My current project: Spamocalypse

This was inspired by a throwaway comment around Halloween in which I suggested that somebody should create a zombie movie that replaced zombies with spammers. I then thought, well, why not make a game around that?

The idea is that you, the player, are trapped inside a spammer-infested server. You must escape by lurking, launching sockpuppets as decoys, and trying to turn on firewalls to set the spammers on fire. If the spammers see you, they will pursue you and try to spam you to death; death results in your account being compromised and you turning into a spammer.

I have so far planned five separate types of enemies:

  • N00bs: blobs of stupidity that just scream “First Post!”, “Me Too!” and similar phrases. Very easily distracted by sockpuppets and quick to forget that they ever saw the player.
  • Regular spammers: try to flog malware and other rubbish. Somewhere in the middle.
  • Phishers: they don’t move, but can snare you with phising rods. After being phished, you will receive spam at regular periods.
  • Compromised admins: smarter than the above, are immune to firewalls.
  • The boss: by far the smartest, quickest and deadliest.

Currently, I’m working on the AI detection mechanics, in particular the sound detection. This is pretty much new territory for me, unlike line-of-sight detection.


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