The Walking Drunk started as a ridiculous idea: what if you were a bartender trying to keep the bar running during a zombie apocalypse? No guns, no glory — just drink orders, chaos, and the occasional undead trying to crash your shift. Your weapons? Whatever you can grab behind the bar — bottles, toilets (yes, toilets), stools, and so on.

It's my submission for the RPG Maker Game Jam, built around the theme “Beyond Expectations.” 

Built in RPG Maker MZ using Sang Hendrix’s Action Combat plugin, the game blends real-time combat with task-based gameplay. You're not saving the world. You're just trying to serve drinks, avoid getting eaten, and maybe break a high score while you're at it.

The Concept

You’re the last bartender standing. Customers still want their drinks. Zombies want your face. You’re multitasking both. Each day throws a mix of tasks and enemies at you — and the longer you last, the higher your score climbs. Yes, there’s a global leaderboard. Because apparently, bartending through the apocalypse is now a competitive sport.

Core Mechanics

• Real-time combat using hitboxes and action skills

• Task system that mixes mundane bar duties with high-stress survival

• Randomized objectives to keep each run a little different

• Global leaderboard to reward the best bartenders in the worst situation

Setting up the hitboxes, animations, and enemy logic wasn’t smooth sailing. Diagonal detection was especially annoying — checkRange() didn’t play nice at certain angles, so I had to fine-tune enemy approach logic to make sure they could actually hit the player… but not from across the map.

Technical Hurdles

• Collision bugs where enemies didn’t detect the player until after taking damage — fixed by adjusting how and when triggers fired

• Audio logic for enemy presence was causing lag on web — optimized that with a leaner check loop

• Web performance still isn’t perfect. I added a disclaimer on the Itch page — desktop is the way to go.

Final Thoughts

What started as a dumb joke turned into a fun, fast-paced survival loop. You serve, you dodge, you fight — all while your leaderboard score ticks up or crashes down.

Thanks to everyone who’s played The Walking Drunk. And if you’re leading the leaderboard, I’m not sure if I should congratulate you or question your priorities — either way, cheers.