Keeping zombie survival free to play

Free is a pricing model, not a promise

A free zombie game is almost never free of charge in the sense you mean when you search for it. It is free to install, and then it sells you the thing standing between you and the fun.

The genre has a favourite thing to sell, and it is ammunition. That is not a coincidence. Ammunition is consumed, it is consumed faster when you are losing, and running out is the exact moment a player is most willing to pay. It is the most profitable pressure point a shooter has.

Which is a problem, because scarcity is the mode

Deadwood Quarantine is built on ammunition being scarce. The armourer at the checkpoint hands out a ration, the ration is not generous, and every decision in the zone is downstream of how many rounds you have left. Do you push deeper for the higher tier of hazard pay, or do you turn around while you can still defend the walk back.

Put a buy button on that and the question stops existing. The tension in the mode is not the zombies, it is the arithmetic, and a wallet solves arithmetic instantly. You would not be removing a difficulty spike, you would be removing the game and leaving the zombies behind.

That is the design pressure any purchase system has to answer: what happens to the decision to retreat when spending changes the resources available? It needs to be checked against actual items and their effects, rather than settled with a promise that the game has no shop.

The same questions reach the rest of the city

A life sim’s rewards connect to one another. These are the things to inspect when a purchase is added, rather than a list of things Craze City promises never to sell.

Money

The city runs on earning it. Selling it directly is selling the outcome of every job, shift and run in the game.

Property

A flat is the reward for a lot of shifts. Sold for cash it stops meaning anything and the shifts stop mattering.

Weapons and ammunition

See above. The quarantine zone is a scarcity puzzle and a purchase is a cheat code for it.

Progress

Skipping the earn is skipping the game. There is nothing underneath it that is fun on its own.

So where does that leave the model

Craze City is planned as a free download for iOS and Android with optional gem purchases. The gem shop includes premium cars priced in gems. Describing that as no in-app purchases, or as a cosmetics-only model, would be inaccurate.

Our guide to mobile games with no in-app purchases still answers that separate question about other games. Craze City falls outside that category and is not ranked in it.

Craze City has not been publicly released, and a public release date is not confirmed. Purchase availability has not been confirmed for a public store release. Final prices and availability belong in the stores when they are ready, rather than in a development essay.

What to check in any free zombie game

Three questions, and you can usually answer all of them before the tutorial ends.

Can you buy ammunition, health or anything else you consume. Can you buy your way past a wait. And is there a currency you can only get with money that also buys things the game hands out for playing. A yes to the third one is the strongest signal, because it means the two economies are joined and the free one is designed to feel slow.

The rest of Craze City is a city life sim about jobs, rent and buying a flat, and the zombie island is one district of it rather than a separate product. If you want to be told when it opens, the waitlist is here.