Horde Survival in UEFN: Build the Co-op Zombies Mode

Horde Survival — "zombies" to most players — is the cooperative pressure cooker. A small team spawns into an arena and fights off escalating waves of AI enemies that come from every side. Each cleared wave is bigger and meaner than the last; you earn currency, buy better guns, and try to push your round count higher than anyone else. It's Call of Duty Zombies / Horde mode, rebuilt in Fortnite. This Game Modes entry breaks the wave loop down and builds a compile-verified Verse wave manager that counts kills, advances the wave, and ramps the difficulty.

1. What it is

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Co-op Last Stand

Horde Survival is a co-op PvE wave-defense mode. Players share an arena against waves of spawned AI:

• Each wave spawns a fixed number of enemies; clear them all to advance.
• Each new wave is harder — more enemies, tougher types, faster spawns.
• Players earn currency per kill to buy weapons, ammo, and upgrades between waves.
• The run ends when the whole team is down; your score is the wave you reached.

The fantasy is the heroic last stand — coordinating a team to hold a line that keeps getting heavier.

2. Type of game

3. The loop

Every wave is the same beat at rising intensity: enemies spawn, the team clears them, everyone buys upgrades, then the next, bigger wave begins.

The craft is the ramp: each wave must feel a notch scarier so the team is always one mistake from being overwhelmed.

4. Why it's fun

• Co-op camaraderie. Holding a line with friends, calling out flanks and reviving downed teammates, is the social heart of the mode.
• Power fantasy curve. You start with a pistol and end mowing down hordes with an upgraded arsenal — the progression feels great.
• Escalating dread. Every wave is heavier; the tension of "can we survive the next one?" never lets up.
• Score chase. "What wave did you reach?" is a clean, brag-worthy leaderboard metric.
• Endless variety. Special enemy types, boss waves, and map events keep each run fresh.

5. Who made the great ones

Zombies/horde is one of Creative's biggest PvE categories:

• goodgamerslegacy — Zombieland (code 9369-6922-8408) is widely called the most popular pure-zombies map, with traditional progression and levelling.
• Shucksourdiesel — Horde Rush, an intense 4-player, 12-round mode where the team clears every enemy as waves converge from all sides.
• Deadpines: Zombie Survival (code 0598-1708-7538) — an open-world, rogue-like co-op zombies map for up to four, ranking up power against endless hordes.
• ITSSPARK — Sunrise City - Horde Survival (code 5780-2589-3510), a record-chasing destroy-the-zombies survival build.

6. Examples / variants

• Round-based zombies — classic CoD-style: clear the round, buy, repeat, endless ramp.
• Horde rush — a fixed number of escalating waves with a final boss; beat them all to win.
• Open-world rogue-like — roam an arena, level up power, fight endless spawns (Deadpines style).
• Tower-defense hybrid — build/repair barriers between waves to funnel the horde.

7. How to make it in UEFN / Verse

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Wave Manager

The devices you'll place

• Guard Spawner / AI spawners — the enemies. You place spawners and trigger them per wave.
• Elimination Manager (elimination_manager_device) — fires EliminatedEvent on each kill, so Verse can count down the wave.
• Item Granter (item_granter_device) — to grant currency, ammo, or upgrade weapons between waves via GrantItem.
• Player Spawn Pads + a defensible arena with buy stations.

The Verse mechanic that ties it together

Spawning is device-driven. Verse owns the wave state machine: count kills until the wave is clear, then advance and scale up the next wave. The series staple returns — subscribe to an event, react — on the Elimination Manager's EliminatedEvent.

# elimination_manager_device fires EliminatedEvent : agent on each kill.
EliminationManager.EliminatedEvent.Subscribe(OnEnemyEliminated)

To reward kills we use the Item Granter — the simplest grant call in the API:

# item_granter_device hands the agent its configured item (e.g. currency).
RewardGranter.GrantItem(Killer)

The full, compile-verified wave manager

Drop this horde_survival_device into your project, wire the @editable Elimination Manager and reward Item Granter, and it counts kills, advances waves, scales difficulty, and rewards each elimination. It's a standalone creative_device, so it compiles on its own.

How it works, line by line

1. @editable EliminationManager + RewardGranter let a designer drag the real devices in.
2. StartWave increments the wave and computes its size as BaseWaveSize + (wave-1) * step — that arithmetic is the difficulty ramp.
3. OnEnemyEliminated rewards the killer with RewardGranter.GrantItem(Killer) (currency), then decrements the wave's remaining enemies.
4. When EnemiesLeftInWave <= 0 the wave is clear and StartWave rolls straight into the next, bigger one.
5. EndRun is the wipe hook — wire 'all players down' to it to finalize the score as the reached wave.

Gotchas

• The AI is device-spawned, not Verse-spawned here. Trigger your Guard/AI spawners for the wave count; Verse owns the count and ramp, not the spawn mechanics.
• EliminatedEvent fires for any tracked elimination. Scope the Elimination Manager to the AI team so player downs don't decrement your enemy count.
• GrantItem grants the granter's configured item. Set the Item Granter to your currency item; call it per kill to pay the team.
• Tune the ramp carefully. EnemiesPerWaveStep plus tougher enemy types is the whole feel — too flat is boring, too steep is a brick wall.

Recap

• Horde Survival is co-op PvE wave defense: hold out against escalating waves of AI, buy upgrades, and chase a high wave count.
• The fun is co-op camaraderie, a satisfying power curve, and relentless escalating dread.
• In UEFN AI/Guard spawners provide the enemies, the Elimination Manager reports kills, and the Item Granter pays out currency.
• The Verse pattern is the series staple plus a state machine: subscribe to EliminatedEvent, reward + count down the wave, then advance and scale the next.
• The difficulty ramp (BaseWaveSize + wave * step, tougher types) is the craft that keeps a horde mode tense.