If tending farms on Facebook is not your idea of a good time, how about foraging for resources in a zombie infested landscape, and occasionally having to tussle with an undead denizen? If you're answer is yes, there's a good chance that you're into "The Walking Dead," which is even better because its the star of a brand new social game.
According to Inside Social Games, the aptly titled "The Walking Dead Social Game" has players first setting up a base camp and then sending out parties to search for necessary supplies, to help maintain and defend home base, while also dealing with zombies along the way.
Groups can attack the undead head-on via melee or ranged combat, and groups can either be kept whole or split up, so one half can create a distraction while the other tracks down essentials. Unlike the aforementioned release, this game will be more closely tied into the show. "The Walking Dead Social Game" comes out in April, not long after the second season's finale.
"The Walking Dead Social Game" is a joint venture between AMC and publisher RockYou. Development is being handled by Eyes Wide Games, which has developed similar Facebook titles for "CSI" and "Storage Wars. Readers might recall that this is not the first video game adaptation of the cult comic book series turned basic cable sensation. Telltale Games has one of their one, which we reported about recently.
Their somewhat spotty track record was and still is in question (as noted already, their "Jurassic Park" adaptation has been universally panned), so the Facebook release is one that fans of the comic and show should pay heed to, even if they're not into social games.
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Matthew Hawkins is an NYC-based game journalist who has also written for EGM, GameSetWatch, Gamasutra, Giant Robot and numerous others. He also self-publishes his own game culture zine, is part of Attract Mode , and co-hosts The Fangamer Podcast . You can keep tabs on him via Twitter , or his personal home-base, FORT90.com .
