When “Humans vs. Zombies” first came to DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond a few years ago, the live-action, undead-themed variation of tag garnered a large following of students.

But the game, which debuted at a school in Delaware in 2005, works better on campuses with multiple buildings. So a group of DigiPen students from various departments joined forces to design their own zombie-apocalypse game that better suited the one-building campus in Redmond.

The result was “Outbreak,” which ups the stakes of the original Humans vs. Zombies game by incorporating game design elements such as teams and “quests.”

“This isn’t Humans vs. Zombies anymore,” said Kevin Sheehan, executive producer of design for Outbreak.

He said the first rendition of Outbreak debuted last year and “it was mildly successful.” About 140 people participated.

DigiPen students played Outbreak for the second time on campus last week and this time, 213 people participated. There are about 1,100 students at the school. In addition to more people participating in the game, they also had more people on the development team — growing from three to 10 people.

Mike Riner, who worked as a systems designer on Outbreak, said one of the changes they made to the game from Humans vs. Zombies was they started with mulitiple zombies instead of one. This made it easier to predict how many people would be “infected” on the first day of play and made things easier to manage and run for the designers.

Riner said they also added “missions” to the game. All of the missions had a similar theme so the game was less random and had a more story-like flow. This year’s theme was finding a cure for the zombie virus and the final mission last Friday was to rescue the scientists who had developed the cure before the zombies destroyed it. The missions happened each night and brought all players together for the evening.

“Everyone’s out there, everyone’s having fun,” Riner said.

Sheehan said this was one of the reasons they ran Outbreak in the fall. Students had the opportunity to meet each other — which is important as many of their players were freshmen and usually don’t know too many people. Upperclassmen are also meeting students from other departments, who they most likely wouldn’t meet in class.

Sheehan also said Outbreak was held in the fall because it gave them the whole summer to work on the game and more people could play before their class load became too heavy.

Sheehan added that as designers, they also got to meet new people as it took students from multiple disciplines to create Outbreak.

In addition to developing the game itself, developers had to publicize Outbreak to let people know about it. This was Karyn McCollough’s job. She was in charge of branding — creating Outbreak dog tags, bandanas and zombie blasters for players, as well as posters to put up throughout campus to let people know about the game and scheduled informational meetings.

“There was no reason for anyone to not know (the rules before gameplay),” McCollough said.

Nicole Maiorano, who is the product director for Outbreak, worked on the behind-the-scenes elements of the game. She did bookkeeping, kept track of the player list, answered questions from players and more.

“I also dealt with our non-player characters (such as the scientists),” Maiorano said.

She said while it was sometimes difficult coordinating and communicating among developers during the summer because everyone had different schedules, the hard work pays off when players approach them and say, “Hey, that was really fun. Thank you.”

Riner agreed.

“That is by far the best feeling,” he said.

The Outbreak development team is currently working on a players’ guide and manual to be distributed to other schools so other campuses can play — including DigiPen’s Singapore campus.

Sheehan said a number of the Singaporean exchange students attending the Redmond campus participated in Outbreak and have been excited to bring the game to their school.

The players’ guide and manual will be ready for distribution in May.