Photo Courtesy of Buffalo Rising
During the week of October 25th-29th, the Buffalo State College student organization Campus Roleplaying, Animae & Gaming Group (CRAGG) held a campus-wide event call “Humans vs. Zombies”. Humans vs. Zombies (also called Zombies vs. Humans, The Zombie Game, or HvZ for short) is a live-action game predominately played at college campuses where players begin as Humans and try to survive in a story where Zombies have risen from the dead. The game was created in the fall of 2005 at Goucher College by students Brad Sappington and Chris Weed in Baltimore, Maryland. Weed and fellow players have since created an official website with rules and information for other universities to create and customize their own HvZ game.
The ultimate goal of the game is for either all Humans to be turned into Zombies, or for the humans to survive a set amount of time. Humans can defend themselves using socks, marshmallows, water guns, dart guns or any weapon that is deemed safe and appropriate, stunning the Zombie players; Zombies are unarmed and must tag the Humans to gain a kill and avoid “starvation”, forcing them out of the game. Safe zones are established so that players can eat and sleep in safety.
CRAGG deemed that only socks could be used as weapons; nerf guns made complications with University Police and local gun laws. In addition, any indoor location was made a safe zone. If you were outside for any reason besides work or school events you were free game. Players were given a colored arm band that you would have to wear at all times while you were outside. Orange indicated that the player was human while neon green meant they had become a zombie. CRAGG set up many activities throughout the week such as finding the hidden drop point to receive special items. One item that I found useful during the game was the cure card. This would allow you to either be safe from turning into a zombie if tagged or cure a zombie if they had been tagged in the last 24 hours. Other items like the zombie repellant allowed players to repel three zombies from feeding on you for five hours. It was used on most of the faster zombies in the game.
The game ended on October 29th, where the few remaining humans had to find a secret button around campus and stop the nuclear bomb from dropping on Buff State. The button went up at 3pm and the game was over shortly after. The group CRAGG said that they are going to try and plan a longer game either next semester or year, so keeps your eyes and ears open for the next zombie attack!
