Land of the Dead was originally developed as a singleplayer PC game called Day of the Zombie, which had a four month development cycle and was ready for October 2004 release. Day of the Zombie was shown to Universal Studios around the time the movie Land of the Dead was being filmed in Toronto, Canada (where Groove is headquartered) - this is how the license was secured. The game was ported to Xbox, multiplayer functionality was added and environments were added to tie the game to the movie. But in 2009, Groove Games finally decided it was a good idea to finish Day of the Zombie and release it, even if the game has 2004 graphics.

The story, which is the only new thing compared to Land of the Dead, is about zombies who have invaded a town and 3 main characteres : a student who wants to save his girlfriend, the director of the student's college who wants to save his college from zombies, and a US army sniper who just wants to leave the town.