Zombie Rods — iPad AdverGame

A studio-original iPad AdverGame born from a stretch of downtime at Juxt Interactive. Zombie hot-rodders, mutant puppies, and a rogues' gallery of makeshift weapons — a fully-illustrated, fully-playable IP built to prove the studio could invent its own products, not just execute other people's briefs. Illustration and world by Sebastian Betancourt.

The pitch to ourselves was simple: when the client roster goes quiet, don't wait. Use the runway to invent things that could earn revenue, sharpen the team, and put the studio on platforms nobody had hired us for yet. Juxt gave us complete creative freedom, and Zombie Rods was the reason we asked for it.

The world came first. Working shoulder-to-shoulder with the extraordinary illustrator Sebastian Betancourt, we built out a black-ink-and-blood-splatter grindhouse universe of zombified hot rods, mutant sidekicks, and gonzo villains — a hand-drawn horror-comic aesthetic that no template asset could fake. Every screen was custom, every enemy had a character sheet, every weapon had a story.

On top of that world we shipped a full iPad game: an intro, a weapon-select flow, a how-to-play tutorial, an in-game HUD, achievements, and a Game Over loop — all tuned for touch, all wired into a shareable social loop with free wallpapers and a companion site at zombierods.com. It looked like a licensed property. It behaved like one too.

Role at Juxt Interactive: initial concepting, creative art direction, UX, and UI — partnering with Sebastian on illustration and world design, and with Juxt's engineering team to ship the app. Zombie Rods is one of the earliest examples of the same instinct that later became AIM PREVIZ and AIM's studio-originals practice: build IP with the same rigor you'd bring to a client, and see how far it can go.