Cheesman Park stars in a new zombie video game
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A dog meetup pictured in Cheesman Park: The Game. Image: Courtesy of Casey Cantor
A Denver software engineer has turned Cheesman Park into a retro zombie video game complete with squirrels, volleyball players and the park's most infamous inhabitants: ghosts.
Why it matters: "Cheesman Park: The Game" is a "love letter" to one of Denver's most iconic places, creator Casey Cantor tells Axios.
The big picture: Cantor spent a week building the free game, using AI coding assistants like Claude to help fill in the gaps.
- The result is a throwback-style survival game packed with neighborhood Easter eggs, from One Cheesman Place to Sprout —a friend's corgi-cattle dog mix who appears in the game as the park's unofficial mayor. (Players earn points by stopping to pet her.)
Zoom in: Cheesman's cemetery past made the premise easy. Players fend off zombies, ghosts and other supernatural creatures while chasing high scores.
- The game's top players have already outdone its creator. Cantor says people doubled his high score within hours of launch — and have since "10x-ed" it.
What he's saying: "People really love seeing their hometown be represented in fun and unexpected ways," he tells Axios.
Pro tip: Cantor let us in on a little secret.
- Pick up an acorn, and the park's squirrels will chase you for bonus points.
What's next: Cantor says he's already working on a Denver bike-racing game set in Wash Park.