It is commonly recognized that, in the mid-90s, “zombies were saved from triviality in popular culture and made frightening again, this time by video games” (McIntosh 2008, 11). What's more, as Shawn McIntosh stated just after acknowledging the importance of the tenth art, “In many ways, in fact, they were and are ideally suited to the video game environment” (ibid.). If one considers the notion of “environment” not in the sense of a system on which a computer program runs, but instead as the combination of external physical conditions that affect and influence the growth, development, and survival of organisms; as the surroundings in which people carry on a particular activity; and as the state of being environed, McIntosh could not have been more correct.

While zombies are seen as the Everymonsters that might appear in many variations of the same narrative schema, and while the interactive nature of the video game indisputably engages the protagonists in direct confrontations with the undead, one should not forget that Capcom's Resident Evil (1996) was a literal game changer by welcoming the player, through a now-famous line during loading screens, to “the world of survival horror” (my emphasis) and thereby drawing attention to the spatial dimension of the experience. Thus, this essay will reflect on the notion of space in the world building of zombie fiction.