The official Zombie Apocalypse Thread

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by mckerney

FREE PUBLIC TECH-DEMO RELEASED! | Project Zomboid

Demo of Project Zomboid released. It's an isometric game where you gather supplies and try to survive as long as your can. The demo is actually quite a bit better than I was expecting it to be at this stage.

I downloaded this and played some over the weekend...

This isn't "Left 4 Dead" or "Resident Evil." You play a guy, Bob Smith, who looks like a middle-aged desk jockey, bald spot and everything. The dead have risen in your town and you and your wife, Kate, are just trying to survive. The game opens with you and Kate in a new "safe house" (third one this week). Kate has suffered a severely broken leg while running away from a gang of marauding humans. You've managed to get her upstairs into a bedroom. From there, the tutorial starts. It's pretty basic. You walk around using the W,A,S,D keys and look inside various houses, bars, restaurants and other buildings for supplies. Your first task is to find things to stabelize Kate. Your second task is secure the "safe house." Third task is to find food. And so on and so forth.

This is a game of survival, not killing zombies. You have to move as quickly and quiety as you can to try and scavenge whatever supplies you can find. Your character needs to eat and sleep. And, if injured, to heal up. Those are the essentials. You can kill zombies. There are some weapons, a hammer, axe, baseball bat and shotgun. It's pretty easy to kill one zombie or two (or many if you have a shotgun, though that is loud and attracts a LOT of attention), but once you start attracting a horde, you're pretty much fucked. You can walk faster than zombies and when you run you blow by them, but you get tired and can only run so long. And running makes more sound, which attracts more zombies.

There is a basic crafting system. For example, you can make bandages out of torn up bedsheets. If you have a hammer, nails and some wood you can barricade the doors and windows. If you have an empty bottle, petrol, the torn up sheets and a lighter... molotov cocktail. And so on.

At this point, there really isn't too much more to the game than just seeing how long you can survive. The best strategy, is probably to stay in the safehouse as long as you can and only run out to gather food and supplies when absolutely necessary.

That game has good atmosphere. You can hear the zombies groaning when they see you or gathering outside your window. You can hear them slowly pounding at the door of your house. If you happen to stumble unexpectedly onto a zombie either in a room or around a corner the music shrieks and your guy can panic. The text dialogue between you and your wife is surprisingly touching. (To skip the tutorial, which you have to play through each time you start a new game, you can just smother her with a pillow. I eventually did that, since I had completed the tutorial so many times. It sucked.)

There are some frustrating things about the game. The most frustrating things are that I wasn't able to drop any items except for putting them in cabinets. This came back to kill me one time. I had a huge haul of goodies, including a shotgun, but was encumbered. Just walking with all that stuff made me tired and out of breath. I thought I could make it home, but I was wrong. And not being able to shed my heavy load led to my death. The isometric view can also be tricky for combat, since you think you have the zombie lined up with your axe, you swing and... not so much.

The game is certainly with a few play throughs, especially since it's free.

I did have to go online to see how to get past the end of the tutorial.

[mckerney]

Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue

I downloaded this and played some over the weekend...

This isn't "Left 4 Dead" or "Resident Evil." You play a guy, Bob Smith, who looks like a middle-aged desk jockey, bald spot and everything. The dead have risen in your town and you and your wife, Kate, are just trying to survive. The game opens with you and Kate in a new "safe house" (third one this week). Kate has suffered a severely broken leg while running away from a gang of marauding humans. You've managed to get her upstairs into a bedroom. From there, the tutorial starts. It's pretty basic. You walk around using the W,A,S,D keys and look inside various houses, bars, restaurants and other buildings for supplies. Your first task is to find things to stabelize Kate. Your second task is secure the "safe house." Third task is to find food. And so on and so forth.

This is a game of survival, not killing zombies. You have to move as quickly and quiety as you can to try and scavenge whatever supplies you can find. Your character needs to eat and sleep. And, if injured, to heal up. Those are the essentials. You can kill zombies. There are some weapons, a hammer, axe, baseball bat and shotgun. It's pretty easy to kill one zombie or two (or many if you have a shotgun, though that is loud and attracts a LOT of attention), but once you start attracting a horde, you're pretty much fucked. You can walk faster than zombies and when you run you blow by them, but you get tired and can only run so long. And running makes more sound, which attracts more zombies.

There is a basic crafting system. For example, you can make bandages out of torn up bedsheets. If you have a hammer, nails and some wood you can barricade the doors and windows. If you have an empty bottle, petrol, the torn up sheets and a lighter... molotov cocktail. And so on.

At this point, there really isn't too much more to the game than just seeing how long you can survive. The best strategy, is probably to stay in the safehouse as long as you can and only run out to gather food and supplies when absolutely necessary.

