2005 · Role-playing · Survival horror

Urban Dead

A free text based zombie themed MMO, with player classes involving military, citizens, scientists, and zombies.

Released: 3 July 2005
Platforms: Browser
Genres: Role-playing Survival horror Zombie
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Modes: Multiplayer
Perspective: Text
Themes: Horror Survival
Country: United Kingdom

About

Urban Dead was a free-to-play HTML/text-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game created by British developer Kevan Davis. Set in a quarantined region of the fictional city of Malton, it dealt with the aftermath of a zombie outbreak. Players entered the game either as a survivor or a zombie, each with different abilities and limitations. Survivors became zombies when they are killed, while zombies could be "revivified" with appropriate technology, returning to life as a survivor – any character played for long would thus spend some time alive and some as a zombie. There were no non-player characters in the game: all survivors and zombies were controlled by players.

Urban Dead went live on July 3, 2005, and shut down on March 14, 2025. The shutdown was stated to be the result of the Online Safety Act in the UK, which they stated brought the threat of "corporate-sized fines" to independent solo web projects with social features.

Keywords

post-apocalyptic
military
doctor
skeleton
text adventure
in-game radio
scientist
firefighter
crucifix

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Gameplay involved zombies breaking into safe houses and attacking the inhabitants, and survivors trying to defend the buildings by barricading them and killing any zombies present. Safe houses tended to be located in or near buildings where useful items could be found, such as shopping malls, police stations, hospitals, and the laboratories of the zombie-related NecroTech corporation. Cooperation between players was not strictly enforced. Internal fighting between survivors and zombies was a frequent occurrence.

Urban Dead had no economy. Survivor characters could loot supplies from abandoned buildings indefinitely, but could not trade, sell, or give them to other players.

Development

Urban Dead was created by Kevan Davis, a freelance video game designer and web developer, in 2005. Davis was inspired by a similar game called Vampires!, which was created by a friend, and play-by-mail games. These were combined with elements of NetHack, MUSHes, interactive fiction and a zombie infection simulation he had developed in 2003. This resulted in the creation of a game which required approximately 10 minutes of planning and play a day, involving exploration, interaction and item discovery.

In 2023, the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the Online Safety Act. By 2025 Davis found it unfeasible to implement the stricter age verification and child-protection measures called for in the act. At the beginning of March, Davis announced the site would shut down at noon on Friday, March 14, UTC.

Reception

A 2007 review in The Escapist was positive, calling Urban Dead "an enjoyably deep web game". The game has attracted some attention decade or longer after its release. In 2017, a reviewer for Rock, Paper, Shotgun praised its execution, despite noting that it suffered from now-obsolete web browser-game design. Similar opinions were expressed by another reviewer in 2018.

In retrospective coverage ahead of the game's shutdown, PC Gamer's Jake Tucker also praised the "large-scale strategic element" that developed within the game as players formed organized groups. Tucker quoted fellow writer Andy Chalk's reflection on an early siege of one of the in-game malls as "incredibly intense and satisfying, and a remarkable feat of spontaneous coordination among people around the world. I fell away [from the game] in 2006, but it still breaks my heart a little that it's coming to an end."