An elegant weapon from a more civilized age.

By now we all know the number 1 rule to surviving the unavoidable zombie apocalypse is cardio.  Six to Start and Naomi Alderman have teamed up to give us a fun interactive game that puts us physically in the middle of the story and helps you prepare for the inevitable.  It is a running application so the mobile device of choice uses your GPS to track your distance.  It’s also a game so as you run you “pick up” supplies.  Later after you are done you can divvy out what you collected and fortify your home base as you see fit.

Whether you helped them with their Kickstarter or you drop the 8 bucks whenever you download the application you get 30 missions.  The first mission starts with a little background and you can wait a couple of minutes or start running immediately.  Either way it tracks your distance.  Most of the story is broadcast to you from the homebase radio station.  But if you get close to the undead you will know it by the sounds of their growls in your headphones.  Zombies, RUN! will pull music from your MP3 player but on the iPhone it only displayed my playlists (none of which were very motivating for running).  Once I made a running playlist I had to close out the app completely before it would recognize it.  The story played in between the songs.  The only time the music was dampened was to let you know you acquired some items for the base.  So I suppose the missions could last longer if you had longer songs on your playlist.

The official site mentions some updates that I thought should have been included in the launch.  After my mission was over I could not see how long I was ran.  I wanted to know how long and how fast (slow) I was running.  But they are working on it.  Six to Start is also planning on adding distance/time notifications along with a total for calories burned.  As long as they push some updates soon it won’t be a big deal.  You can tell that this application was made with the focus of storytelling/gaming over being a great running app.  That’s fine by me.  

I haven’t been running since last September and have a BMI of 27+.  Rest assured I’m not a fitness guru.  But I definitely enjoyed this app.  And when I got tired and had to walk I instinctively looked behind me to make sure it was safe.  I suggest making a playlist with more serious music.  Don’t play anything light and fluffy.

The iOS/Android app Zombies, RUN! dropped on February 27th.