We’ve been interviewed by Ayzenberg Group on our experience and expertise in marketing apps for Apple’s iPhone.

To see why we compare Apple to the Kremlin (which we mean as a compliment, really!), mouse on over and read the full interview.

And while you’re there, sign up for Ayzenberg’s [a]list daily news … it is a vital part of our RSS routine, delivering news about games and game advertising to us each and every day.

A million is undeniably a milestone and so today we note that sometime in the past two weeks, FaceFighter passed one million total downloads, in all of its formats. If we’d been watching closely we’d have trumpeted our success in a press release on the hour of that millionth download … but … well … we were pretty focused on Zombie Pizza and Halloween so the big date slipped past us.

But think about it — a million downloads! That’s quite something for the little app-that-could from the scrappiest iPhone startup on the block. We are delighted that FaceFighter has found (and continues to find) such a wide audience, and we have all sorts of plans on the boil for everyone’s favorite picture-fighter, including an illustrated move list that will debut in our November newsletter (want to get it? Sign up HERE).

Along with our download milestone we are happy to report that FaceFighter has been reviewed by Macworld! The source-of-record for all things Apple awarded FaceFighter 4.5 of 5 mice!

Macworld says, “With great graphics, cool kung fu sounds, and a multi-player mode, FaceFighter is really entertaining. Add in the ability to create custom foes, and hilarity quickly ensues.”

And we quite agree! Don’t believe us (or Macworld?). Then purchase FaceFighter by clicking HERE, or download the free version HERE!

Thanks to all our many (million!) players worldwide for making FaceFighter into a hit. We’ll see you at two million downloads!

We made much ballyhoo here last month about a $25 iTunes giveaway for joining our mailing list. Earlier this week, amid much secrecy, we drew four names off of our mailing list and figured all that remained was to make four members of the Appy Army happy with their gift cards.

Simple, right?

Ah, but as Carl von Clausewitz told us, “Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war.”

For the above quote, substitute “software development” for war … or in this specific case, substitute “marketing of software development” for war.

von Clausewitz

We’re babbling.

OK, here’s what’s going on.

Our winners came from Brazil, Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Awesome! We love our international players. But … Apple apparently doesn’t allow us to purchase iTunes Gift Cards or codes for any store but the one where we’re registered (the United States). So, getting codes to our international winners has been one of those simple things that has accumulated von Clausewitz’s inconceivable friction.

And it is not just the major issue of international payments that is vexing us. Turns out that for on-line certificates, Apple only permits denominations divisible by ten … so we can’t actually award a $25 certificate. Instead, it just became $30 USD. Ah, well, more love for our players, that’s fine. But only two of the four winners have actually contacted us to verify their email addresses! So to our German and British winners … write us back! We have a prize for you (provided we can figure how to send it out of the country).

All of which is our problem, and not yours, and we sincerely apologize for the delay in awarding prizes. We’ll get it dialed in one way or the other!

But there will be some changes for the December drawing:

1. The drawing will be for a $20 USD iTunes gift code.
2. The recipient must accept a U.S. code (many of our overseas friends have already set up accounts in the U.S. iTunes store).
3. We will draw five names, rather than four, for the December drawing.

We’re sorry for the inconvenience this will cause our international players, but at this hour we really don’t see a way around the way Apple handles international iTunes gifts. If anyone out there has any insight or work-arounds for us, we’re all ears!

Thanks!

(And if you want to sign up for our goofy list, click HERE … but please be a resident of our solar system, it is so much easier that way).

Today is Halloween, which besides being our favorite holiday, marks the first birthday of Appy Entertainment.

We’d like to thank all of our friends, family, and the loyal Appy Army for affording us their warm support this past year. We hope you’ve enjoyed our games, and our antics here in this blog and on Twitter. This last year has been the time of our lives.

Have a safe holiday, and we’ll see you next week as we begin Year Two of the Appy Era!

We’ve done our fair share of promoting zombies this month, positioning them as fun for the whole family in the form of our latest game, Zombie Pizza. We even went so far as to publish a roundtable asking if our pop culture has gone too far in taking the horror out of the walking dead. With zombies atop the box office and the best seller lists, it should surprise no one to learn that zombies are just as hot with teens and tweeners as with their developmentally-arrested parents. To zero-in on what makes zombies so damn cool, we went to the source — our resident (almost) teenager, Miles O’Connor.

Miles, the zombie-hunter

The son of Appy co-founder Paul O’Connor, Miles probably never had a chance at a normal life. Burdened by the nerd gene, and raised around videogames all his life, Miles was bound to grow up bent. But even the most ardent supporters of environment over heredity as the determining factor in personality would have to admit that Miles is unusually attracted to horror and the undead, even for someone of his geeky bloodline.

We caught up with Miles after he returned from seeing Zombieland with his old man (who won’t be winning Father of the Year any time soon, we know).

APPY: So, what did you think of Zombieland?

MILES: I’m very happy about it, it was more than I expected and I want to immediately go back and see it again.

