Exercise motivated by the fear of Zombies

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Zombies, Run! is an intriguing game concept that crosses a zombie game with exercise tracking. The developers describe it as "an ultra-immersive running game and audio adventure, co-created with award-winning novelist Naomi Alderma". Essentially the game encourages you to take exercise by providing a zombie inspired narrative during which you collect supplies and complete missions.

The exercise portion of the game encourages you to run/walk/jog by giving you missions to undertake. When exercising, you plug in a set of headphones and listen to the story (complete with marauding zombie screams), follow orders and generally get motivated to run that little bit faster. A healthy imagination helps of course, but if a zombie hoard can't make you run, then you're probably a lost cause anyway... There's an underlying narrative to the story too and part of the fun is finding out the back story and how events unfold.

During mission you collect supplies you are able to buildup your base (township), which in turn will unlock further missions. This game element is something you complete once you have finished your exercise, adding a further motivational element. Of course the app will also keep track of how far, and how fast, you've run.

Zombies, Run! ScreenshotZombies, Run! Screenshot

Marketplace description:

You tie your shoes, put on your headphones, take your first steps outside. You’ve barely covered 100 yards when you hear them. They must be close. You can hear every guttural breath, every rattling groan - they’re everywhere. Zombies. There’s only one thing you can do: Run!

Zombies, Run! is an ultra-immersive running game and audio adventure, co-created with award-winning novelist Naomi Alderman. We deliver the story straight to your headphones through orders and voice recordings - and when you get back home, you use the supplies you’ve collected while running to build and grow your base.

Zombies, Run! can be downloaded from the Windows Phone Marketplace. A free trial is available, with the full game costing £6.49 / $8 / €7. Although this is at the upper end of game / app pricing it's not an unreasonable for such an original concept and the 30 (40 runs) missions means there's a decent amount of content too. 

An updated version, 1.1, is due to be released shortly. Thanks to the support of Microsoft and Nokia it will include an additional 5 missions, which will be exlcusive to Windows Phone.

Here's a video, from the game's developers, which offers an explanation of the game concept.

Source / Credit: Zombies Run Blog