Incredibly Strange Games

Zombies Attack Oakland

Is a Choose Your Own Adventure a game? I don’t know, honestly. That’s the kind of thing you want to argue about with Gabe Smedresman over brunch. I guess I don’t care either. I just like them, especially the challenge of trying to represent and track multiple states with only branching… theoryblahblahblahboringboringboring.

Anyway, if you’d been smart enough to go to the SF Zine Fest, you could have bought this. It’s a fantastic CYOA that’s at least as deep as anything Edward Packard ever did. Plus, it’s got two of my favorite things — Oakland, and Zombies.

Briefly, two bike-riding Oakland squatters, Raven and Jorge, wake up one morning to discover well… if you’ve ever read any Zombie fiction, you have a pretty good idea what they discover. What follows is an awesome Oakland adventure that features a number of key Oakland locales, like the Port, Mosswood Park, Oaksterdam, Telegraph, Lake Merritt, Mama Buzz Cafe and more.

The relationship between Jorge and Raven offers some of the best entertainment. My favorite scene in the book comes when failing to find Raven’s Doctor ex-boyfriend, they have to resort to tracking down Jorge’s ex-girlfriend, who’s a “nurse” in training at Oaksterdam University.

To those who say there’s nothing new left to do in Zombie Fiction, I give you some choice quotes from the scene:

…”But Kaylen is just so incredibly, unbelievably, f*cking stupid. She’s literally the last person I’d run to in the apocalypse.”

“Well,” Jorge clears his throat, “it’s a zombie massacre not an apocalypse, and she is, literally, the last person you’re running to, so suck it up”…

…At first Jorge recoils on instinct from Kaylen’s embrace, remembering her fondness for trance music and her short-lived career as an improvisational “womb dancer”…

…”You gotta be f-ing kidding me,” Raven says loudly as she examines the incense, Costco-sized bag of Poptarts and newly rolled blunts being handed to them by Kaylen…

SHOULD THEY FORGET ABOUT THE ZOMBIES AND SMOKE OUT WITH KAYLEN IN THE BASEMENT? [TO PAGE 26] OR SHOULD THEY TAKE KAYLEN’S WEED AND HEAD TO THE PORT? [TO PAGE 28]

The prose is violent, gory and descriptive, and the eight different endings all offer distinctly, uh, Oaklandish resolutions to the problem of a Zombie massacre. You don’t usually see Zombie stories with as much romantic tension (or zombie-human homo-erotic tension, to be honest) as this, and it’s a nice switch. Another departure from the typical CYOA is the use of third-person versus 2nd person. It works well with the dual protagonists, though.

There are some nice spot illustrations throughout the text, which appears to have been printed on a 20-year-old ink-jet printer set to “draft.” Still, that adds to the zine charm, and it’s still all legible. The copy-editing is extremely good too.

My only real complaint is it’s a bit West Oakland / Downtown focused. Zombies can’t come down MacArthur to Fruitvale or the Laurel? What gives? That’s a minor quibble, though, in an otherwise awesome adventure.

I have no clue how much this cost me or where it’s available when the Zine Fest evaporates into the clouds for another year, but if you are smart and want to get one, try emailing JETTISON PRESS at anreut@gmail.com.

UPDATE: Not that you deserve it, since you blew off the SF Zine Fest, but you can get it on Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/listing/57416861/zombies-attack-oakland-a-choose-your-own?ref=v1_other_1