APPY: To give us some context, tell us what other zombie pictures you’ve seen.

MILES: The Evil Dead series, Shaun of the Dead, I Am Legend … what else?

APPY: I Am Legend was without approval, by the way. You’ve seen the original Night of the Living Dead. No way would we turn you loose on these deconstructed zombie pictures without first seeing the original.

MILES: Ok, there you go.

APPY: Where does Zombieland rank for you?

MILES: I’d give it a ten out of ten. That was the best. I liked the way they kill zombies in the film. I liked the way he (Tallahassee) opens the car door on the zombie as he drives by, the way they hit zombies with golf clubs.

APPY: Can’t say I remember golf clubs, but if you say so … think was that an homage to Shaun of the Dead getting loose with a cricket bat?

Shaun faces a sticky wicket

(warning … Shaun of the Dead spoilers follow below)

MILES: It reminded me of Shaun. They obviously watched Shaun along with a couple other movies before they started directing.

APPY: This zombie business obviously isn’t scaring you … in the picture today, you were squirming and cheering like you were on a thrill ride. What is it about zombies that you find so fun?

MILES: I like the panic that they spread to people, and the way they act … the chasing and they won’t stop unless given a sudden blow to the head.

APPY: Why, you little … in our day, blows to the head were confined to the Three Stooges. Don’t you feel bad when zombies get killed? They used to be people.

MILES: Nah. I’d feel bad if it was an innocent person getting killed in the middle of changing into a zombie, but once they go bad, I like watching them get hurt.

APPY: Do they really get hurt?

MILES: No I don’t think so. Zombies don’t really feel anything.

APPY: Ever seen a zombie that seemed to have feelings?

MILES: Well, I don’t think I’ve seen any zombie movies where they build up a zombie relationship.

APPY: I guess you haven’t seen Day of the Dead yet –

MILES: You won’t let me!

Bub, from Day of the Dead … a thinking man’s zombie

APPY: — you’re not missing much, it’s not Master Romero’s strongest film — but in that picture, “Bub” definitely has feelings. What about Shaun of the Dead’s friend? At the end of the picture?

MILES: Yeah, that changes my feelings.

APPY: What’s different?

MILES: It’s because they build up a relationship between Shaun and Ed, but the joke is when he’s a zombie, he still acts the same as when he was alive.

APPY: I think the subtext of Shaun of the Dead is that we’re all zombies. Shaun’s life before the zombie attack was a kind of living death, to be sure. But for all that it was comedic, Shaun of the Dead has some dark, dark moments. Didn’t you feel bad when Shaun’s mother turned undead?

MILES: Of course I feel bad, I feel bad for when she turns and when she gets shot, but if she was out in the zombie crowd for an hour and then she came back I wouldn’t feel bad becaushe she’s a zombie already. Like when Pete, Shaun’s roomate changes, you don’t mind, it’s fun when he gets shot.

APPY: Now wait a second. We build up a relationship with Pete just like we do with Shaun’s mother. Why is it funny to see him change, but not funny when the mother changes?

MILES: Pete’s sort of yells at Shaun and criticizes him, so I guess that when he gets shot, he’s the guy that’s always chattermouthing, so it’s kind of fun. When he dies you’re kind of relieved.

APPY: Remind us to point your future college roommate toward this blog.

APPY: All right, let’s talk about Left 4 Dead. When we saw this game rolling out at PAX last year, it looked like a sharp little zombie shooter, but we had no idea it would become a daily obsession for you. Don’t you feel the slightest bit of remorse gunning down all those people?

MILES: I don’t feel bad for them because it’s a video game. The zombies look really great, but if you look carefully, some of them are the same. I don’t feel bad about it in Left 4 Dead because you never knew those people before they turned. I wish you could have your survivors turn undead when they die, but they didn’t do that in the game, which is why I curse them. I guess I should write a letter.

APPY: You just did. But it isn’t just zombie games where you kill lots of people. You’ve blasted a whole Reich’s-worth of Nazis to death in Call of Duty.

MILES: They do terrible things, don’t they deserve it?

APPY: You tell me. What’s the dividing line?

MILES: In a game like Grand Theft Auto, you’re just killing random people.

APPY: You’ve never played Grand Theft Auto.

MILES: I’ve played Crackdown, that’s about the same. And Destroy All Humans. I kind of feel bad because you’re electrifying people in that game, but they obviously don’t want you to feel bad for killing humans. When there are only three kinds of humans and they all look the same, you don’t feel bad for them when they die.

APPY: Is it a question of identity?

MILES: In a video game, they don’t have personality. They’re just zombies, they’re all the same, they all think the same way.

APPY: By the way, which is your favorite zombie videogame — Left 4 Dead or Zombie Pizza?

Zombie Pizza, for iPhone & iPod Touch

MILES: Left 4 Dead.

APPY: You little bastard. Zombie Pizza puts food on your table!

MILES: You taught me not to lie, Dad.

APPY: We’re not “Dad” here, remember? It’s Appy!

