“Doom has come to Birmingham” reads the synopsis of Ocean Drive Studios’ upcoming zombie apocalypse game God Save Birmingham, but when isn’t it?
Announced earlier this year, God Save Birmingham is a zombie apocalypse sandbox game set in 14th century Brum with an open world that’ll make your skin crawl. With a strange plague turning the denizens of the city into zombies (usually, it’s monkey dust), the physics-survival game is somehow an even worse version of the city than real life.
But why did developer Ocean Drive Studios pick the West Midlands city as its core locale instead of something even filthier, like Stoke or (God forbid) Hull? As it turns out, it’s because the team simply saw how it looked online.
Speaking to PCGamesN, the South Korean game studio looked for smaller cities they could realistically adapt in Britain with the likes of London simply out of the question. After finding Birmingham and learning its history, it felt like the best fit.
“[The team] did another round of research to find a city that’s still famous, still around, and was around in the middle ages, but of a more manageable size that they could handle,” they explained. “During that process, they found a YouTube video posted by the Museum of Birmingham. While they watched it, they felt that would tremendously help them create the city for the game, and that’s how they decided on Birmingham.”
God Save Birmingham is currently scheduled to release in early access on PC sometime in 2026. While the game will launch with just a slice of the city, it will eventually cover the entire landmass.
