Half-Life: Zombies Ate My Neighbours mod

welcome

Firstly, I would like to thank everyone following this page and those in the Phoenix Community Discord, for waiting so patiently, for this game to be made.

The Phoenix Project Software is a team of volunteers at heart. We take whatever free time from our personal lives we can to work on Half-Life: Zombies Ate My Neighbours. So seriously, thank you.

In this article, I want to discuss our roadmap to get ZAMNHL out the door. It's been in development since February 2020 (3 years, 8 months) and I'm sure some of you are eager to see what we've been up to.

story

For the past three years, I think our vision for the story of the game hasn't been the most clear to the community. There are some people out there who think this mod is still a 1:1 remake of Zombies Ate My Neighbors; it isn't. This game is an overly-ambitious crossover, and we aim to break expectations of all HL1 mods with this one.

prologue

The premise of Half-Life: Zombies Ate My Neighbours begins in 1994. Based in the utopian, supreme capitalist megacity New Roma, for-profit research company Roma Scientific Innovations has been experimenting local portal teleportation technology. The corporation's success has meant it can go ahead with the Orbital Research Program, where in this locale of the multiverse, Space Law doesn't exist. On the spaceship, Head of Bio Research Dr. Abaddon Tongue is micrometers away from finding a way to cure death; a pathway to immortality. After conducting one more experiment on a primate species, they immediately decompose, and become incredibly hostile entities. They break out of confinement and begin to infect the entire facility, creating an armada of half-dead zombies. After the self-destruct of the entire ship fails, the captain decides to crash-land, which would kill almost everyone on-board, in a deserted island on the Earth. However, an unknown force knocks the ship off-course, it instead crash-lands in a borough of New Roma.

Subsequently, the virus unleashed by RSI's Orbital Research Program, and their very own Dr. Tongue, has devastated not only New Roma, but the entire country. The World Order (WO) was able to seal off the entire country in-time, but no survivors were let out. No one was let in. The country is wasted.

After graduating high school in 1992, studying martial arts and participating in the army, completing basic & advanced training in 1993-1994, Zeke A. Jackson still lives in the country, surviving where he can.

where the game starts

Fast forward to 1999, Zeke has met and lost many survivors; including friends, love interests, and resourceful humans. This has left our protagonist in a horrid state. Zeke is a shadow of his former self, and having travelled the entire country, he feels he's near the end of his journey.

Upon further travels, he returns to New Roma. There, he meets John, another survivor who's been living on natural food & water, and turns out to be a former employee of Roma Scientific Innovations -- working in the teleportation sector.

They come up with a plan to utilise what's left of the company's skyscraper building to teleport themselves out of the country, and live somewhere else on Earth, where humanity is in unity for now.

And this is the basic premise for Part I: Grave that I'm willing to show so far.

release roadmap

As aforementioned with the part above, ZAMNHL will be produced and released in five individual parts:

1. Part I: Grave
2. Part II: New Mexico
3. Part III: Black Mesa Assault Team
4. Part IV: Alone Again
5. Part V: The Combine

I can talk in more detail about our current roadmap plan for the production of Part I:

By December 2023, we hope to have had at least a good start on the layout of New Roma.

In March-April 2024, we will have hopefully completed the first half of Part I.

In Q4 2024, I hope to be releasing Part I on Mod DB & Steam.

multiplayer delays

Usually, in August and September of every year, we release a new season update of Half-Life: Zombies Ate My Neighbours Multiplayer. However, we haven't been able to get as much work on it done in the Spring of this year, we need to delay Season 8 (v2.8). We will be able to release it at the end of this year.

And as a final note, I hope to get some sort of gameplay demo out of ZAMNHL in the near future, so you can all get a small taste of what's in the oven at The Phoenix Project Software.

If you have any questions, thoughts, or anything to say, feel free to pop it in the comments. We at TPPS would love to hear from you! Or, you can join the Phoenix Discord!

Thanks for reading!

Sabian - Director of ZAMNHL

Discord.gg