Miles, the zombie … with a shirt from Nightshade

APPY: What are the essential elements of a zombie movie?

MILES: Terror, in every zombie movie, but they didn’t really have that in Zombieland. The intense feeling of the zombies being outside and you can’t escape from wherever you are, zombies banging on the window and coming through the door. The intense feeling that you’re not immune to the infection so you can be infected that easily. You feel threatened by the thought that just being scratched can make you change.

APPY: Do you worry about changing into something or getting sick?

MILES: If I get the flu or something I’m happy because I get to stay home from school. But I don’t think there’s a z-virus out there yet.

APPY: Let’s talk about how zombie movies have changed. What do you remember about Night of the Living Dead?

MILES: I remember conflict.

APPY: What kind?

MILES: Arguments. The people were arguing. Didn’t have those kind of arguments in Zombieland, it was a little more about the zombies.

APPY: George Romero always used his zombie movies to tell us something about ourselves, and our attitudes toward each other. His movies are about how close we are to a total breakdown in civilization.

MILES: That’s like the message, right?

APPY: What’s the message of these new movies, like Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland?

MILES: Shaun was practically a human zombie until he had to start fighting them. The meaning of Zombieland … probably, I’m guessing, I don’t know, was there a message of Zombieland or was it just a movie?

APPY: Wasn’t it about trust and family and love? Appreciating the little things?

MILES: Yeah, in Zombieland they learn to trust each other.

APPY: What about consumerism? The need for things, the owning of things? Is this part of any of these films?

MILES: Twinkies. Yeah, Twinkies.

Twinkies … the ultimate treasure of Zombieland

APPY: Well, not quite what we were thinking. At one point in Zombieland, they’re in this expensive mansion full of cool stuff, but they just leave it. They also bust up a trading post full of stuff.

MILES: They decided they just needed to, they were probably stressed. Sometimes tipping things over can be fun.

APPY: But don’t people spend all their time trying to get those things?

MILES: Things they don’t need, yeah.

APPY: How about Dawn of the Dead? The heroes hole up in a shopping mall full of the things they most wanted when they were alive, but now …

MILES: Can I see Dawn of the Dead? I really want to see that.

APPY: No, not yet.

Dawn of the Dead told us what we already knew — shopping malls are full of zombies

APPY: So do zombie movies somehow ask us what it means to be human? Just being alive, being hungry, wanting things … is that what’s important in life? Because sometimes it seems that’s all we do. But when the apocalypse comes, it doesn’t mean anything any more.

MILES: It’s time to let go of all that and just survive. It probably means take what you need, don’t take what you want.

APPY: Maybe we don’t need the end of the world to decide that makes sense, right?

MILES: I guess.

APPY: So these new zombie movies almost make it seem fun to survive the end of the world?

MILES: Yes, it looks like a lot of fun. I’d love to just go and whack zombies, that would be fun.

cutting loose in Zombieland

MILES: They don’t treat it seriously. They were just trying to have fun and that’s why I liked it.

APPY: But what about the infection and the loved ones turning and the fear and the mass deaths?

MILES: You think too much, Dad. Lighten up, it’s not like Zombie Pizza is some big serious zombie game you know.

APPY: Go to bed, Miles!

Have zombies become too mainstream? Has the horror gone out of the undead?

Several weeks ago, Privateer Press man of mystery and Militant Optimist Matt Wilson visited the Secret Worldwide Headquarters of Appy Entertainment, and as you might expect, we got to drinking and the conversation soon turned to zombies and the living dead. With Zombie Pizza making waves and Halloween fast upon us, we thought it time to publish our transcript of that boozy, three-way conversation …

PAUL: Hey Ulm, how come you like the undead but you’re such a goddamn pussy about zombie movies? I mean, I had to bind you to the chair with duct tape to make you watch 28 Days Later. Yet you’ve created Dead Clown Comics, a angst-ridden teenage undead superhero named Ghoul for Ultraforce, you co-created the vampire lord Rune with Barry Windsor-Smith, then there’s Jericho Cross from Darkwatch … and now Zombie Pizza. WTF? Does this all stem from getting your wires crossed by watching An American Werewolf in London … did that potent brew of coming-of-age story, undead best friend, and oversexed Jenny Agutter just mess you up for all time, or what?

Nurse Jenny

ULM: First off, it is all Jenny Agutter’s fault. I hover around the whole undead thing like some demented moth around an evil green flame. The undead thing has always attracted me, but I faint at the sight of blood. I just can’t stand to see gory depictions of guts being ripped open or close ups of torture cannibalism. It freaked me out when I was ten and it freaks me out now. I don’t know why I can hold both of these beliefs in my head at the same time, but that’s why I’m an enigma wrapped in a mystery. I mean, I love to travel, but I hate to use public toilets — what can I say?

PAUL: “I’m A Frickin’ Looney” might work.

MATT: I’m with Ulm, here. I actually get kind of squeamish with graphic or gratuitous depictions of violence. That said, I’m a huge fan of all things undead, especially zombie movies. I think that zombies are such a parody of humans that the graphic imagery is reduced to over-the-top cartoon violence that doesn’t hit me in the same psychological soft spot that more realistic subject matter would.

