction hordes. And the maximum that I’d like to see is a double-faction horde — a horde with a major faction and a minor faction. The major faction is the same faction as the Overlord and the minor faction for a certain effect or a certain style of play that you like to play.
Think a more complex horde like a three-faction hybrid or a four-faction hybrid, you just would lose the rank buffs.
Extranji: Yeah, those are a big factor in power budgeting for these cards.
Roy: Exactly. So the idea here is to think a bit farther ahead with all the mechanics — all the synergies together — and getting the most effect.
The basic idea of Zombie Battleground is to have a fast-paced, blitz, type of game — sending canon fodder forward, start softening down the enemy and then the Heavies are going to be marching in the back and moving forward to demolish whoever is left. So that’s the idea. Think of a zombie horde running towards you. It’s going to be… scary stuff.
Extranji: Haha. Yeah, you gotta fight for your life.
Roy: Yeah, “life” I’m not sure because they’re all dead. But —
Extranji: Uhuh.
Roy: You gotta fight for —
Extranji: Your “un-life”.
Roy: Yeah, something like that. Haha. The idea is to have a lot of fun, as fast as possible.
Extranji: Yeah.
Roy: Fast-paced fun.
Extranji: Yeah, cool. I guess that’s all I’ve got.
Roy: Alright, so thank you very much.
Extranji: Thank you! It’s been awesome talking to the Game Director for Zombie Battleground. I’m super excited about this. Got anything you want to tease before you go?
Roy: We’re super excited to get the PvP going. It’s going to come real soon. We’re dotting the “i”s and crossing the “t”s and getting it ready for you guys. It’s going to be awesome.
Extranji: Yeah. Thank you again very much and we look forward to seeing what’s coming up in the next version.
Roy: Thank you! Bye-bye.
Stay tuned… There’s more to come!
Hope you enjoyed Part 3 of this interview.
We’ll be coming at you with more content each week, so let us know in the comments if you have any burning questions you’d like to hear Roy talk about in more detail.
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