Facing the zombie apocalypse on crutches, a game proposal

So, last post, it was a couple minutes at most before I found some packages that had been set aside when I was in too much pain to mail and discovered that The Last Guardian and The Last of Us have been given to me by nice people.  Thank you nice people.

That had me going back and striking out a bit of text because I think four settings should be enough that shifting through them will meet my story variety needs, thus things had changed.  (Still could really use delivery food money, advice too --if anyone knows the greater Portland area-- since the Chinese place I know is out of business now.)

Anyway, I started the first The Last game yesterday, and The Last of Us today.

In the opening a girl hurts her foot and can't walk.  Everyone knows what you do in that case: you carry her.  And that's what happened.

I saw myself in her.  A sprained ankle I can force myself to walk on once the initial pain dies down a bit (hurts like all hell, but I can do it), this broken ankle, though, it's different.  The reason I broke my porch was that my left foot grazed it, just barely a touch.  No weight, no force to speak of, and the pain alone dropped me.  I was standing, perfectly well balanced, and then I wasn't.  Sheer force of pain.

So I was thinking that If that happened I'd be utterly useless in the zombie apocalypse.  But then I kept on thinking.  If the zombie apocalypse happened now I'd already have crutches and the pain would be significantly less.  That would make all the difference.  Especially if I weren't as out of shape as I am now.  If I were in peak condition I'd be able to go long distances at speed with a lot of weight on my back.  A backpack is good for inventory, but if you think about it, I could be hop-vaulting away from the infected hordes with a child on my back.

(The child would have to do all the work since I couldn't hold onto them and crutches at the same time, but said work is possible.)

So provided the "I can't stand" injury happened before they stopped handing out crutches, I totally could have been the one carrying the can't-walk girl from the open instead of needing to be carried myself.

And this is how my mind works.  I find myself envisioning a game in which one of the main characters, who is on crutches, is giving the other main character a piggyback ride through the zombie apocalypse.

I wonder if the danger of things that can slide (a piece of paper on a smooth surface could spell your death if your crutch lands on it and you try to put weight on that crutch) would be a gameplay mechanic.

I think about how you'd have to stop to shoot because freeing an arm for the weapon requires not having it on a crutch.  I think about whacking zombies with one crutch while standing on the good leg and the other crutch.

I wonder if the person being carried would handle weapons.

I picture the Boston T (the subway parts) being fortified against zombie incursion and becoming where people live while Boston above ground becomes a massive open world to be crutched through as it decays in that verdant way New England places are consumed by forest if there's no one to mow the lawn.

Of course one must assume that if the player character is using crutches that shouldn't be the only way to get around.  I'm not specifically thinking of the luxury of a wheelchair because I imagine that post-zombie the elevators used for wheelchair access will not be powered.  Not until civilization really starts to rebuild.

I refer, instead, to butt sliding.  Also crawling, depending on the injury.

But sliding is the safest way to go up stairs when you're on crutches, and it's faster than using the crutches to do it unless there's but one step.

But mostly I have this idea of the zombie apocalypse on crutches, because zombie apocalypses seldom wait for a good time.  You usually don't get to go, "Hey, could you wait like six weeks so that I can walk?" and have the zombie apocalypse say, "Yeah, sure, How about earth day?"

Also, can I just say, they go through a museum and don't come out of it with so much as one sword?  Come on people.  At the very least you could have gotten a decent knife and not had to resort to shivs so weak the break after one use.  How do you even get them that weak?  Are they made out of a pane of window-glass?  Cause that's not one of the ingredients used to craft them, but it does seem to describe their durability.

When the apocalypse comes I'm totally looting the cool weapons from the museums.  My muse would be disappointed if I didn't.

-

A very easy way to make a plot would be if the crutch person were pre-surgery and so they needed to track down a surgeon, an anesthesiologists, other such people, drugs, equipment, so forth, and a sterile location where the surgery could be preformed without becoming zombie nomage.