PAUL: I suspect much of the success of Left 4 Dead is down to the fact that it doesn’t feel wrong to shoot zombies. Even Quentin Tarantino might get sick to his stomach killing that many Nazis … but the zombies can keep coming, all day long.

MATT: Are you supposed to laugh at Night of the Living Dead? I laughed my ass off all the way through.

ULM: I’m out. Too terrified to laugh. I was in for the “split dogs” in Return of the Living Dead, though.

Split Dog — now you know where we got that name for Zombie Pizza

PAUL: Matt, if you tell me your love of the undead stems from every artist’s careful examination of animal skeletons then I am going to pull your belt out through your throat.

MATT: I’m not into researching skeletons — you’ve got me confused with the world famous artiste, Farzad Varahramyan. I just like drawing all those skulls and gooey bits.

PAUL: C’mon, I want to hear the deep, true, sick reason you are in love with the undead. Did you pray for the return of your run-over dog? Stare too long and too closely at a bit of roadkill? Grow up as a closeted Iron Maiden fan?

MATT: Trying to trace back why I dig the undead –

PAUL: Heh. “Dig” the undead. Get it?

ULM: Shut up.

MATT: — my earliest relevant recollection is the 1963 version of Jason and the Argonauts. Jason fighting the skeletons was one of the coolest things ever and definitely made its impression on me. Not long later, I’d encounter my first lead D&D minis, which included a couple of skeletons.

Privateer Press’ Own Take On Undead Pirates

ULM: It always comes back to D&D, doesn’t it? It’s the wound that never heals.

MATT: … So my first encounter with the undead was skeletons. Of course, during that time, Scooby Doo was the cartoon du jour, and they encountered all kinds of undead, from zombies to ghost pirates … it’s all coming together here. I was a sponge, as a kid, soaking up all of these lovely images and themes.

PAUL: There is a skeleton pirate subculture, isn’t there? I blame Pirates of the Caribbean — the ride, not the cash cow movie franchise. I remember trying to assemble the old MPC plastic model kits from Pirates … the ones with the “zap action” rubber bands that were supposed to make them move, but instead just made them fly apart. I remember trying to force-fit a couple pieces by biting on them and having a flood of model airplane cement gush into my mouth.

ULM: That explains a lot.

MATT: Playing with the undead has been a great creative pastime of mine. The undead have been a huge part of our endeavors with the Iron Kingdoms/WARMACHINE setting. Indeed, our first books, the Witchfire Trilogy, were heavily peppered with the undead. (Spoiler Alert). The story is of a young woman trying to put the soul of her dead mother back into her mother’s exhumed corpse, with the help of an ancient and magical sword that raises all dead within a several mile radius. The first book in the trilogy climaxes during a festival called ‘The Longest Night’, a celebration of the deceased, analogous to our Halloween. Only this time, the deceased actually come to the celebration and mix it up with the partygoers, which doesn’t go over so well as you might imagine. The whole trilogy actually ends with the heroes lading an army of ancient undead soldiers against a foreign invader. These soldiers protected the land in life, and now they protect it again in death.

So, going back to the idea of playing with the rules, we had a lot of fun with the idea that the living would actually be saved by the undead, and all the imagery that came with this giant battle between a legion of skeleton heroes and the evil, living invaders.

The Cryxians in the Iron Kingdoms are another great collection of undead with a twist. Here’s a hostile empire, ruled by a giant, undead dragon. They use corpses as raw materials in the construction of their armies and war machines, fusing steam powered technology with bone and flesh to create some truly hideous things — and topping it off, everything runs on souls.

ULM: When we were playing Warmachine, I painted up a whole bunch of Cryx. But then I beat Paul’s Khador army and he cried and now we don’t play any more.

PAUL: Not true!

ULM: Don’t lie, Paul. It demeans us both.

leader of the damn Cryx that smashed Paul’s Khador and made him cry

MATT: The realm of the undead is a huge sandbox for artists, story tellers, game makers— anyone creative that enjoys the contrast of fragile, vulnerable life and the limitless and eternal power of death. There’s probably a great philosophical metaphor here just waiting to be penned …

ULM: There is. And we’ve found it. Pizza Delivery As Metaphor. Think about it — you make money by sacrificing life to the insatiable appetite of death. Really, there’s no philosophical metaphor that is NOT made by Zombie Pizza, which is why it is an outstanding bargain for $.99!

MATT: … there’s a malleability to the undead that allows you to do anything with them that you want from a story perspective. The core concepts are familiar — people already understand what a zombie, vampire or ghost is, on a fundamental level. And each flavor of undead has its rules — zombies only go down when you kill the brain, Vampires don’t like sunlight, etc. But it’s also acceptable to change the rules, or play against them, which from a story-telling point of view, is where I really enjoy ‘undead’ as a genre. The film, Fido, is a great example of taking the tried and true zombie sub-genre and turning it on its head; the story of a boy and his zombie — genius.

