The Santa Fe Playhouse is putting a new spin on haunted houses this season with its production of “Santa Fe Dead,” an interactive, live-action video-game-like experience in which “survivors” are on a mission to find the cure to a new zombifying virus.

The goal of the game is to find the cure and make it out alive. However, that gets difficult when you have hoards of zombies trying to attack you. You are armed with neurotoxin darts (nerf guns) that kill zombies, but only if they’re shot in the head.

The zombies, however, are armed with nothing but their blood-coated hands. Each player is supplied with a white shirt, which they return at the end of the show. The zombies’ goal is to tag the player with their bloody hands. If a player gets tagged two or more times, then they are infected and must be left behind. But their journey doesn’t end there — there’s a surprise waiting for them at the end of the line.

Artistic director Vaughn Irving brought the show here from Washington, D.C., where it is called “DC Dead.” Irving first came up with the idea as a bachelor party game for a zombie-loving friend in 2011. It originally took eight minutes and was a rapid-fire, adrenaline-packed race for survival. Now, the show has been expanded into a 45 minute adventure, with dialogue and many stages of action.

“We really didn’t know if it was going to work or if it was going to bankrupt me and my business partner,” Irving says with a laugh. “Luckily, it was a huge hit, and we even got asked to make it a year-round event!” The show has also been put on in Oklahoma City.

“We decided to make it into more of a narrative, so you’re not just going through the building and fighting zombies, but you’re playing through the plot of a story,” Irving says, explaining that player interact with characters along the way.

Even though the scripts are similar, each city has its own name for the zombies themselves. “It’s always got a lot of local flavor,” Irving explains. “If you’re a fan of zombie films or television shows, you’ll know that they never call the zombies ‘zombies.’ ”

In D.C. the zombies were called “staphers” to make fun of Washington politics in that the people who work on Capitol Hill are nicknamed “staffers.” The “ph” came in when they decided the virus would be a mutated form of a staph infection. “The whole show was a metaphor for gentrification,” Irving says.

Here in Santa Fe, the zombies are called “tourists.”

Although the base of the game is shooting others in the head, there are some rules: Namely, respect the actors. In past shows, some players have intentionally harmed them, but they are actors — real, living, breathing people, and being kicked or harassed isn’t what they signed up for. (Company members reserve the right to escort players out of the building if the rules are not followed.)

Santa Fe Dead opens on Oct. 19 and closes on Halloween. The shows take place at the green warehouse on 1400 Boylan Lane, off of Agua Fria Street, between Frenchy’s Field and Siler Road. Shows start every 15 minutes from 6:30 p.m. to 10:15 p.m. There are 14 performances a night, each one lasting approximately 45 minutes.

Tickets are $20 until Oct. 27, but on Halloween weekend the price jumps to $25. Tickets are available at the door and on the Santa Fe Playhouse Website (santafeplayhouse.org).

Come fight the undead! Save the city!