American McGee and Spicy Horse have officially jump started his Kickstarter campaign for OZombie. McGee describes the project as “narrative-driven action-adventure game set within an alternate version of the Oz universe created by L. Frank Baum.” The game will utilize a steam-punk style, similar to American McGee's Alice, but will have its own unique style, foregoing any similarities to previous adaptions of the OZ story, including McGee's previously scraped OZ project.

The game will support single-player and multi-player modes, although little information has been released on the multi-player. The single-player campaign will follow Dorothy through OZ as she attempts to save Ozites from the Scarecrow's mindless army. Although the Scarecrow seems to turn the Ozites into Zombies, McGee has stated that these are not typical zombies and less obsessed with eating brains and more prone to mindless conformist behavior, a subject inspired by Robert Heinlein's work. The Scarecrow will use his army to “free Oz from "lazy magic" and to begin a new era where "life matters because there is death." His idea of utopia is one where creativity, passion and imagination are evil and should be repressed. Mindless repetitive activities and Luddite prejudices align with his goals. Happiness comes from conformity.” Although the story seems fairly straight-forward, McGee has stated that the game will be more complicated in that Dorothy will need to “build communities and persuade allies to root out and destroy the damage to multiple cultural and political institutions to restore a humanistic civilization.” At this time, McGee has not offered any clarification as to how this will play out in the game.

The Kickstarter campaign has offered 24 separate tiers for backer and 3 milestone markers for backers. Pledges range from low, where $5 USD will get you a unique forum avatar and access to the pre-production forums to an extravagant $10,000 pledge where backers will receive all items and a trip to Shanghai to meet the Spicy Horse team. Most pledges offer digital game content, but it has not been confirmed if the items have uses or are purely cosmetic in nature. Pledges of $30 or more will also receive the soundtrack and pledges of $50 or more will also include early Alpha and Beta access to the game.

This image is available as a mini poster with most pledges.

Spicy Horse is also offering milestone achievements according the number of backer they receive. If the first goal of 6000 backers is reached, they will open the mystery chest. At the second goal of 11,000 backers, Chris Vrenna (former drummer for Marilyn Manson and NIN) will compose the soundtrack. The third goal has yet to be determined.

The game will be available on Linux, Mac, PC and latest-gen tablets. It will also be DRM free, although there will be a one time online registration fee. After the game is registered, the game will be playable offline.

The campaign will be open for backing from June 24th till August 5th, 2013 and the game is set to release in 2015.