An Introduction to Firwood Falls (and myself)

Hi there. My name is Jake, and I'm dying to share my latest project “Firwood Falls” with you.

I've been obsessed with zombies for as long as I can remember. Something about surviving after the fall of society and facing mindless but unrelenting foes appeals to me, and as strange as it may sound, I've always fantasized about the scenario. Of course, as with many other fantasy scenarios, I tried to realize it through video games. But I never quite found my vision of the apocalypse in any of the titles I played, and as a result, I've fiddled with making zombie games quite a bit over the years.

Firwood Falls is a passion project, and my most ambitious attempt to realize my fantasy zombie apocalypse. And this post is Firwood Falls' introduction to the internet. Until now, this project has been seen by only family, friends, and one collaborator. I think I'm onto something with this game, but I'm very curious what others think. It's hard operating in a bubble.

The game is still very early in development (I started this project about 7 months ago, in March of 2024), and as such, there is plenty of jank present, but I thought it was far enough along to start sharing. I'd love to gauge interest, collect feedback, and maybe, a little encouragement.

Your genuine thoughts are valuable to me. If you read this post, please, leave a comment! As a one-man developer working on this project on my free-time, motivation is very difficult to maintain--your help keeping me sane is much appreciated 🙂.

I'll let this first clip speak for the project so far, and dive in deeper later in the post, but remember: THIS GAME IS NO WHERE NEAR FINISHED! It's still just a prototype 🙂.

Firwood Falls is an Open-World VR Zombie Survival game with physics based combat and a focus on exploration and freedom of play. The player finds themselves in Firwood Falls, a small rural town in the final death throes of a zombie apocalypse. It features a day/night cycle and time based survival mechanics. This first video will show you what a day in Firwood Falls looks like as of today's prototype:

So, what do you think?

Here's another quick little clip that shows was sleeping looks like in the game (I was killed while recording the first video before I had a change to show it 🙂):

I've got one more video for you down below, but I wanted to discuss the current state of the game, what I hope the future looks like, and highlight some of the key features first.

Art (A Disclaimer)

I'm a programmer by trade. I've worked professionally developing software of various kinds for the last 10 years. Much of that software has been interactive media produced in Unity. I love Unity (most of the time). But I'm not a digital artist or a musician. The vast majority of the artwork in the game has been purchased online--things like 3D models, animations, sound effects, etc., were created by others. There are some exceptions, and I do modify some of the art, but I want to be transparent about the fact that I wouldn't be able to make this game without the assets produced by the many talented artists out there. I also use many frameworks and/or libraries in the game.

Secondly, and people seem a bit touchy about this, but I use AI as part of my regular workflows for many aspects of the game. Sometimes I generate images and modify them for my game. Sometimes I generate images and use them directly. I use AI to help me write my code, and the lore for my game. And on and on.

Take that however you like, but I felt obliged to be clear about this.

The Vision

As I mentioned earlier, I've always been obsessed with zombies. Romero's were the first to terrify me in my youth, and media like Resident Evil and 28 Days Later ultimately converted that terror into an obsession. There are a ton of great zombie games out there, but none of them really let me feel like I was living in the apocalypse. Many of them scared me. Many of them allowed me to explore. Many of them allowed me to survive. Many immersed me. Some of them made me laugh. Some of them gave me immense freedom. But none of them did it all. That's my goal for Firwood Falls. And that's why it's a VR game.

VR is an incredible platform. I've been playing since the Oculus Developer Kit released, and I've learned a lot about what differentiates VR experiences in that time. Some feel very much like games, and are very fun. Others feel like you're stepping into another reality. Like you're exploring an alternate world. Like you're not bound by too many rules and are free to interact with everything you see. These experiences are the ones that interest me the most, and I find they all have a commonality. Some of my favorite titles: Half-Life Alyx, Boneworks, Into The Radius--They all exist in physically based worlds, and they're all amazing. Conversely, immensely popular games like Fallout 4 and Skyrim, when ported to VR, were often criticized by gamers for not feeling like VR games, or for being clunky to play. And I believe it's because physical interactions with the world were not properly implemented. This made the worlds, no matter how amazing, feel hollow and fake.

While non physically based VR games can be a lot of fun (See Compound, or Beat Saber), I believe physical interaction is essential for maximum immersion. I want to be able to touch and interact with everything in Firwood Falls. I want to feel like the zombies are really there. I want to feel like the walls around me are real.

So I was determined to make a physics based VR Zombie Survival game. At it's core, that's what I want Firwood Falls to be. In a sentence, I want it to be: an immersive open-world physics-based VR zombie survival game where the player chooses how to play. Want to hunt down zombies and kill as many as you can? Do it. Want to disappear into the hills and farm tomatoes? Go ahead. Want to hunker down in a basement and hoard supplies? No problem. Hide in the shadows? Sure thing.

Something else I find bothersome about other zombie VR games is that they just, often, aren't very scary. They aren't gory. They aren't hopeless or terrifying. I want Firwood Falls to be all of those things. But it also doesn't take itself too seriously. It recognizes that, if a zombie apocalypse did occur, it would be in a world where bubblegum exists, and corny radio hosts crack bad jokes, and where people eat magic mushrooms or drink too much. A world where people once lived. Where every house belonged to a family with a story, where every street has a name. A real place to explore and survive in.

Core Features and Mechanics

As I mentioned, physically based interaction was incredibly important to me. Because of this, I've spent the majority of my development time so far making sure that interactions with my zombies felt real. In the video above, you can see that all zombies have active ragdolls. You can grab and interact with them, push them over, blow their heads off, pick up their dead bodies, or grip their heads while you stab them. You can bash them with a bat, or punch them to death. Shoot them with an arrow, or stab them with a fork. All of these features are implemented today, though they still need some polish. I'm quite proud of the combat system so far, but I still have to make enemies fully dismemberable, and give the player the ability to decapitate enemies. Oh yeah. A zombie can only die if the brain is destroyed! I'm a zombie purist when it comes to that, even for video games. Aim for the head.

I've also tried to make my zombie behavior robust. This still needs some tweaking, but zombies have simulated vision and hearing. They will pursue you for a while before giving up to wander again. They will go to the site of a gunshot to try to find the source. Some of them can run. So choosing to use a firearm over a bow or a knife could prove fatal.

The second most important aspect of the game is survival. Every second that passes in Firwood Falls, you become more hungry, thirsty, and tired. These traits reduce your max health, your stamina, and your experience modifiers as they accrue, so eating, drinking and sleeping are essential to survival. You can even starve to death. I'm pretty happy with this system overall. Aside from balancing rates and creating more food items, I think it's pretty much complete.

In the video above, you'll see me look at my watch often. This displays the time of day (duh), as well as your health, hunger, stamina, thirst, experience, fatigue and experience modifier. It also displays, as a red ring around the outside of your watch, your adrenaline. Adrenaline is gained by taking damage or killing enemies, and allows you to enter bullet time. Bullet time can be essential in making it out of a confrontation alive. Combat is difficult in Firwood Falls, and it's not always easy to hit the head.

Another really important aspect to me is immersion. I don't want this to feel too much like a game. I want to give people a world to explore and survive in, and I want them to think it feels alive (or undead, maybe?). For this reason, I've opted to limit user interfaces as much as possible, and to allow the world to expose itself primarily through lore found throughout Firwood Falls.

There's a lot more I could go into about this game, but it's getting late, and this post is long enough.

Here's one more video that showcases some of the weapons I have models for, but have yet had the time to make functional: