Call of Duty Mobile has proved to be quite a hit for Activision in the nearly two months it’s been out, and all that time the game managed to attract millions of downloads with just two modes, the standard Multiplayer, and Battle Royale. That changed this weekend with the return of the franchise’s fan-favorite side mode, Zombies.

Since 2008’s Call of Duty: World at War, this mode has popped up frequently throughout the series and offered fans a break from the main military action with more fantastic horde-based challenges against legions of the undead set on maps specifically designed for Call of Duty Zombies. Now that it’s available in on mobile devices for a limited time, it should give newcomers even more incentive to give the game a try, even if they won’t be able to access it right away.

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How To Unlock Zombies Mode

Anyone who downloaded the game this weekend may have been surprised to find that they weren’t able to immediately jump into Zombies mode. That’s intentional, and luckily for impatient fans, it doesn’t take long to remedy that. All one has to do to unlock Call of Duty Mobile’s Zombies mode is reach level 5 through playing the rest of the game normally. Once that’s done, players are free to play the mode as much as they want while it’s available.

How To Play Zombies Mode

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For those hopping into a Call of Duty Zombies mode for the first time, here’s the gist: players, playing either alone or with up to three others, are dropped into a map (in this case Shi No Numa, one of the original Zombies maps from Call of Duty: World at War) armed with only a pistol and a knife and tasked with fending off the zombies that start swarming them. By killing zombies and boarding up windows to slow their advance, players can earn points to buy better weapons/character buffs, open up new parts of the maps, set traps, and unlock powerful tide-turning abilities.

Zombies mode in Call of Duty Mobile currently comes in two forms: Survival and Raid. Survival is the classic Zombies experience where players are challenged to survive as many waves as possible, with better rewards being earned for completing more waves. Meanwhile, Raid is a brand new option for the COD Zombies experience which shakes thing up by throwing in a set number of waves (8 or 12 depending on the difficulty chosen) for players to clear and a final boss to fight. That boss is the scorpion-like Abomination that lurks in Shi No Numa, but there is also another boss for players to find when playing Raid on the Hardcore difficulty.

To reiterate, the Zombies mode presently available in Call of Duty Mobile won’t be available for long, but Activision has stated that Shi No Numa, its bosses, and its hidden secrets make up only “the first of many zombies experiences” planned for the game, in addition to all of the other limited-time events being added to Call of Duty Mobile. In short, players shouldn’t have to wait long for more zombie-themed content once the current event ends.

Call of Duty Mobile is available on iOS and Android devices.

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