One peasant and his pitchfork versus the zombie horde looks to be the concept behind God Save Birmingham, the recently-announced survival crafting game from Ocean Drive Studio. With a short alpha trailer dropped this week at Gamescom and a recently-posted Steam page, God Save Birmingham will be a “physics-based” game set “in a painstakingly recreated medieval market town.”
The trailer shows a pretty normal-looking dude dodging zombies through the muddy roads and fields of a medieval village, all while armed with little more than a pitchfork. The big pitch for God Save Birmingham is that its mechanics are physics-driven, so you see the character stumble and slide around the world—and the zombies engage in some real slapstick stuff like tripping over benches.
For a lot of people—me included—the appeal here is definitely the look at historical authenticity and realism.
“Explore a carefully reconstructed 14th century Birmingham, in all its bucolic, bubonic glory. Stop by the Markets or the Burgage Plots to forage for resources. Raid boarded-up smithies for tools, grab a drink at the nearest tavern, and explore historic architecture at the Church of St. Martin in the Bull Ring,” says the studio.
Developer Ocean Drive haven’t been at work on God Save Birmingham for very long.
“We’ve been working on the game for only five months so far–with just two of us in the first four months, and now a strong team of six,” it said in a Steam post. “With a bigger team, we hope to ramp up our development to bring you the playable version of God Save Birmingham as soon as possible.”
You can find God Save Birmingham on Steam, where it doesn’t yet have a release date.
