Organ Trail | Free Online Zombie Game

Are you and your family ready for a zombie onslaught? Do you know how to prioritize so that you survive when the brain munching hordes are on the rise? Organ Trail is a game from Many Hats that aims to teach children and adults about the necessary skills to survive a zombie invasion.

I was overcome with glee when I saw the game load, mostly because the graphics look like they were slammed together by someone with a perm and MC Hammer harem pants. This game is so retro it makes endless re-runs of 'Friends' look current. That doesn't bother me however. I started gaming in the late 80's with Carmen Sandeigo, so bad graphics make me nostalgic rather than annoyed.

So here's the premise of the game, in a pixel nut shell. Because Washington D.C has fallen to Zombies, it is being nuked out of existence, depending on when you decide to leave the city, you have a a day or two to gather supplies. You must decide what supplies you will gather the most. Do you need more money, or more food? How important is ammunition? Are medpacks any use in a zombie invasion?

Once you've made these decisions, you'll be free to leave the city, which promptly goes up in flames. I was surprised that one of my crew managed to get themselves bitten by a zombie whilst in our trusty station wagon.

Unfortunately for Organ Trail, the main aim of the game appears to have been rather corrupted by the fact that basic zombie facts are ignored in the game mechanics. For instance, after Tracy was bitten, I went to my status screen to collect some ammo with which to put her out of her misery. After all, as we all know, once a zombie bites you, you are an infected liability who will eventually start gnawing on other members of the group. Imagine my surprise when just a couple of hours of rest appeared to cure Tracy of her affliction. (I later found out that according to the lore of Organ Trail, getting bitten 'doesn't matter'. Cue my face of disapproval.)

Other strange inconsistencies also pop up, for example, when I left Washington DC, a city about to be nuked because of zombies, the zombie activity was 'low', when I got to Pittsburgh, somehow the activity was now 'Medium'. Looks like someone nuked the wrong city.

Throughout the game, you need to deal with various scenarios. In these scenarios, zombies start displaying an interesting array of behaviors not previously encountered in other zombie lore. Indeed, the game occasionally describes small mobs of zombies as 'placid'.

We fought our way through quite a sizable horde of zombies 'without incident' and got back on the road. Again, weird things happened as we were driving, the game reported that Bob had simply wandered off. How Bob managed to wander off whilst driving at 60 mph is beyond me.

Though a great deal of the game is simply menu selection, there are some interesting and unexpected encounters in which you will have to use your space bar pressing skills to ward off zombies. You have been warned.

So, long story short Organ Trail is still a game in development, and this means glitches. Some players report being awarded ridiculously large sums of money out of nowhere (2.5 million, to be precise), and some of the scenarios don't make a lot of sense. Having said that however, this is a pretty charming, entirely free game that makes use of a lot of 'retro' mechanics to create an experience far more pleasant than being mauled by a zombie – which I assure you, does matter.