Release Date
Jan 10th, 2013
Platforms
| PC / Mac / Linux | USD $4.99 |
| Steam | USD $4.99 |
| Switch | USD $9.99 |
| PS4/Vita | USD $9.99 |
| iOS | USD $2.99 |
| Android | USD $2.99 |
Description
Organ Trail is a retro zombie survival game. Travel westward in a station wagon with 4 of your friends, scavenging for supplies and fending off the undead. Members of your party might die of dysentery or you might have to put them down yourself when they get bit. Faithfully recreated it as if it were on the Apple 2, Organ Trail offers amazing 16 color art and retro beeps and boops. Packed full of zombie mechanics, themes and references, this is a must have for any zombie survival fans. Created by a small indie team in Chicago, The Men Who Wear Many hats are very excited to make this game for you.
History
After 3 months in development we released the game for free Halloween 2011 in flash and continued to support it 3 months after. We were going to walk away from the idea but the fans grew and grew and everyone demanded we put it on mobile. So about 6 months later we shelved the project we were doing to return to Organ Trail. The idea this time was to improve it and make it worth paying for.
We started a Kickstarter campaign with the goal of buying a Unity license. We asked for $3,000 and got over $16,000. We have since used the extra money to form a studio, pay people who actually work on the game and go to PAX. Ryan even quit his professional industry job to work full time on the game. Organ Trail: Director’s cut is now a much bigger and badder game, and our first commercial product.
We released on August 9th for iOS and Android with near monthly updates and support. After trying to get into Steam via the Greenlight service, we decided to work on an expansion for the game to add more value. We launched January 2013 for Steam with the expansion for all platforms.
The Final Cut Expansion marks the release of Organ Trail Complete Edition for PS4 and PS Vita released in October 2015.
The Nintendo Switch release of Organ Trail Complete Edition was on August 10th 2023.
Blog Posts
Organ Trail Complete Edition Announcement
Organ Trail One Year Postmortem
Features
- Name your party after your friends and watch them die slowly
- Hours of gameplay!
- Get dysentery and 9 other diseases
- Scavenge for supplies while you fight back the undead
- Manage your food, ammo, fuel, medkits and more in your struggle to survive
- Put down infected party members who might turn on you
- Stop at towns to trade, take jobs and fix your car
- Car upgrades
- Fight off bandits
- Zombie boss fights
- Choose-your-own-adventure style encounters on the road
- A weather system and day night cycle
- Huge soundtrack and delicious Apple 2 pixel art
- 28 Achievements
- Survivor leaderboards
- 400 community written tombstones
Endless Expansion
- Endless Mode! Play until you die
- Combat Upgrades
- Car Upgrades
- Bonus ridiculous physics based driving game
- Over 40 new road events
Final Cut Expansion
- Co-op! Drop in co-op play during any combat scenario
- Choose-your-route on the road with twice as many cities
- 5 unlockable cars
- 10 unlockable characters
- 3 new boss fights
- 3 new zombie types
- Radiation mechanic gives you a new way to die
- Hit and Run driving job
- Graveyard retrieval mission
- Fishing
- More and new bandit attacks
- Secret endings
- Double the story encounters
- Double the road events
Awards & Recognition
- “Best RPG of the Year” -Pocket Tactics (Dec 2012)
- “Best iOS Games #11” -Metacritic (Dec 2012)
- “Best iOS Games: Miscellaneous” -Touch Arcade (Dec 2012)
- “Best Overall App #3 & Interactive Award” -IndieDB (Dec 2012)
- “What’s Hot” -iTunes App Store (Aug 2012)
- “New and Noteworthy” -iTunes App Store (Aug 2012)
Selected Articles
- “Organ Trail: Director’s Cut is a weird, wonderful and almost surprisingly expansive experience that will both infuriate and enchant.”
– 9/10 Cassandra Khaw, Touch Arcade - “Virtually every aspect of Organ Trail: Director’s Cut oozes style and cleverness.”
– 9/10 Rob Rich, 148 Apps - “It’s definitely one of the more intense and cerebral zombie games out there, offering a welcome break from all those first and third-person shooters populating the App Store and Google Play.”
– Chris Buffa, Game Trailers - “Organ Trail: Director’s Cut is a quirky, darkly humorous, and off-beat love letter to retro gaming.”
– Dora, Jay is Games - ” At its heart, Organ Trail: Director’s Cut is basically just The Oregon Trail with zombies, but it is so perfectly The Oregon Trail with zombies that it comes across better than if it were just a modern recreation of the original game.”
– Dan Kricke, Appolicious - “Organ Trail doesn’t pull any punches. You have to learn how to soften its blows. And while a lot of its content might be random, the spots of cause and effect in the game are some of its most satisfying points of design.”
– Brad Nicholson, Touch Arcade
Monetization Permission
The Men Who Wear Many Hats allows for the contents of Organ Trail: Director’s Cut to be published through video broadcasting services for any commercial or non-commercial purposes. Monetization of videos created containing assets from Organ Trail: Director’s Cut is legally & explicitly allowed by The Men Who Wear Many Hats. This permission can be found in writing at this URL.
Additional Links
Soundtrack
Soundtrack bencrossbones.bandcamp.com.
Development Blog
A one year postmortem. here.
Request Press Copy
Send us a message with your name, email, and company name and we’ll get back to you as soon as a press copy is available for you.
Team Credits
Ryan Wiemeyer
Owner & Designer, The Men Who Wear Many Hats
Michael Block
Owner & Programmer, The Men Who Wear Many Hats
Benn Marion
Artist, Freelancer
Tim McMahon
Artist, Freelancer
Ben Crossbones
Music, Freelancer