Medieval zombie survival game God Save Birmingham exploded onto the scene in April with an 8-minute “gameplay” trailer that sparked as much skepticism as it did excitement. Among jokes about its Birmingham setting, some said it looked too good to be true, with animations that suggested what we were seeing in the trailer wasn’t so much gameplay, more pre-rendered footage designed to hoodwink the gaming public.
Perhaps most damning of all, some compared God Save Birmingham to the infamous The Day Before, calling it a “fake game” and even a “scam.” For the uninitiated, The Day Before was one of the most controversial and catastrophic game launches in recent memory, as what was touted as the "next generation of post-apocalyptic MMO open-world survival games" was released as a barebones and broken extraction shooter. The Day Before received an almost impossibly rare 1/10 in IGN's review, and its shutdown was announced just four days after it launched in Early Access.
After God Save Birmingham's April video went viral, Korean publisher Kakao Games and its developer Ocean Drive brought a demo to PAX East and released an updated gameplay video that offered perhaps a more realistic view of where the game is currently at in terms of development. This latest video has gone some way to addressing the narrative established by God Save Birmingham’s explosive April promo. But still, those The Day Before "scam game" comments remain.
It was with this in mind that I interviewed Ocean Drive CEO and founder Jae Kim and head of publishing Jungsoo Lee to find out if God Save Birmingham can ever shake off The Day Before. What surprised me is that both seemed perfectly happy with the comparison. Read on to find out why.
IGN: Can you give us some background on Ocean Drive?
Jungsoo Lee: We founded our studio back in 2020 and it's our fifth year. We currently have about 80 developers in Korea and about 12 people in the States working on business, narrative design, and localization. As Ocean Drive Studio, our first game was Lost Eidolons. It was developed using Unity, which was one of our mistakes actually on decision-making. But we tried to have a quality of Unreal, and that was story-driven, Fire Emblem style turn-based tactical RPG. That was our first project.
Currently internally we have four different teams. Two of those projects are pretty small-scale, more like an indie style. One of the projects is positioned as more like AA scale. It’s unannounced, but it's an action RPG project based on one of the reputable IPs in Korea. Our last final project is God Save Birmingham. We started small, but as of last month we had about 28 people working on the project.
IGN: So how did God Save Birmingham come about? How did that project start? Where did the idea come from?
Jungsoo Lee: Overall our company's vision is basically, we only work on the game that the creative director knows the genre as a hardcore player, because we believe understanding the community needs, what kind of game should be there for the genre, is the most important factor making a successful game there. And Hyeonseong Cha [creative director] really loves Project Zomboid.
We also had a test project from Mr. Cha, one of the prototypes — it's on the Steam market right now — it's called Dropkick Navvy. It's a puzzle game using physics. So he was really into using the physics in his game design. So we actually mixed those two. And on top of that we had a Lost Eidolons medieval art style production experience. So all these concepts came together after one year of prototyping, and our past project became God Save Birmingham.
IGN: The surprise for me is Birmingham. Even British developers don't make games set in Birmingham. But a Korean developer deciding to do it in Birmingham is very surprising. So I'd love to know why you decided to go there.
Jungsoo Lee: Last year at gamescom, we had a lot of interviews at the show, and the most-asked question was, why Birmingham? So I know the answer pretty well! What happened was, we are a small team and they were really into working on medieval, especially the art director who used to work on our first game and he loves medieval art style. So we were looking at medieval, and they were searching for a medieval city. We are based in Korea, right? We are not really familiar with any of the cities in medieval times in Europe. So they were just looking at the list of cities, and they had a condition which was, it shouldn't be big because we're not a big team, so we can’t create a huge town. So that was the first condition. The second condition was, we wanted to have some diversity in the city, meaning that city must have some trade, a lot of trade and things going on at the time.
So they were doing research and somehow they came to this YouTube video from the Museum of Birmingham, and they had recreated 14th century Birmingham there. They were looking at that and they loved how the town looked. They did some research on Google and they learned, oh, this background is perfect, let's just do Birmingham. And our entire team was actually surprised after our trailer released at gamescom, because there were so many British people making fun of Birmingham, and we started to wonder, what's going on with Birmingham? Because we had zero idea what was really going on at the modern day Birmingham.
So it was a coincidence how we picked Birmingham and the situation at Birmingham got mixed up together. It helped us gain more views there because on Reddit, like Birmingham Reddit and UK Reddit, the trailer was there and they were making fun of Birmingham, like it's better than modern day Birmingham. So initially we asked Gary [PR] and the team, 'Is it okay? Did we do something wrong?' And Gary told us, 'No, it's part of the joke.'
