Urban Dead is a free-to-play HTML/text-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game created by British developer Kevan Davis. Set in a quarantined region of the fictional city of Malton, it deals with the aftermath of a zombie outbreak. Players enter the game either as a survivor or a zombie, each with different abilities and limitations. Survivors become zombies when they are killed, while zombies can be "revivified" with appropriate technology, returning to life as a survivor – any character played for long will thus spend some time alive and some as a zombie. There are no non-player characters in the game: all survivors and zombies are controlled by players. Urban Dead went live in July 2005. Gameplay Gameplay involves zombies breaking into safe houses and attacking the inhabitants, and survivors trying to defend the buildings by barricading them and killing any zombies present. Safe houses tend to be located in or near buildings where useful items can be found, such as shopping malls, police stations, hospitals, and the laboratories of the zombie-related NecroTech corporation. Cooperation between players is not strictly enforced. Internal fighting between survivors and zombies is a frequent occurrence. Urban Dead has no economy. Survivor characters can loot supplies from abandoned buildings indefinitely, but cannot trade, sell, or give them to other players. New players begin the game as one of the three survivor classes; Military, Scientist or Civilian; or as a Zombie. Each side in the struggle has its own advantages and disadvantages. Survivors move twice as fast as low-level zombies and are able to employ various weapons and tools. Survivor characters can communicate with each other in-game via speech, radio broadcasting, graffiti and text messaging. They can also barricade building entrances, keeping zombies at bay. Zombies, often referred to as "zeds", are limited to using claws, teeth, and blunt melee weapons. However, they can self-revive with full hit points when killed, whereas a survivor needs another player to revive them after death if they do not wish to play as a zombie. Higher level zombies can communicate with each other via a crude form of zombie speech, as well as through various groaning noises and hand gestures. It is possible to switch sides in the conflict: a survivor character that is killed will rise up as a zombie, and zombie characters may be brought back to life by a survivor who has the relevant skills and items.