As far as motivations to run go, being chased by zombies is a very compelling one.

Zombies, Run! is an app that blends fitness tracking with some light gamification to create a more interesting way of staying in shape. Pitching you into a standard zombie apocalypse scenario through audio snippets piped into your headphones, the game feeds you instructions and updates whilst your phone keeps track of how far you have run and how quickly you are running.

The gamification elements come from supplies that you ‘find’ whilst out for your run. Once you’re back at home and collapsing on the sofa in a sweaty mess, you can spend these resources to build up your virtual survivor town with new buildings to help other inhabitants of your post apocalyptic world.

Don’t look now, but there are zombies behind you

As well as picking up supplies to build a little town on your phone, the game will periodically tell you that there is a horde of zombies behind you and that they are going to catch you if you don’t hurry up. It is surprising how effective the idea that a mob of flesh-hungry monsters snapping at your heels is at making you pick up your pace.

Zombies, Run! will warn you that the zombies might be 70 metres away, and then a few seconds later will tell you how much closer they’ve got. The first time it did this to me, doing the quick mental arithmetic to establish they had caught up by about 30 metres was enough to make me swear and actually break into a sprint.

See someone out for a run with Zombies, Run! telling them there’s a hungry horde of zombies hot on their tail and the terror in their eyes might encourage you to start running too and ask questions later.

All this time you of course know there aren’t really zombies behind you…but…well, have you ever tried to get a really good look behind you whilst you’re running? Do you really want to risk it?

I’m not entirely sure what happens if the phantom-zombies do actually catch up with you. The tutorial says that you lose some of your resources that you’ve picked up along the way, but I’ve not wanted to find out so I haven’t let it happen.

Some imagination required

As well as standalone supply missions which are an endless mode where you go for a run to pick up supplies along the way and run away from the aforementioned zombie hordes, but there’s also a story mode which puts you in the middle of a zombie apocalypse tale unfolding around you.

The story is told to you through snippets of one-way radio chatter directed at you. You have allegedly survived a supply-helicopter crash and are now being given directions by a township of survivors to get back to them and where the best route to take is.

The route you take is probably the least effective part of the game. Whilst it would probably be impossible to map your real world route to the route your character is supposed to be taking in Zombies, Run! it is sometimes distracting to be told you’re running through the ground floor of an abandoned hospital when you are in fact clearly running through a quiet residential part of Surrey.

It would be nice if there was at least some relation between what was happening in the game world and the real world, but it’s a minor gripe that doesn’t become too much of an issue. There was actually a moment where I questioned whether there might be a relation after all when the radio operative told me to head to the old sawmill, I turned a corner and was then told “oh good, I see you’ve changed direction” but I’m pretty sure it was just a fluke.

There is also something immersion breaking about the story mode missions in the way that they are broken down into episodes. As an example, the end of the first episode has you running towards the town you’ve been directed to, but something happens to make entering impossible.

Before anything can resolve, the app tells you that the episode is over and gives you a “trailer” for the next one, making you feel that you’re stuck in zombie-apocalypse limbo.  This left me a bit bemused and finishing the last couple of minutes of my run before I got home in a hopeful silence, expecting the radio chatter to possibly kick back in. It also became thematically confusing when I came to build up my virtual town with discovered resources as part of me felt my character was still jogging on the spot just outside the gates.

Zombies, Run! is the first wave of augmented reality

The smartphone revolution makes games like Zombies, Run! a very viable possibility and its going to be incredibly exciting to see what other things developers start work on now that the technology inside our pocket computer communicators has become not only incredibly powerful, but also mostly stable and reliable.

Zombies, Run! might feel a bit like a first wave of these augmented reality apps, but it truly is an excellent alternative to something like Runkeeper or the Nike Fuel app that you might otherwise track your exercise with. Running away from imaginary zombies has to be a more interesting way to fight the flab that is drawn to adult life.

Developer: Six to Start
Price: Free / In-app purchases
Platform: iOS and Android
Quick verdict: A fantastic motivation to go for a run and an even better way to make you look paranoid in public.