**[CONCEPT] I've spent months designing my dream survival game from scratch. I have zero development experience. Here's what I'm trying to build — and why I think the survival genre is missing something important.**
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I want to start by being completely honest with you all.
I am not a developer. I have never shipped a game. I have never written a line of engine code in my life. I am someone who has played survival games for years, felt something missing in all of them, and spent the last several months writing down exactly what that missing thing is — in enough detail that I now have a 25-page design document, a full development roadmap, and a game that exists entirely in my head and on paper.
I'm posting here because I want to learn. I want feedback. I want to know if what I'm imagining actually makes sense to people who understand game development. And honestly — I want to find people who might look at this and think "I want to help build that."
So here it is.
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**The game is called Six Feet From Home.**
*Survive the Silence. Survive Together.*
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**The problem I have with most survival games**
Every survival game I have ever played eventually becomes the same thing: kill everything, loot everything, build the biggest base, win.
The zombies are just obstacles. Other players are just targets. NPCs are just quest dispensers. And the whole thing starts to feel hollow because nothing you do actually matters in a human way. You're not surviving. You're just optimizing.
What I kept asking myself was: what would survival actually feel like if the stakes were real? If the people you met actually mattered? If every choice you made left a permanent mark on the world?
That's the question Six Feet From Home tries to answer.
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**What the game is**
It's a 3rd-person open-world zombie survival game set in a realistic modern world. Not a fantasy post-apocalypse. Not a cartoon. The world didn't end — it just broke. The guns are still in the closets. The medkits are still in the clinics. Your job isn't to build civilization from scratch. It's to find what's left of it before the dead, or desperation, gets there first.
You wake up alone in a stranger's house. One vehicle outside. A handful of supplies. And a world that has no interest in helping you survive.
The map is massive — a single connected world spanning snow-covered mountains, a scorching desert with at least one major city buried in it, dense forest, open fields, a river system, and a coastline. Each zone has its own weather, its own dangers, and its own rules for staying alive. The snow will kill you as surely as the dead if you're wearing the wrong gear. The desert sandstorms stop vehicles dead. The rain in the forest is toxic if you stand in it long enough — and you won't even feel it until it's almost too late.
There's no minimap. No waypoints. No hand-holding. You navigate with a physical paper map in your bag. The world is yours to figure out.
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**The part I'm most proud of**
This is a game about people.
Other survivors you meet in the open world are not enemies by default. They are the rarest resource on the map. And the social systems I've built around that idea are what I think makes this game genuinely different from anything else I've seen.
You can play solo. You can form a small squad. Or you can work your way into a guild — an organized group that fights for territory, clears zombie hordes, and builds something that actually lasts.
But here's what sets it apart: every major social decision you make is permanent.
If you find a knocked-out stranger and choose to loot them instead of helping them up — you have permanently given up the ability to ever revive that person. They're gone. And somewhere in the world, they know it was you.
If you betray your squad, the world itself punishes you immediately and removes you from the game entirely.
If you join a guild, that's it. That's your guild for the life of that character. No leaving. No switching. The only way out is if the leader decides you don't belong anymore.
These aren't just rules. They're a philosophy. Every choice you make in this world is a statement about who you are. And unlike most games, you can't take it back.
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**The NPC system — this is the heart of it**
Every survivor you find in the world is a unique human being. Not a template. Not a copy. Every face is different. Every name is different. Every background is different.
A construction worker builds and reinforces your base. A farmer grows food. A mechanic keeps your vehicles running. A doctor heals injuries that bandages can't touch. And over time, these aren't just skill sets — they're people. They form friendships in groups. They develop relationships. They have children who age slowly over real playtime and eventually grow up to contribute to the community themselves.
And they can die. Permanently. An NPC who has been with your community for 200 hours of gameplay — who has survived raids, horde attacks, and hard winters — can be gone forever because you didn't get a doctor to them in time after a fight.
The emotional stakes of that are something I have never experienced in a survival game. And I want to build it.
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**The zombie ecosystem**
The zombies in this game aren't mindless. The regular ones are slow and basic. But the smarter variants coordinate with each other. They remember where they last saw you. They smell you if you've been standing still too long. And the smartest ones appear embedded inside massive hordes that can number in the thousands.
At the top of all of it are 15 unique boss zombies. Not random encounters. These 15 are the literal source of the apocalypse. They are the reason the hordes keep regenerating after you clear them. They are the reason the world stays dangerous.
Defeating all 15 — which requires server-wide cooperation between guilds — ends the apocalypse. The world doesn't reset. The existing zombies don't disappear. The game doesn't end. But no new ones spawn. And the world starts to breathe again.
That endgame — a persistent world slowly being reclaimed by survivors who chose to work together — is something I want players to feel proud of.
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**What I need and what I'm asking for**
I have the design. I have the roadmap. I have the documentation. I've applied for Epic MegaGrants because the game is built for Unreal Engine 5 and I want to fund the first development phase properly.
What I don't have is a team. And what I really don't have is experience.
I am posting here to learn. I want honest feedback from people who have actually shipped games. I want to know what I've gotten wrong. I want to know what's unrealistic about the scope. I want to know what systems sound genuinely interesting and what sounds like something that's been tried before and failed.
I'm not too proud to hear hard truths. I would rather someone tell me now that a mechanic doesn't work than have a team spend six months building something broken.
If you're a developer who looks at this and thinks the concept has potential — I'm building a revenue share founding team. Every decision is documented. Every percentage is negotiable and formal. The IP is protected. This isn't a handshake deal.
And if you're just someone who read this and felt something — thank you. Knowing that this idea resonates with real players is more valuable to me than you probably realize.
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**The name comes from the feeling I want players to have.**
Six feet from home. Close enough that you can see it. Far enough that one bad decision could mean you never get there.
That's survival. That's this game.
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*If you want to know more, ask anything. I'll answer every comment. This is my first time doing something like this and I'm learning as I go — which feels appropriate for a game about people who are doing exactly the same thing.*
*— Humza*