About Zombie Games
When Catholic slavers of the 16th century brought the slaves they captured in Africa to Haiti and forced them to convert to Catholicism, they planted the seeds of new syncretic religious belief system. While the slaves ostensibly accepted the imposed religion, they continued to engage in the religious practices of their old country. Over time, they also absorbed some of the local Arawakan religious beliefs. This resulted in Haitian Voodoo. It is this Afro-Caribbean religion that gave rise to the idea of zombies.
According to Voodoo folklore, a dead person can be revived by a sorcerer, or a bokor, and turn it into his slave as it no longer has any mind of its own existing only in a trance-like state. Scholars and scientists have conducted researches about this, with some concluding that the trance of zombies is actually the result of powerful drugs, but nothing is conclusive.
Whether or not zombies are for real remains a mystery. What is not a mystery, however, is that zombies are all the rage in popular culture. The trend began with George A. Romero’s film, Night of the Living Dead, although he was not the first to feature zombies in film. Romero’s zombies differ from Haitian Voodoo. In his movie, zombies are ghoulish monsters who clawed their way from the grave and hunted the living to eat their flesh.
Later zombie versions still portray them as flesh-eating undead but they have evolved from what are now called the Romero zombies. They are now known to have been infected with some form of virus or a chemical compound. They retain their memory and even intelligence, both of which the Romero zombies did not have. They no longer walk with a slow and shambling gait, and are not longer limited to grunts and groans like their predecessors. Indeed, they can run and talk like normal human beings.
Zombie Games explores the world of the living dead as these ghouls have laid siege to almost every aspect of our lives. Plenty of movies have been made about them. Some authors write about how to survive in a zombie-infested world, while others relate stories about encounters between the living and the dead. Shirts warn us of the menace they bring. Board games and video games are now also infiltrated by them. And worse, even children’s toys are being taken over by these monsters.
We have to defeat them, and the first thing we need to do is to learn everything about them. Since we are at war, it is best to heed Sun Tzu’s advice in The Art of War –know your enemy. Read books about them, watch their movies, and play their games. You’ll find them all at Zombie Games.
