Ubisoft discusses how Killer Freaks became ZombiU
Ubisoft made the surprising announcement at this year’s E3 that Killer Freaks from Out Space had been transformed into the more realistic survival shooter, ZombiU.
Although the move was unexpected, it was well-received. ZombiU was considered by many to be one of the best Wii U games at the expo.
But what prompted the change?
Ubisoft senior vice president of sales and marketing Tony Key explained:
“We look at Killer Freaks as more of a tech demo. They came up with this idea. It was an easy execution for them to use the Rabbids technology that they had built to create the Rabbids, the wire frames, to create these very quickly, these little goofy creatures. And they brought it to us as a tech demo for the Wii U saying ‘this is what we can do with the game.’ And we all thought ‘wow, that’s really cool. We should show that to Nintendo.’
“And before you know it, it’s here at E3 as a way to demonstrate the new system. And as time goes by, we start to see that there’s maybe bigger and better ideas around this actual game design, and these freaks slowly started turning into zombies because zombies are much more compelling than these stupid little rats we had running around, whatever they were.”
Story design director Gabrielle Shrager weighed in on the overhaul as well:
“We were having a blast with Killer Freaks. The more we got into developing specifically for the GamePad, the more we realized how absolutely ideal it is for survival horror. The fact that you have to keep your eyes on two screens at once, it’s incredibly scary. It’s a perfect fit. You’re not going to fight it. When you’re trying to design for new technology and a new gaming experience, you want to go with what’s going to be best for that. We capitalized on everything we’d developed for Killer Freaks.”