PAUL: Out of a desire to keep things on track, I won’t introduce Let The Right One In to your list of reinvented genre movies, except to say that it is brilliant and you are a Philistine for not agreeing.

MATT: And you are a port-sipping film snob. That picture was a bore. There are an endless number of ways to explore the subject, and all of them better than your over-rated Swedish fang flick. Lesser known fav’s of mine include Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive (originally Braindead) and a recent fun romp through a zombie infested town called Dance of the Dead. Of course, everyone knows the Army of Darkness. And the hits just keep coming.

ULM: He’s more like a Diet Coke swilling snob. Shaun Of The Dead is where it’s at for me with a little of From Dusk Till Dawn thrown in for good measure. And Zombieland!

Goreshade, another cheery denizen of the Iron Kingdoms

PAUL: Any comment on pop culture’s relatively recent re-casting of the undead as hero figures? Certain vampires, at least, are now seen as good guys, or semi-admirable anti-heroes. Are we so afraid of death that being a vampire now seems a pleasant fantasy … are we really that materialistic at heart? It seems all these heroic vampires have tragic pasts but bright futures full of romance and redemption.

MATT: Is it really such a recent phenomenon that the undead have become the heroes? Or is it just that they’re now being mainstreamed (eg. castrated)? How far back can we go and find examples of undead protagonists? Does Spawn count as undead?

PAUL: We’ve had undead comics heroes since at least the early 1970s – Blade, Ghost Rider, Swamp Thing…

ULM: Actually, despite my supposed hatred for violence, I keep coming back to the undead. Back in my comic years, every character I had a hand in a creating ended up being dead at the core: Dead Clown. Ghoul. Rune. I think what draws me back time and time again to the undead is that they have crossed the ultimate divide — only to be back among us! The very existence of the undead is an aberration against all that is natural and sacred and occupies this high place of tragedy — which, like you, causes me to convulse with laughter.

PAUL: Are you mocking me?

ULM: I love the idea of this weird juxtaposition: every character is better if he’s dead for some reason. Consider: a wise-cracking detective — who’s dead. A supermodel with a twinkie fixation – who’s dead. A teenage wizard — who’s dead.

PAUL: An iPhone startup CEO — who’s dead! Not that anyone cares or remembers, but the first comic book I wrote — Bones — featured a sarcastic, undead protagonist, so I guess I am with you guys.

MATT: I was an avid watcher of a Canadian TV show in the early 90’s called Forever Knight, about a reluctant Vampire trying to atone for his sins by solving crimes. (A vibe repeated many times since then as seen in Buffy, True Blood, etc.) That’s almost twenty years back. There were some helpful ghosts in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as I recall, though I’m not expert on that saga. And Frankenstein’s monster wasn’t really evil, right, he was just built that way … and misunderstood. Even Dracula was sort of a tragic figure, though I suppose not a protagonist at all.

PAUL: Dracula was the protagonist in the old Tomb of Dracula comic series from Marvel. Man, I loved that book.

MATT: When it comes to the undead leaches, though, I like my vampires like a I like my eggs: sunnyside up on top of a stake. (That pun’s for you, Paul.) I mean, come on, I enjoyed the first three seasons of Buffy as much as any other geek with a free hand and a Y chromosome, but I think we’ve really lost sight of the idea behind what vampires are supposed to represent when every teenage girl in America wants to date one.

Buffy!

ULM: Matt, most of the time I like you, but now it’s on. Buffy was awesome all the way through the sixth season! You just have to snuggle up with a warm fire and let your inner chick take over…

PAUL: Marvel was wise to keep Drac a mean old son-of-a-bitch in their comic series, and they kept it going for 80-something issues. Marv Wolfman’s take was that Dracula was aristocratic and proud to be Lord of the Vampires. He reveled in his evil. There was no looking back for that dude, no Hamlet-like monologues on the battlements of Castle Dracula.

MATT: Just out of high school, I wasted a lot of hours arguing with a couple gamer buddies about the idea of being a vampire. They thought it would be the coolest thing in the world.  I thought they were idiots. Give up the taste of good food? Never see the sun again? It’d be like living in England! Ugh.

SARGE: Oi!

MATT: Of course, the ultimate trap was, would you give up sex to be a vampire? Well, they both said yes, but they were late bloomers and didn’t have a basis for comparison. Otherwise, that used to be the coupe de grace in that debate … until vampires were reinvented with a raging libido. I blame Joss Whedon. He did smartly what no one before him could do, but he broke vampires for everyone, and since then we’ve been subjected to a slew of craptastic vampire media that has reached so far in an effort to be different that they have not only redefined the once bloodsucking spawn of Satan as emo-kids who sparkle in the sunlight, but have finally answered the question of whether or not a virgin-turned vampire would actually regenerate her hymen each time after intercourse. (Might be good, might be bad, depending on if you live in a landlocked state.)

ULM: Now, no vampire gives up sex at all. They get everything! For the latest in vampire porn, see True Blood!

