Plenty of first-person shooter games play with the video game setting and take the genre in new directions. There are zombie apocalypse stories that take place in different time periods and with vastly different obstacles involved. In some cases, the zombies themselves are just another target for the first-person shooter to attack. Plenty of zombie killing games will feature other popular supernatural creatures and science fiction or fantasy opponents, such as aliens, vampires, or other types of undead creatures. Mixing the genres and the elements allows game designers to potentially attract a larger audience, or add new takes on the zombie apocalypse genre.

Adding other supernatural creatures to the mix in a game that includes zombies also allows the player to deal with varying obstacles. There are plenty of different zombies in fiction. Some of them move quickly, whereas some of them are slow enough that individual zombies don't pose as much of a threat. Zombies of both extremes are typically threatening primarily because of the number of them in the first place. The crowd is the threat. With other supernatural creatures, the individuals may be more threatening, and each individual monster may be in the minority. The players will have to face the unique challenges associated with dealing with these kinds of monsters, as well as the challenges associated with taking on hordes of zombies.

Many zombie killing games fall into the hack and slash genre of video games. In those cases, eliminating the zombies is very much both the goal and the fundamental appeal of the game for the players. The player's perspective may vary depending on the game, from shooting overhead to shooting from a more direct perspective within the game. Players can get very different experiences with different zombie hack and slash games.

Video games increasingly use more substantial storytelling, so the events that unfold have more substance and the players can get into them more easily than they would with events that existed in a vacuum. The players are adding to the baseline story, in that case. There is often a substantial narrative that accompanies many modern zombie killing games, and the players can dramatize that narrative for themselves. Some of the appeal, in that case, is going to come from an emotional connection to the storyline that is connected to the game. The storytelling aspect will probably continue to become even more important to the gaming experience as developers put more and more of their efforts in that direction. The zombie killing games of the future will be different from the games of the past.