We’re already seeing zombie games that give you control over undead characters: in Dying Light you’re able to troll other players by taking over one of the game’s more terrifying night beasts. So if we accept that zombies are here to stay, what’s next for the monster who can give us everything except beauty tips? Zombie strategy

This week sees the release of sandbox zombie chiller Dying Light and later in the year we’ll get Dead Island 2, newer builds of DayZ and an Xbox One edition of State of Decay. Just look at the ever-transmogrifying Resident Evil series. Zombies also suit today’s epic sensibilities: they attack in massive swarms which looks cool on the big screen, and they are relentless and therefore easy to franchise. In the 1990s and 2000s, Danny Boyle and Marc Forster have used them to consider the lurking horror of global pandemics, with the zombie apocalypse becoming a handy symbol for bird flu and ebola. In the 1970s and 1980s, they were used to explore everything from Cold War paranoia to rampant consumerism, through the films of Lucio Fulci and George A Romero. Of course, as cinema has taught us, zombies can be endlessly re-invented for new generations. These senescent monsters just refuse to lay down and die. The past three years has seen a shuffling horde of undead adventures, from open-world indie role-player State of Decay to Popcap’s light-hearted blast-’em-up Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare. S o it looks like zombies games are here to stay.

State of decay vs dying light