PAUL: Maybe we lay the body of the heroic vampire on Anne Rice’s doorstep. She kind of defined the tortured metrosexual noble vampire with her books, and was laps ahead of Joss Whedon, at least until she got religion and started writing Jesus books.

MATT: My musing turned into a rant, but here’s the score so far: I’m down with undead heroes — what’s more tragic than having every reason for living denied you and suffering on, consciously, in a dead vessel that can never enjoy the pleasures of humanity again? But you do it anyway, out of some sense of righteousness, to protect loved ones, serve humanity better in death than you did in life, seek revenge on some wrong — name your motive. That’s good stuff!

PAUL: Good premise for a novel there.

MATT: But it reduces down to weak sauce when you temper the tragedy by giving back to these things what death rightfully takes away. As we said before, what’s fascinating and enchanting about the undead is the contrast to real life, the exploration of continued existence trapped in a state of death. When you let vampires enjoy long afternoon walks on the beach and make them better lovers than the living, I think you’ve cut the nuts off the whole foundation of the concept.

as mainstream and scary as it gets — soccer mom!

PAUL: Yeah, the horror of undeath is being undercut in contemporary fiction by giving back to the undead those things they should have sacrificed with the end of their lives. It’s like Hummers in mall parking lots, soccer moms on Facebook, and tattoos for everyone – mainstreaming messes things up!

MATT: So, can we just kick vampires out of the undead club? Clearly they turned traitor. Let’s stick a stake in them and call them done.

ULM: Resolved. But I’m not giving up True Blood. My wife likes it, after all.

PAUL: If vampires have been pussified, are zombies next?

George Romero — Old School Patron Saint of The Undead

George Romero still has a pretty unflinching idea of what these mindless, flesheating ghouls are all about … but we’ve moved on to Shaun of the Dead, Army of Darkness, Zombieland, these characters making Zombie Pizza (plug plug) … Have we entered the era of the Fundead?

ULM: The next frontier! Maybe Marvel will bring back Millie The Model as a flesh eating zombie and show us how it’s done!

Our thanks to Matt Wilson for providing images from the upcoming Warmachine MK II for use in this article. All Privateer art (which definitely does NOT include Millie the Model, alive, undead, or otherwise) is © & TM Privateer Press, Inc.

With Halloween approaching, Zombie Pizza reviews are popping up all over the place. You already know that we’re on Entertainment Weekly’s Must List, and now we’ve on the Huffington Post!

You can connect to the coverage HERE.

Time for an update to our irregular “What We’re Playing” series, with a focus on Appy Entertainment’s favorite season — Halloween! There is no end to the fine Halloween apps on offer in the App Store, and we don’t even pretend to offer a comprehensive or unbiased view of what you should be playing this Halloween (ahem Zombie Pizza ahem), but we can guarantee that all of these apps provide excellent entertainment to put you in the spirit of the season.

As much as Halloween has come to be dominated by drunken frat boys and nasty girls in nurse costumes (of which we heartily approve), it’s important to remember this holiday is also for the little guys. If you want a monster app that isn’t too scary but is still fun to play and has style to burn, then you won’t go far wrong with Flipn’ Monsters:

Game play is a variation on memory match, which is fine for the kids, and goosed-up enough to entertain adults too … but where this game really shines is in its production design, with plenty of stylish and old-school monsters on hand. Flipn’ Monsters shows the kind of pride of craft and attention to detail that marks the finest work from independent iPhone development shops, and it is richly deserving of your support. Check it out.

Flipn’ Monsters uses an iconic eyeball on the reverse of their cards, and Eyegore’s Eye Blast takes the eyeball theme to the limit. We’ve already enthused about this game in our Militant Optimist piece about co-creator Gavin Bowman, but the game is good enough to be worth a second look.

It was love at first sight (no pun intended) for Eyegore, but we’ve since found that this is a game with genuine staying power. We’ve returned to it quite a bit, working through the different puzzles, perfecting our bank shots, and learning the fine art of rocking the eyeball cluster at the end of the chain.

There are subtleties here that reward repeated play, so if you haven’t yet tried Eyegore’s Eye Blast, or if you haven’t returned to the game in awhile, we encourage you to give it a try.

A Twitter exchange last night with fellow app developer Markus Nigrin reminded us of how much his iSpider gives us the willies. This is a free app, and it has attracted its paradoxical share of hit-and-run reviews that expect it to be a hand-held version of William Shatner’s Kingdom of the Spiders (or whatever), but for our money, this app does what it is supposed to do — creep you out with a spider erupting from your iPhone.

Markus has good-naturedly joked that the scariest thing about his app are its App Store reviews, but c’mon — it’s a freaking spider coming out of your phone. Scary enough for us.

And since we’re swerving off the beaten path a bit, let us recommend another unexpected App that we’re playing with this Halloween: Classics.

