Amused enough with an idea to share it in a public-type note here: rogue-like zombie survival game where dead characters persist as zombies until re-killed
Key is the character-generation portion, which should be fairly involved. To minimize on map-making, maybe use Google Maps API? You can have the characters spawn where you are. That also allows for alt real
Zombified versions can have same or analogous characteristics as living versions, but should give the zombie AI some personality. It can start out as some geo-location map project, the introduce the game aspec