I was excited to try Rightsized Games’ new management sim, Undead Inc. I wasn’t sure what to expect, other than that I’d be ruthlessly running a pharmaceutical company and creating monsters for profit, a business model that has proven flawless time and time again.
With so many resources, statistics, objectives to keep track of even in individual games, new players may find some sim games overwhelming. Settling into my shiny new office at Endswell Medical, I got myself up to speed.
Undead Inc. uses a room-and-worker setup similar to Fallout Shelter, albeit with much less room to build. Space is as much a resource as labor and cash, and my first unexpected challenge was getting layouts right.
It was about this time that a researcher named Ray Cano started coughing, as did everyone else on staff after a night in the shared sleeping quarters. Probably nothing to worry about.
The company was turning a healthy profit as our retained doctors prescribed proprietary medications sold at a markup from our in-house pharmacy, but the shareholders wanted more. It was time to expand, specifically into the sewers below the city.
Getting permits would be a huge mess of red tape, so for the sake of expediency I hired some engineers with a good “Culture Fit” and sent them below to get a-blastin’. As it turns out, the sewers are the territory of the Blindspot Gang, the local organized crime ring.
I paid them off so that they wouldn’t cause any trouble, then built an underground lab for our Infantry Enhancement division. Defense contracts are always lucrative, so bio-enhanced soldiers seems like a no-brainer.
The project was expensive, but I made it through the next shareholder meeting only having to smooth a few ruffled feathers. Once the Gladiator Serum was ready, the profits would start pouring in.
In the meantime, sales of our DefEnds cold remedy were skyrocketing as more people around town picked up that nasty cough. Things started to go wrong when the Blindspots came back hoping to shake us down for more money.
At this point, I figured our security team was more than strong enough to handle any retaliation, so I told them there wouldn’t be a deal. As it turned out, the Blindspots have access to some pretty decent gear.
They raided my franchise’s main office, gunning down my security and several of my staff before I had to emerge from my office and join the fight myself, enhanced by some untested but probably mostly safe combat stimulants. I lost a lot of good employees in the attack, but my star researcher, Ray Cano, was safe underground in the Infantry Enhancement Lab with plenty of DefEnds to handle his chronic cough.
While I was cleaning up the mess, I got a notification – Ray had turned into a zombie and was now trashing the lab. Compared to the Blindspot massacre, that was small potatoes.
I hastily hired a new security team and sent them down to the lab for cleanup duty. When they arrived, Ray was nowhere to be found.
A few days later, the news started reporting people being found eaten throughout the city. Secure in plausible deniability (nobody had actually seen Ray turn into a zombie, after all), I set about trying to right the ship.
Unfortunately, the Blindspot attack had caused enough damage that I couldn’t make my earnings goal, even with the help of a loan from the company’s financing department. I was given a pink slip and left town just as the police were starting to cordon off infected neighborhoods.
Of course, being a capitalist stooge, I can always start up a new franchise in a new city. I’ve got a great new marketing plan for bio-enhanced combat gorillas that I’m sure the Defense Department will love.
After all, the Blindspots opted into Endswell’s voluntary testing program when they shot up my office. I’ll never know what happened as a result of the outbreak at my first job, but I’m sure that my customers’ tax dollars and our elected officials have the matter well in hand.
