Zombie Apocalypse: Gaming data reveals only 29% of people would survive

With the video game adapted TV series The Last of Us achieving a big success, the search volume for “post apocalyptic games” jumped 54% last week. From zombie outbreaks to alien invasions, there are various types of memorable narratives told in the video game world, but how likely would it be that we survive in each apocalyptic event in real life?

With this in mind, Slot Tracker collected a list of 85 popular post-apocalypse video games and analysed data on the percentage of gamers completing the story through Steam and Astats. They then ranked the games to uncover which types of post-apocalyptic games players have the most success in, thus revealing the apocalyptic future we are most confident in surviving! 

Key Findings 

• Plague Inc: Evolved tops the list of post-apocalyptic games that we would most likely to survive in, with 81.1% of gamers completing the game’s story. 
• The Walking Dead: A New Frontier ranked second highest as the post-apocalyptic game we would most likely to survive in, with 68.1% players beating the story.

Top 10 post-apocalyptic games with the highest completion rate

Rank	Video game	Apocalypse Type	% of gamers who beat the game’s story
1	Plague Inc: Evolved	Disease	81.1
2	The Walking Dead: A New Frontier	Zombies	68.1
3	The Walking Dead: Season Two	Zombies	64.4
4	The Walking Dead: Michonne – A Telltale Miniseries	Zombies	64.1
5	The Walking Dead: The Final Season	Zombies	64.0
6	Half-Life 2: Episode Two	Aliens	61.3
7	The Bunker	Radiation	54.5
8	The Silent Age	Other	50.4
9	Metro: Last Light Redux	Radiation	49.4
10	Half-Life 2: Episode One	Aliens	46.8

Slot Tracker found out that Plague Inc: Evolved is the post-apocalyptic game with the highest completion rate, with 81.1% of gamers completing the story. It takes players an average of 19.3 hours to complete the main story line and get all three story achievements on Steam. Initially released in 2014, this real-time strategy game simulates the spread of severity of a global plague. Since the game unexpectedly became a reality in 2020, the game developer introduced a new DLC expansion and collaborated with WHO experts to promote outbreak control measures and raise public awareness on epidemiology. 

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier is the game with the second highest percentage of gamers who beat the game’s story (68.1%). Developed by Telltale Games, the game is set four years after the zombie apocalypse and requires the player to protect all survivors from the zombies while discovering the whole story about this world that is gradually eaten up by zombies. It takes gamers around 8.4 hours on average to acquire all 30 story achievements in this game. 

In third place is The Walking Dead: Season Two, the second season of this video game series. 64.1% of the players have completed all 40 story achievements and reached the end of the story, spending almost 10 hours on average. Released between 2013 and 2014, this game has 5 episodes and is a sequel to the first The Walking Dead. 

Two other games of this episodic graphic adventure game series followed closely behind. The Walking Dead: Michonne ranks fourth with 64.1% of players completed the story and The Walking Dead: The Final Season fifth with 64.0%. 

Last on the top 10 list is Half-Life 2: Episode One, with a story completion rate of 46.8%. This first-person shooting game is set in a world where the Earth has been conquered by the alien empire Combine, after a research accident. 

Please see the full dataset including all 85 games here.

Top 10 apocalyptic futures we would most likely to survive in

Rank	Type of post-apocalyptic game	Average time to beat story (hours)	% of gamers who beat the game’s story
1	Disease	19.4	50.3
2	Lovecraftian	17.8	39.0
3	Curse	34.4	34.9
4	Aliens	9.8	34.7
5	Demons	16.0	33.5
6	Radiation	21.0	30.0
7	Zombies	15.6	29.9
8	War	11.6	26.8
9	Cults	63.7	26.8
10	Asteroid	33.5	25.4

Slot Tracker can reveal that we would most likely survive in an apocalyptic future with disease, with 50.3% players on average beating this type of game – the highest percentage among all apocalyptic game types reviewed. It reportedly takes Players slightly more than 19 hours to survive the game. 

An apocalyptic future with lovecraftian, unnatural and terrifying monsters is the second scenario that we are most confident in surviving within, with a 39.0% percentage of players completing this type of post-apocalyptic games. 

An apocalyptic future led by Curse ranks third, with 34.9% players beating the story. Following closely behind is a future with aliens – 34.7% people completed the challenge. 

Although four zombie post-apocalyptic games were ranked in the top 10 with the highest percentage of completion rate, the average completion percentage for all zombie games reviewed is only 29.9% – leaving us not much confidence to survive when the world is full of zombies. 

Please see the full dataset including all 85 games here.