Meet the Zombiewood team at Hanoi Studio

Great news! Our classic twin-stick shooter, Zombiewood: Survival Shooter, is back on the Nintendo Switch with new features and improvements.

In this Hollywood-inspired zombie apocalypse game, players navigate 18 levels and over 60 chapters, blasting zombies across iconic locations like Hollywood Boulevard and mansions. It's adrenaline-fueled fun!

And to honor their tremendous contributions to Zombiewood, we promptly conducted an interview with the talented team behind the game. Representing the team is Kieu Huong Giang - the Game Producer of the project.

This allows you to gain a detailed insight into the process that brought Zombiewood to life.?Let's get started!

1. What motivated the decision to propose revamping Zombiewood to Head Quarter (HQ)?

Giang: Originally, we were assigned to do a small Switch training project. However, upon selecting the game, our point wasn’t to select something that’s easy to handle, but we had a little big dream back then already. We wanted to do something really meaningful, instead of killing time. We wanted to create something really enjoyable, that at least the game team who’s doing it has to love it first.

Among all the researched titles, we found out that Zombiewood indeed was a potential candidate. It has super fun gameplay, an unsaturated market, strong nostalgic vibe, and most importantly a large number of players who’ve been requesting its revival in its Youtube trailer’s comment section for the last 11 years.

With that spirit in mind, throughout the whole journey, we had a strong belief that we were carrying the great responsibility of bringing Zombiewood back to life. And with that passion transferred to work, we successfully convinced HQ to revamp it.

2. Could you give us a brief overview of the revamped Zombiewood and highlight the main changes or improvements compared to the original version?

Giang: Zombiewood was a cool, but also super old title. On the front end, as a player, you can see it already has a lot of changes in terms of UI – UX, visual, effects and especially gameplay: with new game modes, new levels design, new camera, controller, new features and Bosses, and even its trailer & Identifier set.

On the back-end, the amount of work put into the game was even much greater. From updating the game’s codes and libraries to their latest runnable versions, fixing uncountable errors, bugs and crashes, to increasing the game FPS from 10x to 60FPS, fixing every single point that the game’s FPS dropped. Indeed, there were some points where we found super severe showstoppers that could block us for days and weeks, but I’ve had an amazing team, and they never thought of giving up and dropping the project.

So, if you allow me to brag a bit, I could proudly say, those incredible changes were all Hanoi studio-made.

3. What were the biggest challenges you faced during the revamp process?

Giang: There were indeed a lot of challenges throughout this journey, but I could share a bit about the controller designing phase for the game.?

Zombiewood is obviously a twin-stick shooter, and we had to put a lot of effort into finding the way to both satisfy both a casual player and not offend a mid-core one. It has to be a perfect design for a twin-stick game, but must not challenge ones with only a single-joycon. It has to be functional with four directional buttons, 1 stick & 1 side button, but also has to sync in function between all controller modes. It has to be comfortable and user-friendly enough, but still engaging and make players stay on the move, without getting bored easily.

We spent a lot of time and trials to work on something like that and constantly shared it back and forth with HQ to seek the final completed version. Now that the itch has been scratched, the result eventually lays there on the product which you could try!

4. Can you share any standout moments during development that showcase the team's determination or creativity in overcoming challenges?

Giang: To be very honest, all the moments working with this squad made me realize how determined, creative, collaborative and utmost one team could be.?

This is our first project as an old game’s revival, on a Switch platform, especially with a lot of creation needed to meet the current game standards. That means most of the experience was brand-new for us. And in order to deliver such products, we needed to involve a lot of support, numerous new members and recurrent communication with many other parties. Meanwhile, the deadline to deliver the project is already fixed.

However, that seemingly tricky situation made me realize I got so many gemstones in-hand, and they all are trying to do a great job in delivering the project.

Our Game Designs took a lot of time and effort, only to come up with a satisfying idea for one single feature, and posted a thesis-like message in the chat.

Our Artists dedicated extra time to deliver a trailer version three weeks prior to the original estimated time of arrival, so as to help the team catch up with our deadline.

Our Developers were literally unstoppable, transferring all the most complex ideas into reality, despite the fact that old game engines restricted us in all possible ways. The HQ team asked us to improve the controller, we came up with 4 more options to fix it the next day, and prototyped them within the next week. HQ handed us the idea of a new camera, and it’s even finished before we hosted a second meeting to disclose it.

Our embedded QAs found out the weirdest and trickiest issues, and even proactively asked the developers to fix them before other QA teams could realize if there’s a bug about it.

We also have an amazing Studios expert team who was always willing to jump in and help us cope with any stoppers in the way, even the trickiest tasks.

And it became common sense how they did it with self-consciousness and willingness, not because someone forced them to.?

I got an A-team, and couldn’t be more proud!

5. How do you plan to continue supporting and updating the game after its release? Are there any upcoming updates or events for players to anticipate?

Giang: Zombiewood was designed to be a one-time-deliver product, that’s why we went all-in for it. Neither updates nor events are planned thus far, but we hope players will enjoy the game at its current presentation, and who knows if good news may come in the future!

That wraps up the awesome article! We've covered all the thrilling details about Zombiewood's release, and after the big launch, the team went all out with a lively party.

Picture colorful decorations, delicious snacks, and upbeat music setting the stage for an unforgettable celebration. Everyone gathered to raise their glasses in atoast, commemorating the success of Zombiewood and the hard work of the entire team.

It was a night filled with laughter, camaraderie, and memories that will last a lifetime.