--- title: 'Zevaland Interview: Lead Designer on Co-op Survival, Zombie Mechanics, and Player Creativity' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=6zsDjGcnNTY' video_id: '6zsDjGcnNTY' date: 2026-09-12 duration_sec: 614 channel: 'IGN' --- # Zevaland Interview: Lead Designer on Co-op Survival, Zombie Mechanics, and Player Creativity > Source: [Zevaland Interview: Lead Designer on Co-op Survival, Zombie Mechanics, and Player Creativity](https://youtube.com/watch?v=6zsDjGcnNTY) ## Summary In this interview, Cecilia Pan, lead designer of Zevaland, discusses the co-op survival crafting game set in a post-disaster city. She explains the emphasis on player freedom and collaboration, unique zombie mechanics, and plans for future updates. ### Key Points - **Game Overview** [00:00] — Zevaland is a co-op survival crafting game set after a disaster, where players can enter buildings and interact with items. - **Collaborative Design** [01:28] — The design emphasizes player freedom and collaboration, allowing players to choose to cooperate or not, such as giving oil to other survivors. - **Creative Goals** [02:22] — Players can build bridges, ski resorts, or restore electricity, requiring teamwork and creativity. - **Player Creativity Example** [03:28] — A player built a house on a car and drove a bar, showing emergent player creativity. - **Weapon Assembly** [06:01] — Players can attach zombie heads to weapons for effects like stun, and use items like hard carbon to electrify other zombies. - **Zombie Transformation** [08:05] — Becoming a zombie gives you 15 minutes to return to human or help friends; if you lose control, you become a permanent zombie. - **Future Plans** [09:33] — After PTR feedback, they will launch a private server, but the public server will have a bigger map and more themed servers in the future. ## Transcript Smash everything, stash everything, craft everything. Zevaland is a co-op survival crafting game where players work together to survive a zombie apocalypse. Here to tell me more about the game is Cecilia Pan, the lead game designer. Cecilia, welcome! Hello, hello. I'm the host of Zevaland. Zevaland is a story that will take place after the disaster, about a few months. In this story, the city is still there, and every building in the city, such as the police station, the hospital, the convenience store, you can all go in. You can interact with all the items here according to the requirements. For example, you can pick them up or pack them or do some weapon assembly. Then we have done two tests. We expect to do a steam EA when we are in QE. Now, one thing that stands out to me about Zevrland in general is this emphasis on assisting others versus, you know, fighting enemies. It seems like you're much more incentivizing people to work together. Can you talk to me about that? This part I would like to explain more. In general, many game collaborations are developed to set up some fixed story plot or some boss to let players learn through the main character. What we want to do is to have a collaborative experience. The mechanism in this game is very free. Players can choose to cooperate or not cooperate. For a specific story, for example, in our game, the editor needs to work hard. When you meet another survivor on the road, you can choose to stop and give him a bucket of oil so that he can continue to go up the road. Of course, you can also choose no. So we hope this is a more free choice for players. In order to let everyone cooperate, we also hope to see this story not only for players to solve this survival problem. When players solve the survival problem, we also want to see if players can do something more awesome together. For example they can build bridges on all the rivers or build ski resorts between the high buildings in the city or find ways to restore the city electricity All of these things require more players to work together That really cool I love the idea that you are kind of creating a bunch of different systems that depending on how the players interact with them, you kind of incentivize that creativity. Now, you talked about doing two public alpha play tests earlier, and I'm just curious, is there any interesting stories, Any favorite stories that you might have had during those Alpha playtests? It's like this. I met a player by chance. He built his house on this car. He drove a bar on the roadside in the sunset. He and his NPC were talking about the guitar. He was very happy. I joined them in the middle of the journey. Because there are a lot of colleagues in our project team. They all like the late-night theme. When everyone is playing the game, they often ask me if I can put on my alarm clock. Now, like, You talk a lot about how you kind of iterate on these different design decisions and things like that. Tell me a little bit about, you know, you say Zeverland is a game with no limits. What are the kind of gameplay mechanics that you think best kind of express that player creativity and freedom? 如果不能进入玩家的背包,也许它能够被举起,然后投掷出去也会产生伤害, 那玩家除弃这些机制了之后,他就可以利用自己的常识去解决生存问题, 同时他也能利用自己的智慧攻克在这个游戏中遇到的所有的困难。 对,我们就直接来谈谈武器的调整吧。 你提到很多不同的系统, 例如它们的元素, 它们的环境, 你已经看过玩家的行为了, 那么,你会说, 玩家做的一些最奇怪的武器是什么? 在攻击丧尸的时候 当然如果你把丧尸脑袋打下来了 你也可以把丧尸脑袋 跟武器组装在一起 它同样会产生 比如说眩晕的这些效果 然后你也可以去 应该你去找一些 类似于硬碳机的物件 然后硬碳机绑定之后 它可能可以电燃其他的丧尸 诸如此类的一些 有趣的一些组合吧 那很厉害 一只凶猛的兽 我从来没有认识过 但是看起来是一个可靠的方法 那这些的选择,和玩家的创造性也会和车子有关吗? 有选择的方法吗? 我们可以看看这方面的探索吗? 就是我们的集装箱的所有的面 都是可以放置物品的 因此你可以像在自己家里的墙上 去装饰这个集装箱的平面 当然如果你需要载具 有很强的这个战斗功能 你可以放一些就是陷阱类的物品 放到这个载具的上面 那我有一项要求 如果已经在游戏中 你可以把一只残骸 放在你的车上吗 当然可以 我喜欢这个 becoming infected and turning into a zombie Can you walk me through that system How does it work Can you ever return to becoming a normal human You will inherit a lot of combat power from being a human after you become a zombie. But its time may be limited. You need to find a way to return to being a human in this limited time. Or if you have time, you may lose control. And then this world will leave a zombie with the name of your previous character. Of course, you can also choose to use these 15 minutes to help your friends do what you want to do. That's certainly one of the most clever examples I've seen of, like, the kind of souls, like, run back to your body and try and reclaim what you've lost. Now, that's really cool. Tell me about, like, the different varieties. Is it just going to be four different, like, zombie types that you can integrate into your body? Is there a plan to include different types of zombies in the future that you can kind of build on? And also, can I infect other humans? 现在想专注先把人类的体验做好,所以目前的话玩家是只有这四种选择。 未来的话我们会考虑把这个体验再做得就是扩展更丰富一点,当然也会包含你说的这样子的体验,但是也许是在EA之后的版本。 Now, we're just nearly out of time, but I gotta know, especially with people who are interested in how this game is going to evolve, if there's anything you had to tell your kind of community, is there, what do you have to say? What do you have to say about the future of Zevrland? After the PTR, we received a lot of feedback from players. Players really want to have their own world with their friends. So we decided to launch a private server. But we will not give up the public server. Our public server will have a bigger map. In the future, we will also launch more different theme game servers. We hope players can create their own stories and solutions there. Zebra Land is available to wishlist now on Steam. And for more on all things gaming, stay tuned to IGN.