We’re not afraid of Classics‘ nifty page-turning animation, or even of the havoc the still-unconfirmed Apple Tablet Device is poised to inflict on the book and publishing industry, but we do appreciate the Halloween chills contained within the covers of some of the excellent books Classics will put in your pocket. The Time Machine, The Hound of the Baskervilles, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, and of course those indispensable staples, Frankenstein and Dracula — all are classics well-worth rediscovering, and never moreso than on Halloween night. Give it a look.

Finally, you didn’t think Appy Place was going to make it through a Halloween round-up without mentioning our own favorite son, did you?

We obviously think Zombie Pizza goes perfect with Halloween, and Apple agrees … but we’ll keep this particular plug low-key (by OUR standards), and restrict ourselves to reminding you that the free version of our zombies-attack-a-pizza-parlor-magnum-opus (Zombie Pizza Lite) is now available in the App Store.

Trick or Treat!

Some people love Santa Claus, and some people love pussy cats, but one thing that everyone loves is something FREE.

Just in time for Halloween … here comes Zombie Pizza Lite!

Zombie Pizza Lite is the bite-size, free sample version of everyone’s favorite zombie-feeding pizza game. Inside Zombie Pizza Lite you’ll find three levels that give you a hint of what you can expect from the full version of the game. Zombie Pizza Lite is the perfect appetizer for iPhone gamers who haven’t been convinced to buy the game by Macworld’s review, Apple’s endorsement, or our appearance in Entertainment Weekly. It’s also just right for folks who like to try before they buy.

So tell a friend … and even owners of the full version of Zombie Pizza may still want to check out Zombie Pizza Lite, as the game’s final level (a kind of “graduation exercise”) is unique to this game and did not previously appear in Zombie Pizza.

Click HERE or on the button below to get your FREE copy of Zombie Pizza Lite!

Meanwhile, owners of the full version of Zombie Pizza can begin looking forward to our next free update. Zombie Pizza version 1.2 is being tested right now, and features both an “endless” survival mode and full Open Feint leaderboard integration! Our Twitter followers were treated to a screenshot of our work-in-progress … if you want to be in the loop for future sneak peaks, follow us on Twitter right now!

(And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter, too … the first edition of the Appy Insider goes out tomorrow!)

And just like Zombie Pizza Lite, it’s all free, free, FREE!!!!

Hard to believe it has been almost a year since we last did a Fridays With Farzad feature … but we keep Creative Visual Director Farzad Varahramyan so darn busy here at the Secret Worldwide Headquarters of Appy Entertainment that he doesn’t have time to talk. We remedy that with today’s feature, which is all about the art of our latest and greatest game: Zombie Pizza!

Zombie Pizza began life as a pizza delivery game, but after initial designs proved too complex, the concept was reimagined as an ingredient-matching game set in a hellish kitchen. The basic mechanics of sorting ingredients from a conveyor belt onto pizzas was thoroughly understood before commencing the visual design. “Chris Ulm and I decided to do the kitchen first,” Farzad says. “We whiteboarded it, and the finished sketch was not dissimilar from the first ideation. Which goes against my credo of iteration, iteration, iteration.”

unhappy Appy … Farzad wants to iterate, damnit!

But sometimes you know what you want right from the beginning. Sort of. There would be plenty of iteration on the way to the final design.

The play field was originally conceived as a top-down view, but Farzad quickly adjusted it to use forced perspective. “We needed to take it out of a very flat looking playing field using every trick at our disposal as visual artists,” Farzad says. “Perspective, in this case, being one of those tricks. Once we decided to go with forced perspective it made sense to be more cartoony, which fit the whole premise from the very beginning — that we wanted to make a game that was fun and funny and not too gross and bloody.”

While the scrawled-upon napkin that served as the first design diagram has been lost to time, the progress of the game’s main screen from whiteboard, through finished pencils, to final color shows that nearly all of the original design elements were in place from the get-go. The first design had four pizzas and a permanent special orders menu, while the final version would see no more than three pizzas in play at one time, and special orders limited to later levels.

Of the pencil sketch, Farzad said, “The only thing we removed was the splatter on the door. It was supposed to be the remains of a pizza but it looked too much like blood, so we took it out.”

Also appearing for the first time in the pencil sketch is a rolling pin. “I put the rolling pin in there as a background element,” said Farzad. “That inspired Chris to create a mechanic around it. I’m his muse.” By the time the final game screen was approved, plans had been hatched to smash ingredients with the rolling pin, and the pin had grown menacing spikes to suit its enhanced role in the game.

With the game’s main view locked down, Farzad says, “it was time to start thinking about the rest of the world. Where does this pizza kitchen sit in the world and live? How can we show what happened with the zombie apocalypse?”

“I wanted to have something geometrically simple to read,” Farzad continue. “I kind of went with the mid-century modern architecture and signs of 1950s diners. The sloping roof design and round sign helped me create a simple and strong composition of circles and triangles.”

But of course, something was missing.

“At some point we had to have some zombies in our zombie apocalypse,” Farzad said. “Chris and I sat down and really defined the tone in more detail.”

