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It's dusk on a brisk autumn Friday. At college campuses across the United States, students are preparing for a weekend of booze-fuelled debauchery.

The ritual extends even to the tiny liberal arts school Goucher College, north of Baltimore. But some students there have found a different way to blow off steam.

Several dozen students are being led on a march around the perimeter of the wooded campus. They carry Nerf dart guns. A few bark out orders; the rest follow them. They watch each other's backs and stay in formation.

In their minds, they are among the last survivors of the human race, marching across a post-apocalyptic world where the dead rise from the grave. They remain vigilant, scanning the woods and training their guns on an unseen menace that could attack at any moment.

Their leader on this journey is a student dressed as a Mayan priest. Occasionally, he stops and directs his followers to sing and dance.

Christopher Weed lingers apart from the crowd. Lanky and soft-spoken, Mr. Weed (who recently graduated) is the puppet master behind this bizarre display.

As the students launch into a song-and-dance number, he can't contain himself. His chuckles give way to laughter. He buries his face in his hands.

"I love this game," he says.

The game is called Humans vs. Zombies. Mr. Weed and fellow student Brad Sappington invented it in 2005, drawing from games such as Assassins and Murder, in which players sneak around and slay one another by throwing balled-up socks.

Really, it's just a high-concept version of playground tag. But the introduction of zombies provided an irresistible wrinkle.

"It's this way to watch an awesome flick like Dawn of the Dead or some zombie movie and then try to be a part of what that means," game moderator Trevor Moorman said.

It offers a perfect cover for college students who don't want to be called immature but aren't ready to grow up yet, either.

At Goucher, which doesn't offer many of the social opportunities common among bigger schools, Humans vs. Zombies quickly became one of the biggest events. The college, with 1,300 undergraduates, has no fraternities or sororities.

"We're all nerds," zombie player Libbie Wenick said. "Rejects from high school come to Goucher and become awesome. I don't mean that in a bad way."

The game is simple: Humans identify themselves with bandanas around an arm or leg; zombies wear bandanas on their foreheads. Zombies kill humans by tagging them.

Humans can "stun" zombies for 15 minutes by shooting them with Nerf darts or hitting them with socks. Zombies die if they go 48 hours without feeding.

After the rules for Humans vs. Zombies were posted online, the game spread to dozens of campuses and has even infected the Ivy League, at Cornell University.

But it hasn't always been smoothly integrated into campus life. In the wake of mass shootings last year at Virginia Tech and this year at Northern Illinois University, some believe it is insensitive, if not dangerous, for students to march or sneak around campus with plastic dart guns.

Perhaps the most dramatic zombie-related uproar came in April at Alfred University, where the campus was locked down after a staff member reported seeing a man carrying what appeared to be a handgun. The suspect turned out to be a student playing Humans vs. Zombies, said Norman Pollard, dean of students.

The game was suspended for the spring at the Alfred, N.Y., school, and Dr. Pollard met with organizers to discuss ways to continue it.

"Here was a group of 75 students actively involved in a physical activity that didn't involve drugs or alcohol," Dr. Pollard said. "I can see the merit for them."

At Goucher, a similar debate has raged.

"Guns scare me," said Jennifer Jennings-Shaud, who teaches in Goucher's education department. "Nerf guns, regular guns, any guns."

The moderators of Humans vs. Zombies have listened to these and other concerns, but the complaints resulted in few substantive changes.

And the game has a backer in Goucher president Sanford Ungar. "If I thought that banning Humans vs. Zombies at Goucher College would end violence in America tomorrow, then I would consider doing it," he said. "But it wouldn't do that, and this (campus) is not a pit of violence because of this game."

There's also a segment of the student population that thinks Humans vs. Zombies is ridiculous. When the humans were on their march around campus, a group of young women taunted them from a passing car, sticking out their fingers and yelling, "Pow! Pow! Pow!"

Player Boman Modine bucked up the troops after the car drove away.

"While they enjoy a night of drinking and illegal drugs," he said, "we're out losing weight and looking sexy."

Ultimately, there's something poignant about Humans vs. Zombies. When asked to explain the appeal of the game, players talk about the friends they've made. The game bridges divides between men and women, seniors and freshmen, computer scientists and poets.

Humans vs. Zombies is also a chance to bring back a childhood that some never experienced. Growing up with structured activities and safe playgrounds, they didn't get the primal appeal of the chase out of their systems.

"My mom didn't let (toy) guns in the house, and I didn't get TV till I was 18," Mr. Modine said. "This is just me catching up."