All work
Hive Zombie poster. A crowd of pixel-art zombies on the left faces soldiers behind sandbags on the right, across a city road.

Game 01 · Unity

Hive Zombie

A game byJoshua Moonsamy, Liam Fullard, Ndzalama Khosa, and Kian Smith

Synopsis

You are patient zero. Bite civilians to turn them into zombies, and each one joins the horde that follows you through the city. A bigger horde makes the world fight back harder, as police and then the military arrive to stop you.

The horde is also what you spend. Use followers to shield yourself, heal, or pin down a target, then decide how many you can afford to lose.

Project brief

Hive Zombie was made for the Weekend Game Jam: Mystery Theme on itch.io, hosted by DG-Gamingstudio. The theme stayed secret until Friday, 16 October 2026, when it was revealed as Hive Mind. Teams then had until Sunday, 18 October, to design, build, and upload a playable game.

The brief asked for a small, finished game rather than a large unfinished one. Entries were judged on theme interpretation, gameplay, creativity, and polish.

We read the hive mind as a horde with one will. You start as a single zombie, every bite adds to the group you control, and that same group is what you spend to survive.

My role

I was the gameplay programmer. I wrote the systems the player uses on every run:

  • Biting, and turning civilians into zombies that join the horde
  • Separate hunger and health, where an empty stomach drains health and eating heals only once hunger is full
  • The horde as currency: a live count, followers that spread around the player without overlapping, and a best-horde record
  • Three abilities paid for with followers: a shield that circles the player, a sacrifice that heals, and an attack that runs down a target and pins it
  • Civilians that wander, then flee erratically when a zombie gets close, spawned in set areas across the map
  • Camera follow, the map border, the pause menu, and the game-over screen

Liam Fullard, Ndzalama Khosa, and Kian Smith handled the level design, the art, and the police and military enemies.

Tools

  • Unity 6
  • C#
  • Universal Render Pipeline 2D
  • Unity Input System
  • TextMeshPro
  • Git and GitHub
  • itch.io

Process

Hive Zombie in play mode in the Unity editor. Zombies follow the player across the map, health and hunger bars sit top left, and panels on the right list the three abilities and the horde count: 3 zombies, 2 that can be spent, and a best of 3.
Testing in play mode. The health and hunger bars, the ability costs, and the horde count are all systems I built. Here the horde has three zombies, two of them can be spent on abilities, and the best so far is three.
ZombieFollow.cs open in Visual Studio, showing the follow, shield, and attack fields and the StartFollowing method.
ZombieFollow.cs The script on every bitten civilian. It follows the player, circles them for the shield, or runs down and pins a target for the attack. Each zombie takes its own spot in the horde so followers do not stack on top of each other.