Lab of the Dead is an online zombie simulation/mystery game. You play as scientist Allen C. Tyler, a man who wound up in an underground military complex shortly before the zombie apocalypse escalated to nuclear destruction. He has tasked himself with discovering the cause and cure for transformation into a zombie. The gameplay is strictly point and click. You have a series of items at your disposal to hand over, feed, or attack your zombie subject with. Your job is to quantify the reactions and alter the subject's mood, hunger, and humanity to elicit different results. You also have to research upgrades to your facilities, new objects to test, new research methodologies, and what happened to the previous scientist examining the zombies.

As repetitive as the gameplay is, there is something compelling about this grotesque simulation game from Evil-Dog at Newgrounds. (warning: image of deteriorating zombie after the break)

I have to credit this to the storyline in the game. I'll grow tired of clicking on the various options after a few minutes, but I'll find myself craving more of the story the scientist discovers through research. The scientist you play as is optimistic about the possibility of finding a cure, but his historical corollary is increasing pessimistic about the process she's forced to use.

This is where humanity comes into play. With each object you use to interact with a zombie, there are three basic reactions. The first is neutral, meaning there is no strong feeling associated with the object. The second is aggressive, meaning the object angers the zombie. The third, and most telling, is passive, meaning the zombie is actually interacting in a more meaningful way with the object. They might turn the dial on a radio or pet a puppy dog, rather than throw the radio to the ground or rip the dog in half. Once you get the most difficult reaction--positive or negative--you can unlock the advanced reaction, which is as close as the zombie can get to how they behaved when they were alive.

Humanity, pushed to either extreme, causes the strongest reactions. If you make a zombie feel like a monster, he'll behave like a monster in the same way an angered person will react harshly. If you make a zombie feel like a human, he'll react in a human-like way. It is this scale that lends the story some much needed hope and levity to keep someone playing.

Lab of the Dead is a unique game in both simulation and zombie fields. If you can handle some gore and the ever-present image of zombies, you might find some value in this game.