There have been dozens of zombie games over the last two decades, ever since The Walking Dead brought the shambling corpses back into mainstream popularity. Zombies are simply the perfect fit for video game enemies — slow, plodding corpses that relentlessly pursue the player. But with the glut of zombie games it takes a special something to stand out — and remind us why the monsters have been so compelling in the gaming space. That’s just what the Dying Light franchise has done, time and again. The secret sauce, according to director, Tymon Smektała, is to hold onto what works while pushing in new directions.
The new direction for Dying Light was clearly the parkour — an innovative movement that brought these games to life. “In Dying Light 1, you have a classic zombie game – where you have a weapon, zombies in front of you, and you need to take them out,” says Smektala. “Would you fight them, or would you run away and climb to where they can’t reach you? That’s why we added parkour, it was our way of pushing the zombie genre to other places.”