Although it was initially believed the zombies would appear only in silhouette, Farzad still sketched out zombie expressions and facial features. “After a few passes on the zombies we were able to zero it down by saying, ‘More of this, less of that … this seems about right,’” Farzad said. “Ultimately we didn’t want to have anything truly gross or scary, we wanted to have characters that were funny to look at and entertaining, but obviously zombies.”

The above sketch shows three zombies who made it into the game, along with several who didn’t. Of the ones who didn’t make the cut, Farzad said, “Some were too angular, or flat/cartoony. And there were some that were just bad. Most of them are in that sort of lite cartoony look and feel … it was just a matter of finding the ones that were appealing. Just because they’re cartoony doesn’t make them appealing.”

Ulm, Farzad, and Paul?

The three iconic zombies that made it into the game represent a peculiar cooincidence. People who know us well — our friends and family — have several times remarked that these three zombies are parody cartoons of three of Appy’s five co-founders — from left to right, the Ulm, Farzad, and Paul.

“I never saw that,” Farzad said. “Never, ever, I had absolutely no idea.”

Was it a subconscious choice?

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Farzad said. “I honestly didn’t see that, it still takes me a little while to see it, but if other people see that, they’re welcome to do so.”

To set the stage for the game, the team decided to do an introductory video. “The first storyboards were far more of a movie-style cinematic, with left-to-right wipes, intro titles, tracking and panning shots revealing parts of the zombie neighborhood, and ending on a push-in on the pizzeria,” Farzad said. But further consideration led to a briefer and more targeted presentation.  “After speaking with Em and Marc-Antoine, we settled on a multi-layered pan-up to show parallax and create an anime-style depth for the opening sequence. I just worked out that way. The game is held in portrait mode, and so we decided it would be a nicer reveal to do a pan up. Thematically, from there we came up with the idea of going from a graveyard with the path leadin up to the pizzeria.”

(Editor’s note — readers wishing to see the full panel used in Zombie Pizza’s opening pan should sign up for our newsletter, as that original piece of art will be featured in our Halloween mailing going out next week!)

“Creating the pizza ingredients were kind of a classic videogame challenge,” Farzad said. “We needed a multitude of small, iconic images that represent key things and clearly stand out from each other, thus not confusing the player.”

Not every ingredient made the cut for the final game. “I was sad, we had rats and spiders and a snail, too, and the rat was my favorite, it was the character with the most personality,” Farzad said. “But for good game design reasons we had to edit him out. My favorite design is the heart becuase I was able to draw a cartoony but anatomical heart, while the highlight is a valentine heart shape, superimposed on the realistic heart.”

The story for Zombie Pizza revolves around a pizza chef who has been bitten by zombies, and needs to train an apprentice to take over the business before he becomes one of the walking dead. “Chef Zomboni was a lot of fun to design,” Farzad said. “We wanted to come up with an iconic Italian pizza chef without hopefully offending anyone in particular. I was born in Milan, Italy, so I felt I had some leeway here.” Creating a zombie pizza chef was a matter of playing with a few core elements. “We played with the hat, the moustace, the five o’clock shadow, a variety of builds from thin to gluttonous. At this point it was an exercise of looking at the choices with Chris and seeing what people responded best to. The one we picked fit the bill, he was not too scary, kind of funny to look at. You can almost hear his voice.”

Victory! Zomboni offers the keys to the kitchen!

Speaking of which, where did that voice come from?

“Well, as I mentioned before, I was born and raised in Italy for much of my childhood, so I was a natural choice to be Zomboni,” Farzad said. “Those are real Italian words Zomboni speaks, in what an American audience might consider a stereotypical Italian accent. Again, without offending too many people, hopefully.”

Farzad’s message for his Italian-speaking friends regarding Zomboni? “Scusi,” Farzad said.

Our friends at Imangi Studios have already gone on record about the importance of a clear App Store button, and Zombie Pizza was no exception. “Initially I think we had a pizza with a slice missing, and a couple eyeballs on it. Another was a single pizza slice with a skull logo in it,” Farzad said. “The very, very first one was a full peperoni pizza with a skull in the center.” Ultimately we settled on a single slice of pizza with eyeballs, as it best provided the notion of “Zombie Pizza” (or at least, damn weird pizza) in a small image.

The Zombie Pizza project was especially satisfying for Farzad. “I was very happy with this because it was the first Appy game where I got to put into use some of the character design and environmental design and painting skills from my past,” Farzad said. “Production design is especially challenging on the iPhone. My canvas is 320 x 480 pixels, and it kind of forces the visual development to be as distilled and clear and to the point as possible. As a matter of fact, the ability to simplify and arrive at the core and soul of the design is even more critical in this smaller canvas (than creating for console games).”

Any closing words? “See you in another year for our weekly feature,” Farzad replied, pointing out that it really has been far too long since we took a close look at the artistry of Appy’s iPhone apps.

Ouch. He’s right. Fortunately, our next several apps are original games, so it shouldn’t be too long before we’re back to share another Friday With Farzad!