The Foodpocalypse

The Foodpocalypse is a 2020 first-person shooter game developed and published by Clever Interactive. The game themes around mutant food creatures referred to as “food zombies” who are bloodthirsty and have invaded every supermarket around the globe. Players take the role as mercenaries who must exterminate the food zombies to eradicate them. Each of the mercenaries players can play as are based on specific stereotypes. The game can be played cooperatively online or can be played by a single player either by themselves or with player bots.

It released on 31 October 2020, Halloween Day, for, , Kin, Lifestyle Gaming, and. It was later released for and  as launch titles.

Gameplay
Players are tasked with fighting and surviving a wave of food zombies, each having different abilities and attributes. Before playing a game, players have to choose their primary, secondary, and melee weapon, with each having unique stats and abilities. For each food zombie killed, players are given “Cents”, a currency which can be used to upgrade their weapons after finishing a wave by going to an upgrade station. All players are equipped with syringe guns that can be used on themselves or other players to restore their health. Players can perform a special killing move to a food zombie when it’s on low health to brutally mutilate them to earn extra cents. After completing waves of food zombies, players must fight against a boss, who is a person that has mutated into a food creature. Once players defeat a boss, they’ll be able to perform a violent finishing move called a “Foodtality” which is similar in concept to 's moves. After finishing a game, players are rewarded with “Bucks”, the game’s in-game currency that can be used to purchase new weapons, characters, and cosmetics.

Game modes

 * Survival: The standard game mode in which players have to complete a number of waves.
 * Endless: A game mode in which players have to finish as many waves as possible until they all die.
 * Quests: A game mode where players have to complete a number of maps by clearing an objective. Each quest can be played every day, week, and month.
 * Food Massacre: A competitive game mode in which players go against each other as singles or teams to kill as many food zombies as possible until time runs out.
 * Challenges: A single-player game mode in which a player must complete a set of challenges to earn either a bronze, silver or gold medal. Each challenge has an objective with unique rules and scenarios.
 * Training: A game mode that allows a player to test their weapons against food zombies as well as being able to spawn specific food zombies to fight against.

Survivalist mode
Survivalist is a sub-game mode added in a content update which gives players starting weapons which they can pick from and have to buy weapons in the upgrade station in order to use them. There’re no ammo pickups, instead, players have to purchase ammo in the upgrade station. As a benefit, weapons do not feature any downsides in this mode. The player can set a game to Survivalist in the game set-up menu.

Pre-release
In a Clever Showcase announcement, a demo of the game was released on 4 October 2020. It allowed players to play as four of the characters in the game with them only being able to play one stage with the four differently modes. They can play the game by themselves or play with three player bots. For a limited time, players could play online with random players until it was disabled on 31 October 2020, the day the game launched.

Post-release
The game received content updates after launch, featuring new game modes, maps, and food zombies.

Promotions
During the game's launch, Clever partnered with many supermarket retailers to promote the game and made licensing deals with food companies to include the food zombies on the packaging of certain food products that contained codes that players can enter in the game to receive Bucks.

As part of the game’s promotion, a costume was created depicting the apple food zombie from the game in which they appeared in different supermarkets to spook shoppers.

In Japan, during the game’s anniversary on 31 October 2021, Clever made a partnership with Japanese supermarket chain Life Corp to sell limited discounted retail copies of the game that included promotional cosmetic items featuring the chain's mascot Lalapie.

Legacy
A minigame based on the game is included in the exclusive game Clever All-Stars Switched. In it, players can connect their Nintendo Switch systems to each other and create unique level layouts by playing in a top down perspective killing a wave of food zombies.

Clever’s first-person shooter game Dominate takes place in the same universe as The Foodpocalypse does, with Clever referring to it as the “Dominate/Foodpocalypse Shared Universe”. In addition, certain maps and weapons from the game were added into Dominate, featuring some food zombies that act as enemies that can be killed to earn points.

TV series
A television series of the game titled Rise Of The Foodpocalypse was produced by Owen Productions and released on 31 October 2021 for Clever's streaming service Media Express, later rebranded to Medior.