So, if I go back to what I’m looking for them to be role wise. Then the hunger should be an omnipresent threat. They are the main inhabitations of the ruined cities. And the idea is that the player will only have a few hours of relative safety to explore, gather supplies, and find shelter. Wanders will be continually pressed to continue moving while leaders will have to continually strengthen their defences and find other survivors to defend their shelter against ever increasing numbers. There needs to be a way for survivors to be infested when injured by the hunger. That way you’re not sure if someone is infected or not until it’s too late.
What if I scrap the blindness, and kill spot aspects and instead make them feral humanoid stalkers. Crawling out from the dark spaces, and underground tunnels. Twisted abominations that began to appear as a precursor to the collapse that ravaged the world. They stalk the ruins of the fallen cities hunting for people who fall through the cracks and find themselves in the broken earth. They feel no pain and those they don’t kill they infest with their black bile like venom, transforming the victim into another of their wretched kind. Leave no gap in your walls or basement left unsecured lest the hunger find away in.
Something like a more desert version of this:
![Ghouls_thumb%25255B3%25255D.jpg](http://lh3.ggpht.com/-2trEflOJknw/T4zZitqYxqI/AAAAAAAACMw/lLQOvbM4VEM/Ghouls_thumb%25255B3%25255D.jpg)
with a bit of this throw in:
![wendigo-1.jpg](http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/wendigo-1.jpg)
I’ll have to do some rethink about some of the creatures that make up the forsaken but I think by making them more creature like and less zombie like, it makes them more like something that could have existed elsewhere. I’ll also have to rethink the base building side of the gameplay as it one thing to build walls and secure the perimeter against a zombie horde it’s another when you can have creatures crawling out a sewer grate or hidden amongst the debris.
The other forsaken I was thinking of were:
Prometheus: A biomechanical monster created before the collapse in an attempt to weaponize the hunger. Their body is reinforced with a metal exoskeleton with a flamer throw and buzz saw where their hands should be. The Prometheus tirelessly pursues it targets and anything that gets in its way.
Siren: There relationship with the hunger is uncertain they possess no eyes and seem to glide across the ground. Their haunting song draws the hunger to them even out into the light of day where the intelligent siren can command her minions as a single entity.
Levitation: Almost nothing is known about the great living ship known as the leviathan it mainly roams the barren wastelands rarely coming near the fallen cities. It purpose and origin unknown but where it goes death follows. In its wake is leaves hundreds of spore that develop into a horde of the forsaken.
Patriarch: The great beast and destroyer of worlds. A monstrous entity over 50 meters high said to be the combined mass of thousands of the forsaken. More myth and legend then fact the Patriarch only appears in the final days when the concentration of life is so great and the forsaken have gathered in such a multitude to call it forth. Like the calm before the storm it is said that the forsaken will flee at its arrival and so great is the instinct of fear it exude that should one of these great beasts be slain then the forsaken would never return to that place.