LOGAN SQUARE — Designer Blaise Sewell hopes everyone soon will be doing the Zombie Shuffle.
The 28-year-old Logan Square resident runs Feels Right Design and has done work for local political campaigns and comedy events, but now he has turned his attention to something decidedly more ... undead.
It started when he and some friends were playing drinking games in 2011 and started to develop the game with a regular deck of playing cards.
"We wanted to make a cool game, and I wanted to design a cool deck — you know, a cool deck of cards — so the idea popped up for a zombie game," he said.
They decided that the face cards would be zombies, and the aces survivors. Cards 2 through 10 are weapons and "Power Ups" that boost a survivor's rating and chance of survival, with the ultimate goal, of course, to survive the zombie apocalypse.
And Zombie Shuffle was born.
They realized they were onto something good, so Sewell set off to design the cards, though in the early months there were a few revisions to the game.
"It was working great, but it was a little too random, and we wanted to make it more strategic, so we changed quite a few things at that time," he said. "It just progressed from there."
Next, all he needed was some funding.
"Printing costs for decks of cards are very expensive, and they have very large minimum orders," he said.
So last month, Sewell launched a Kickstarter campaign that ends Tuesday. He reached his fundraising goal, but still is offering goodies for generous investors, such as the chance to be immortalized as one of the zombies.
The rules for the game also can be found on the Kickstarter video, and even backers who contribute smaller amounts will receive a deck of cards, which can be used for classic card games.
But Sewell is taking a card, so to speak, from another Logan Square card game to recently hit the big time, Cards Against Humanity.
Like the creators of that game, Sewell will make his game free to download.
"I definitely think that's awesome, and I think it's a great model that we're going to go with," he said.
