In Zombie Dash, you play the role of Penelope Dolittle, an amateur zombie hunter and professional StarCraft player. Your job is to trek through an abandoned building, rescuing frightened citizens before they are turned into brainless, drooling zombies. On each level, you must lead all of the citizens safely to the level’s exit(s), then head through an exit yourself so you can advance to the next level of the building to save more citizens. If you kill some zombies in the process, that’s even better. Any time a zombie gets next to a person and faces them, the zombie may attempt to vomit on the person. Should the vomit hit the victim, the person will soon become a brainless, vomiting zombie, unless before it's too late, they can get to the exit. However, Penelope is clear-headed enough to use a vaccine on herself. Once you have saved all of the citizens from every level of the building, the game is over.
You control Penelope with the arrow keys, or for lefties and others for whom the arrow key placement is awkward, WASD or the numeric keypad: up is w or 8, left is a or 4, down is s or 2, right is d or 6. Use the space key to fire Penelope’s flamethrower (if she’s picked up fuel), the tab key to deploy a landmine (if she’s picked up landmines), and the enter key to use a vaccine (if she’s picked up a vaccine kit). To quit the game at any time, press the ‘q’ key.