Zombie Survival
Move left and right, shoot endless waves of zombies, and grab better guns from the brutes. Survive as many waves as you can.
How to play Zombie Survival
- Press Start. The game goes fullscreen and wave 1 begins: eight zombies, walking in from the left and right edges at random.
- Move with ←/→ or A/D. You face the way you last moved and you shoot the way you face, so turning around is aiming.
- Hold Space to fire. There is no ammo to manage and nothing to reload — each gun simply has its own rate of fire.
- Clear the wave. The next one starts as soon as the last zombie falls, and patches you up by 30 health on the way in (health tops out at 100).
- From wave 2 on, every wave brings at least one glowing brute. Kill it and it drops a crate: the next gun up the ladder — or a medkit (+30 health) if you already carry the best gun the current wave allows.
- Walk over the crate to collect it. It disappears after about 13 seconds, so don't leave it for later.
- When your health reaches zero the run is over. You get the wave you reached, your kill count and your survival time, plus a result card you can share.
Controls
| Action | Keyboard | Controller | Touch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Move & face | ← → or A D | Left stick or D-pad | ◀ ▶ buttons |
| Shoot | Space (hold) | A or RT | FIRE button |
| Pause | P | Start | ⏸ in the top bar |
| Mute | M | — | 🔊 in the top bar |
On a phone the game plays in landscape — it asks you to rotate the device if you start in portrait. The ⛶ button in the top bar switches fullscreen on and off, and 🔊 opens separate music and sound sliders plus a controller-rumble switch.
The five guns
Guns come in a fixed order and you climb one step per crate. Each step is also locked behind a wave number, so the heavy hardware can't show up early:
| Gun | Available from | Damage per shot | Rate of fire |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pistol | Wave 1 (you start with it) | 18 | about 3 shots a second |
| SMG | Wave 2 | 13 | about 10 a second, slightly scattered |
| Rifle | Wave 5 | 33 | about 6 a second, very accurate |
| Shotgun | Wave 8 | 5 pellets × 21 | about 2 blasts a second, wide spread |
| Plasma | Wave 11 | 64 | about 7 a second |
A crate never downgrades you, and a bullet stops at the first zombie it hits — nothing pierces, so the zombie at the front of a queue soaks up the fire.
How the waves scale
- Wave n contains 6 + 2n zombies: 8 in wave 1, 16 in wave 5, 26 in wave 10. They also arrive faster — the gap between spawns shrinks from about a second and a half in wave 1 to well under half a second from wave 13 on.
- An ordinary zombie has 24 + 7 health per wave, and gets quicker and bites harder as the waves climb.
- A brute has 150 + 40 health per wave. It is slower than the ordinary zombies around it, but its bite is far worse: 16 damage plus 1 per wave, where an ordinary zombie does 6 plus 0.6 per wave.
- Zombies only hurt you while they are touching you, and they bite on a cooldown rather than continuously — so a single straggler is survivable, a crowd is not.
- There is no final wave. The game keeps escalating until it wins.
Tips & strategy
- Hold the middle. Zombies appear just beyond both edges of the screen, so standing near an edge means the ones from that side reach you almost at once. The centre gives you the longest look at both directions.
- Shoot the nearer side first. Turning is instant, so keep flipping to whichever group is closest instead of finishing one side while the other walks up behind you.
- Start on the brute early. It is slow, so you have time — but at wave 6 it already has 390 health, which is a lot of pistol rounds if you wait until it is next to you.
- Know when the next gun unlocks. Before wave 5 the best you can carry is the SMG. If you are already at the cap, the brute's crate is a medkit instead — useful, but it means the upgrade is still a few waves away.
- Collect crates promptly. Thirteen seconds is shorter than it sounds when the crate is on the far side of a crowd. Clear a path to it before you clear the rest of the wave.
- Let the shotgun work up close. Its pellets fan out, so at long range some of them sail over the zombies' heads. At short range all five land.
How it's built
Zombie Survival is one JavaScript file drawing to an HTML canvas. There are no image or audio files to download: the characters are drawn in code, and the music and sound effects are synthesized on the spot with the Web Audio API. Controllers work through the browser's Gamepad API, including rumble where the pad and browser support it. Nothing about your run is sent anywhere — there is no account, no leaderboard and no database. When you share a result, the numbers are packed into the link itself and drawn onto the image, which is how a friend can open your score without any server having stored it. The only thing kept on your device is your volume and rumble preference.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zombie Survival free, and do I need to download anything?
It is free and runs in the browser tab you already have open. There is nothing to install, no account to create, and the whole game is a single small script, so it loads almost instantly.
How do I get better guns?
Kill brutes — the large glowing zombies that appear from wave 2. Each one drops a crate holding the next gun in the order Pistol, SMG, Rifle, Shotgun, Plasma. Guns are also locked behind waves 2, 5, 8 and 11, so if you already have the best gun available at your current wave, the crate holds a medkit instead.
Does the game have an ending?
No. Waves keep coming, each one larger and tougher than the last, until your health runs out. The goal is simply to reach a higher wave than you did last time.
Can I play on a phone or with a controller?
Yes to both. On a touchscreen you get on-screen move and fire buttons and the game plays in landscape. With a controller, move with the left stick or D-pad, shoot with A or the right trigger, and pause with Start.
Is my high score saved?
No. The game keeps no scores, on your device or anywhere else. If you want a record of a good run, use Share result, Save image or Copy result on the game-over screen — the score travels inside the link and the image.