Corvick's Containment ContingencyField manual ▶ Play the game

Personnel: Who Is in the City

Two sides you can play, and a city full of people who are not waiting for instructions. Every portrait here is drawn by the game itself.

Playable

Containment · up to five players

Blue officer

You. A blue uniform, a pistol that never runs dry, a kevlar vest and one random item from the loot table. Everything else you find in the city.

  • Walk and sprint. Stamina drains fast and comes back slowly, so save it for the moment something is on you.
  • Your vest stops three grabs. After that, a grab is a coin toss between getting away bitten and turning on the spot. If three zombies get hold of you at once, you turn.
  • Shout orders with Q. Civilians you send somewhere go there. Send them into a building and they hole up inside it.
  • Bitten is not dead yet. A cure gun can still save you before you turn.

The outbreak · up to two players

Zombie dog

Faster than any officer and not very tough. When it is killed it rises again out of one of the shamblers, so the horde is its lives. When the last shambler is gone, its next death is its last.

  • Bite (left click): hold the jaws open and whoever walks into them is caught. Shake the mouse to finish the bite faster. Tap at a door to chew it down.
  • Roar (Q): two seconds standing still, then the nearest twenty shamblers head for wherever you are pointing. Every person you have turned yourself also brings one more zombie in from the edge of the city.
  • Acid (E): unlocks after you have turned fifteen people. Spits a cloud that slows the living, blinds anybody standing in it, and blocks their view. You and the horde see straight through it.
  • Transformation (F): unlocks once the outbreak has turned a hundred people across the city. You tear yourself open into something six times tougher that throws tentacles at whatever you aim at. A red circle warns officers where each strike will land, so they can dodge it. After twenty seconds you burst into a toxic cloud.
  • A corner map shows any officer a zombie of yours is close enough to see.

Containment · fills empty seats

Bot officer

A blue officer in a grey helmet, standing in for a missing player. Bots move as fast as you do, carry the same kit, loot houses, kite the dead, open car boots, call in radios and beacons, and shout civilians to safety.

Backup

The city's own garrison

Grey officer

Spread evenly across the city from the start, so no quarter of it is unguarded, and a few man the police station. They carry pistols and they are deadly to the zombie dog. A spectator can take command of them, RTS style, and have them build sandbag walls.

Called in by radio

SWAT

The first call on a hand radio brings a van, and a SWAT team gets out of it. They sweep the city as a squad behind a leader carrying the radio pack. Riot shields stop grabs from the front, and they slam the shield into anything that gets too close.

Dropped by helicopter

Soldier

Soldiers come down a rope from a helicopter when you throw smoke or call in a survivor beacon. At a beacon they hold a perimeter round the survivors, and one of them mans the gun on the roof of the Humvee that a supply run brings.

The city

Hundreds of them

Civilian

Every civilian is different. Some run for the nearest building, some for the furthest. Some lock themselves in and guard the doors, some hide behind the couch, some run to whoever has a gun. Couples hold hands. Some curl up and shake when there is nowhere left to run. Keep them alive: how many are left at the end is your score.

Everyone who did not make it

Zombie

A zombie still looks like the person it was. They search buildings room by room, claw through doors and glass, and pass word of a chase along. Shoot one and it may come for you instead. Six minutes in they gather into hordes of up to fifty that sweep across the city.