IGN: Did any of the developers actually visit Birmingham to get a sense of what it's like? I'm curious about some of the research that went on to try and nail the setting.
Jungsoo Lee: In terms of how the town looks, we referred to the video from the Museum of Birmingham. That video gave them a lot of inspiration, especially how the town was looking at the time and what was the biggest landmark at the time, like Moor Street. And another research they did, our team in Korea, they purchased all the books related to medieval Birmingham.
There was a case of, they had a potato as one of the foods, and they looked at the book, what was the main food there, and potato wasn't there. So they actually took out the potato. We have a carrot now, but we learned the color of the carrot was different at the time. It wasn't orange, like carrot-ish color. So we are in the process of changing that.
So for now, we are actually referring to all those materials that we could get from the books or online. Also we are working with Gary to see if they can find somebody who can actually consult us about medieval times. One of the key pillars we have is recreating 14th century Birmingham as accurately as possible. So we are trying to find ways to actually make that happen right now.
IGN: I know the game is about the last survivor, so it's not like you're going to have lots of voice acting for characters that you'll meet along the way. They're zombies. Will the character have a Brummie accent?
Jungsoo Lee: Yes. We are trying to have that for the final product. The current voice acting for the trailer and the game demo, we couldn’t actually find the right person in the short period of time. But we are planning to find somebody who can recreate that medieval accent, the Brummie accent. So that's in the plan. And we have multiple different classes and we will try to have different voice acting for those.
IGN: The April gameplay reveal trailer had a huge amount of interest and comments. Some people were saying the animations were too good to be true, some of it looked scripted, it wasn't true gameplay. You'll have seen all of these comments yourself. Was that something you anticipated from that video? Or did it take you by surprise?
Jungsoo Lee: I say half and half. Meaning we didn't think the impact of The Day Before… because lots of people are referencing The Day Before and saying it’s another scam, right? I mean we read everything! Even internally, Jae and especially myself were thinking some people might say something similar, it might be too good to be true. Because we acknowledge we never say it's from the build, but the title is correct, meaning this trailer is there to show people this is what we are aiming to create in terms of gameplay experience that people will have at the final product.
So reception, we were a little bit surprised. There was another video from a YouTuber with almost 1 million views, ‘Another fake scam’ was the title. So in that sense we are a little bit surprised, but it wasn't something we weren't expecting.
IGN: Just to clear up for our audience exactly what is going on in that trailer, what are we seeing in that video in terms of gameplay versus things that you've created to give the impression of the experience you’re going for?
Jungsoo Lee: So the map, environment, props, everything is exactly as what we are working towards. So it's already there in the build, the map and the objects, buildings, they're all there. But as you have pointed out, some of the animations are not there yet. Some are a work in progress, and in the near future it'll be implemented as a demo build. Some will take a longer period of time to actually get there.
But ultimately what we can tell you is we are actually working towards that direction, and nothing is really exaggerated there. Here's one caveat though: if you play a sandbox game, you're not going to move the camera like that. Yeah, we acknowledge that. But what we intended with the trailer was basically we want to show the environment, what kind of features will be there. That was the major intention. If the player wants to create a video like that, our final build will let you actually make the video look like that.
There will be camera options, especially for console controller players, it's kind of common. So if you want to move the camera like that, you can actually do that. If you want to grab props like in the video, where the hand exactly grabs the objects, you can do it. But in sandbox gameplay, real-world players, what they're going to do is open up the tab in the menu and drag everything into your inventory. You don't want to pick one-by-one. So there will be that difference. But endgame, the animation where you walk and grab the apple, those are already in the works. So they're actually working towards that right now.
IGN: So what you're saying is that everything we see in that video will be achievable in the final game once it's finished?
Jungsoo Lee: Correct.
IGN: This isn't a situation where people are going to feel like the final product doesn't have some of the things suggested by the video? You're saying everything we see there eventually you'll be able to do in the game?
Jungsoo Lee: Correct.
IGN: You had a follow-up video and took the game to PAX. From what I can see online, the reaction to that has been better, with people saying this looks a bit more realistic and not the same thing as the previous trailer. What is your assessment of the reaction and the sentiment now that that video has come out, and how different it is compared to the sentiment after the first video?
Jungsoo Lee: We definitely had much more positive comments there, but at the same time of course those people who talked about another The Day Before situation, some players are still saying, see, look at the difference between it. Our plan was basically, let's share this, our end goal, and then we'll regularly share how we are making progress towards that.
One thing we didn't really expect was, we really underestimated how people perceived The Day Before situation, how hurt they were, because they were so excited. Because they were really excited, they got much bigger disappointment towards the project. And another thing was, we are not that reputable yet, so people don't really understand what kind of pedigree we have, what kind of people we have here, how many people we have here working towards the game.
