Last week there were people running around campus trying desperately not to get tagged or throwing socks at each other wanting to be the last human on campus. This was the campus wide game of Humans Versus Zombies.
Humans Versus Zombies is a tag game that is played over the course of a week, ASG said they knew that it would be a fun way to bring students together when they decided to play the game after hearing about it from other schools.
In the fall, there were roughly 200 people that played.
“I don’t think we have had anywhere near that many people play in the last few years, if ever,” Robert Belgarde, ASG club leader, said..
The game starts with one zombie who is patient zero.
“Don’t worry, the first zombie gets a prize as soon as they were chosen to be patient zero,” Belgarde said.
This player gets a call after they sign up for the game, letting them know that they are the first zombie.
After that, their job is to tag other people creating a zombie army; “killing” all the humans by tagging them. During the week, players get special power-ups that can do things like bringing a zombie back from the dead, which is named “the antidote”, or stunning a zombie so they can’t tag other humans for a certain amount of time.
Charlie Erickson, a second-year student at SFCC, said he got a spitball, a power-up that lets a zombie turn a human by throwing something at them rather than tagging them. However, he doesn’t plan on using it, saying, “I used it once and missed!”
There are multiple winners at the end of the week that range from most people tagged to the last human standing. The prizes also get handed out during the week to the people or zombies playing, and players could get anything from a Barnes and Noble gift card to a venus fly trap plant.
People play this game for a wide variety of reasons, but Gabe Gwyn said he did it for the exercise, while Christian Deleon decided to join because he wanted to make friends.
There were rarely humans or zombies hanging out alone. One player proved this when four zombies grouped up on him to turn him into a zombie, and their efforts worked: He got “infected,”
After a long week of running away or toward other students, the participants were rewarded with a “zombie bash” where there is food, fun and more prizes for the players.
“We need more players,” Gwyn and Deleon said about future Humans vs. Zombie events.
Belgarde agreed: “Going into the fall, I think that is really important that more people should play. If you want to play again next year, go into the ASG office and be vocal about how fun it is and how you would want to join or play again next year.”