Starting tomorrow, Zombies, Run! fans will be able to download a new eight-part story for the fitness app. That’s nothing short of a miracle.
In 2012, Zombies, Run! was one of the first fitness apps to find a dedicated community. A big part of that success was that it combined a couch-to-5K plan with immersive audio storytelling set in a zombie apocalypse. Six to Start — the company behind the game — was eventually sold to OliveX, a dubious purveyor of crypto and NFT products. It then fell into the same trap that befalls many indie apps and games after acquisition. A little over a year ago, all but two Six to Start staffers had been laid off, and new episodes of the game were indefinitely put on hiatus.
This is usually the point in the story where devastated fans try to mount a campaign to save the thing that brought them together — often with little hope or success. You only have to look at Supernatural, a popular virtual reality game that suffered this exact fate a few short months ago after Meta laid off the bulk of the game’s staff. But in the case of Zombies, Run!, fans got lucky. Cocreator and author Naomi Alderman bought back the app in November, and after roughly six months, Zombies, Run! is kicking off a new era aptly titled “Back from the dead.”
“That was the feeling I came to. I was just like, ‘I don’t want to let my thing die, and also I really care about my players,’” Alderman tells The Verge, noting that coming from a writing background, it’s been a steep learning curve to run a company.
The new episodes will feature much of the same beloved characters and voice actors, says Alderman. She also notes that the game is going back to its roots. I got a sneak peek at the first episode, and without giving away any spoilers, that characterization rings true.
“We wanted to write something that is easily accessible for new people who haven’t ever played the game before, but also is still within the world for people who have played all the way through, because we have a lot of fans out there,” says Alderman.
Comebacks like this are exceedingly rare — and in many ways, Zombies, Run! is likely to remain an exception to the rule. Alderman says she partly benefited thanks to a clause in her original contract that allowed her the right to buy back the game if it were ever put up for sale. She also had never been bought out by the game’s new owners. To do that, Alderman says she gathered funds from her work as a novelist and a bank loan.
Right now, Alderman says that the Zombies, Run! team is necessarily lean. The goal isn’t to blow up, make a ton of money, and then cash out by selling to another company. Instead, Alderman is emphatic that the goal is to create a sustainable business that serves a loyal community for a long time. But even with the narrower focus, there are still plans to expand on the Zombies, Run! app. For starters, after receiving fan feedback, the game will soon introduce smartwatch support for audio playback.
“I think there are at least as many people out there who haven’t tried Zombies, Run! yet, so I feel like there’s good organic growth to be had in the player base,” she says. “We’re an apocalypse that’s about getting through by being part of a community and caring about each other. I feel like it’s a message that’s needed now more than ever.”
