Zombies, Run!

This is a narrative running app, activated when you take your smart phone for a run. Players take on the person of ‘Runner 5,’ a scavenger in the app’s post-apocalyptic setting; their running playlist is sporadically interrupted by voice-recorded messages from other survivors, leading them to nearby supplies or warning them of approaching zombie hoards – so that half-hearted runners know that it’s time to pick up the pace. Narrative fragments are embedded between songs, and timed so that a story arc of 4-5 episodes will complete every twenty minutes, and that each subsquent fragment ends with a hook so the runner-reader will want to return for more. The narrative is locative but works anywhere, providing a fictional layer on top of an actual map of your surroundings where you can collect supplies and medicines, and where you must avoid zombies. The first season consists of 24 twenty minute episodes and there are plans for a second season.