We had a lot of supporters, some of them said, ‘Why didn't you just release this video first?’ And that part, we take the feedback seriously. But one interesting story there, Jae and I actually told the dev team not to make a pre-rendered video. We basically said, ‘Let's just use our build and then share our current build video based on that.’ But our team, they're so into the project that they were the ones basically insisting, ‘No, we are very confident we can do it and we have to show them how ambitious we are.’
So that was one of the interesting parts, because lots of people were thinking vice versa, where marketing and business folks were pushing them to create this marketing video to attract a lot of players into our community. But it was actually vice versa. They were very confident, ‘We can do it.’ Every week we kept asking them, ‘So this is our end goal, you have to deliver this, you're making a promise to our players.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, we understand, and we’re very confident.’ That's how this video came about actually.
IGN: There have been multiple occasions in this interview where you've referenced The Day Before. It seems to me that what happened with that game has created a difficult situation for you. How damaging do you think The Day Before has been for you specifically? Are you confident you'll be able to get to a place where people stop mentioning it with your game? Or do you think that it's just something you are going to have to live with for the rest of the development and until the game comes out?
Jungsoo Lee: Jae and I had this conversation after the video. I don't think it was just only giving us the damage. Because it went viral, although it wasn't all positive, I think we got more views on the video because lots of people were actually saying, ‘Another scam here, there's The Day Before.’ Getting more interest towards a small studio like us, every type of interest helps. So we don't really think it's giving us that damage.
Part of that is because we are pretty confident. The Day Before, they never had a test. They said they're going to have a beta test, but they suddenly say only for volunteers. Everyone was confused at the time. And we are not doing pre-orders; we've never done pre-orders on any of our games. So while we are internally confident that by showing the progress that we are making regularly — for example we're going to be at gamescom and we're going to share another demo on-site, then people will see how we progressed from the PAX East demo to the gamescom demo.
So because of that level of confidence internally, I think we are fine with people actually comparing us to The Day Before, because if we can turn this around with actual gameplay and the demo, those people who are disappointed can actually be huge strong supporters of ours, and this is how you actually have to build a game with the community.
IGN: Do you have a target year in mind for when people might be able to play it via Steam either in early access or otherwise? Or is it too early to say at this point?
Jungsoo Lee: Our official communication about timeline is early access sometime next year. What we are internally debating is what volume of content do we want to have for early access? We don't want to monetize the game too early with a very empty game, right? So we have been assessing what will be our optimum volume of the content where players can actually enjoy the game to provide us meaningful feedback about how we should evolve the game.
Project Zomboid is doing a great job. They started small and with the Build 41 update, they truly achieved commercial success from that update. And ever since they've been working with their community to actually create a feature that their community is asking. So we want to take a similar approach where we should have good enough of a game to… and especially with the video, we raised our internal standard bar for early access. So once we have that, I think we can get into early access. But Jae and we are targeting sometime next year. I don't think it'll be early next year, but probably between summer and the end of 2026.
Jae Kim: Actually, we are very impressed by the viewer count of our game reveal trailer on IGN. Our studio is the child company of Kakao Games in Korea, the big listed company. So maybe we can make the team bigger after discussing with Kakao Games, because this game has a lot of buzz right now. So maybe we can invest more into this project to make it better when we launch this game. The schedule is quite open, but personally I really want to do the early access within the next year.
IGN: For someone who has seen the April video and the reaction and dismissed it as a scam game or a fake game, or another The Day Before, what is your message to that gamer right now to convince them otherwise?
Jungsoo Lee: Actions speak louder than words. The only thing we can tell them is, we understand, we'll try to prove it with our actions, especially with testing. Even though we have a trailer, there is a possibility people might think it's scripted, although it's actually the build happening. So I think hopefully they can at least wait for our future alpha, our beta tests, so that they can actually experience the game, and also follow us so that they can see what kind of progress we are making. Actions speak louder than words, so we'll focus on our actions going forward.
Jae Kim: Our team is quite capable to deliver this quality of the game. We are not a newbie team. We have a lot of experience. It was mostly the free-to-play games, but the core members in my company, they really hate to make free-to-play games right now, because they’re all hardcore gamers, and they really want to make story based or a game with core play. So I'm quite confident to deliver this quality of the game.
My only worry is that the game should be fun, right? That's the main concern I currently have. The quality, we can provide the quality. But I really want to provide a fun game. So please keep an eye on us, and I really appreciate all the comments on the video. Even if it's good or bad.
God Save Birmingham is due out on PC via Steam in early access form in 2026.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
