Hmm. Some good suggestions I guess part of the problem is I’ve already had zombies in mind when I was thinking of the hunger. And while zombies are still popular I don’t feel they are right for me.

So, if I go back to what I’m looking for them to be role wise. Then the hunger should be an omnipresent threat. They are the main inhabitations of the ruined cities. And the idea is that the player will only have a few hours of relative safety to explore, gather supplies, and find shelter. Wanders will be continually pressed to continue moving while leaders will have to continually strengthen their defences and find other survivors to defend their shelter against ever increasing numbers. There needs to be a way for survivors to be infested when injured by the hunger. That way you’re not sure if someone is infected or not until it’s too late.

What if I scrap the blindness, and kill spot aspects and instead make them feral humanoid stalkers. Crawling out from the dark spaces, and underground tunnels. Twisted abominations that began to appear as a precursor to the collapse that ravaged the world. They stalk the ruins of the fallen cities hunting for people who fall through the cracks and find themselves in the broken earth. They feel no pain and those they don’t kill they infest with their black bile like venom, transforming the victim into another of their wretched kind. Leave no gap in your walls or basement left unsecured lest the hunger find away in.

Something like a more desert version of this:

with a bit of this throw in:



I’ll have to do some rethink about some of the creatures that make up the forsaken but I think by making them more creature like and less zombie like, it makes them more like something that could have existed elsewhere. I’ll also have to rethink the base building side of the gameplay as it one thing to build walls and secure the perimeter against a zombie horde it’s another when you can have creatures crawling out a sewer grate or hidden amongst the debris.

The other forsaken I was thinking of were:

Prometheus: A biomechanical monster created before the collapse in an attempt to weaponize the hunger. Their body is reinforced with a metal exoskeleton with a flamer throw and buzz saw where their hands should be. The Prometheus tirelessly pursues it targets and anything that gets in its way.

Siren: There relationship with the hunger is uncertain they possess no eyes and seem to glide across the ground. Their haunting song draws the hunger to them even out into the light of day where the intelligent siren can command her minions as a single entity.

Levitation: Almost nothing is known about the great living ship known as the leviathan it mainly roams the barren wastelands rarely coming near the fallen cities. It purpose and origin unknown but where it goes death follows. In its wake is leaves hundreds of spore that develop into a horde of the forsaken.

Patriarch: The great beast and destroyer of worlds. A monstrous entity over 50 meters high said to be the combined mass of thousands of the forsaken. More myth and legend then fact the Patriarch only appears in the final days when the concentration of life is so great and the forsaken have gathered in such a multitude to call it forth. Like the calm before the storm it is said that the forsaken will flee at its arrival and so great is the instinct of fear it exude that should one of these great beasts be slain then the forsaken would never return to that place.

So, I'm just spit-balling here and you might not like it, but here we go...

Just make them humans. Humans with a horrible, terminal disease that has a cure, but is incredibly rare in your waste land.

The infected could beg and scream for help when they chase after the player and tear away at them looking for the cure.
And this way, you get to keep nearly all the things you want!

They can be weakened by the disease to the point of having virtually no sight and horrible body aches that slow them down.
They desperately want the cure, so the go after humans as fast as their dying bodies can move.
They chase humans down since anyone could be hording a cure.
They group up at night for protection with other infected, making running into them at night more dangerous.
They might have open sores and infections on their skin, making them toxic as all heck.

That and I just think it would be more jarring to the player if they have to fight off these people that are pleading for help so desperately than the same old zombie parade. A bit more dramatic I guess.

Whatcha think?

If I were you I'd consider an evil scientist / gotten out of hand experiment / alien related mind control thing exposing very basic instincts (adds something to destroy as an object?) or something like HG Well's Time Machine Morlocks vs Elois where mind control takes place once again with some details.

I think biological creatures are kind of boring...

What about some fancy nanobot like matter that forms creature like colonies that can consume burnable stuff (and dump the wastes somewhere?)

As swiftcoder said, you have described zombies. If you call them mutants or something of that sort, they are going to remain zombies; narrative tropes rely on duck typing.

If you want the game to revolve around fighting these monsters, I suggest making them much more monstrously inhuman than zombies; extraterrestrial parasites or symbiotes deforming their human hosts might be a suitable excuse (which retains the infection element of a zombie disease).
Monsters with alien elements could have highly arbitrary body shapes (to underline that they are monsters, not undead people), unnatural natural weapons (like the "bugs" in Starship Troopers), unclear motives (more suspenseful than zombies being attracted to people), strange and/or complex tactics and behaviour (unlike overly predictable zombie swarms)

Nobody would ever consider to rename cars in a racing game to be creative.

When you build a new world, the reader/player need some links to connect his knowledge with your world. Having too many unknown elements always bears the danger to alienate the reader/player. The term zombie, in its current state, has nothing to do with its original meaning. Nowaday it is the short form for human-brainless-hard-to-kill-creature, so there're many variations possible without alienating the term zombie itself.

I would not take a new,unknown name. Personally I was always disappointed when reading a fantasy story with some new creature, but eventually learning that it was just a modification of creature X with a new name. The good meant creativity led only to an harder imagination of the world.

If you have so many parallels to zombies, then call them zombies.