That game has good atmosphere. You can hear the zombies groaning when they see you or gathering outside your window. You can hear them slowly pounding at the door of your house. If you happen to stumble unexpectedly onto a zombie either in a room or around a corner the music shrieks and your guy can panic. The text dialogue between you and your wife is surprisingly touching. (To skip the tutorial, which you have to play through each time you start a new game, you can just smother her with a pillow. I eventually did that, since I had completed the tutorial so many times. It sucked.)

There are some frustrating things about the game. The most frustrating things are that I wasn't able to drop any items except for putting them in cabinets. This came back to kill me one time. I had a huge haul of goodies, including a shotgun, but was encumbered. Just walking with all that stuff made me tired and out of breath. I thought I could make it home, but I was wrong. And not being able to shed my heavy load led to my death. The isometric view can also be tricky for combat, since you think you have the zombie lined up with your axe, you swing and... not so much.

The game is certainly with a few play throughs, especially since it's free.

I did have to go online to see how to get past the end of the tutorial.

It it pretty limited since it's just the demo to the alpha version of the game. Right now you can buy the game for €5 and the alpha should be online soon. It was up for a while, but there was a pirated version out that took up too much bandwidth because of how often it would download the game while checking for updates. As a result they took it down until they can prevent that sort of thing. Some of the things they'll include in their next update:

Character professions – Select your character’s pre-apocalypse job, which will grant them unique traits relating to their career to give them unique apocalypse survival skills. Make Bob a construction worker who’s barricading and crafting skills are second to none, or maybe a fire officer who can chop through zombies heads and doors with equal finesse.

Traits – You can give your character a combination of good / bad traits. You can trade for more points by giving Bob bad traits, perhaps making him a hypochondriac who develops zombification symptoms whether he has been infected by a scratch or not. With these points you can buy positive traits, making him brave and less prone to panic, or extra fit to make easy work of those long runs or frenzied weapon swinging.

Curtains! – ‘nuf said, we think!

Burglar alarms – Be afraid.

[Honolulu_Blue]

I know that the "World War Z" movie has been in the works for sometime now, but I didn't know that they'd actually begun filiming it already and that it's due out next year!

Ain't It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news.

[JediKooter]

Nice!

[Edward64]

Oct 8 is the day!

World Zombie Day To Bring Out The Living Dead | Fox News

This October flesh-eating corpses could be shambling the streets of a city near you. Oct. 8 has officially been coined World Zombie Day and events across the United States are searching for victims this month.

Zombie walks inspired by classic horror films like George A. Romero’s "Night of the Living Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead" give people across the country and around the world a day of dead fun that’s inexpensive, and often gives back to charity.

[Honolulu_Blue]

I have been trying to get into some form of shape for a while now. And I think I've finally found something that could inspire me to do it:

5K Obstacle Course Zombie Race - Run For Your Lives

Thinking of the Indy date, unless there is one closer to the Detroit area or possible Chicago.

[Kodos]

hxxp://shop.cafepress.com/zombie

I like the "Does your family have a zombie infestation plan?" one.

[AlexB]

'Resident Evil 5' stage collapse sends 11 to hospital | Inside Movies | EW.com

I love the fact that 'Since the actors were reportedly dressed as zombies, paramedics could not tell at first which of them were actually injured...'

[Subby]

OH HAI!

World War Z trailer

[DataKing]

Fake.

[Subby]

Ah, so it is. Pretty well done though.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by Subby

Ah, so it is. Pretty well done though.

I agree. It is pretty well done.

[SteveMax58]

I know this has been posted in a couple of other threads but this truly belongs here. Start getting your supplies in order.

The Zombie Apocalypse has begun!!!!

Miami Police Shoot, Kill Man Eating Another Man’s Face « CBS Miami

the officer saw what the man was doing, and ordered him to stop. He said the man growled at the officer, and then returned to his meal.

[Edward64]

For all you Walking Dead comic book fans, Brian Keene has started his own. Read them at B&N, I thought pretty good. Only 2 out so far.

Amazon.com: The Last Zombie: Dead New World (9780984487929): Brian Keene: Books

[Edward64]

I found the below forum. Its a prepper forum but they try to incorporate a zombie apocalypse (as well as other SHTF scenarios).

http://zombiehunters.org/forum/

[EagleFan]

Alexander Kinyua Ate Kujoe Agyei-Kodie's Brain, Heart In Maryland, Cops Say

Does this make it a trend?

[tyketime]

Originally Posted by EagleFan

Alexander Kinyua Ate Kujoe Agyei-Kodie's Brain, Heart In Maryland, Cops Say

Does this make it a trend?

Great... Now all of the Zombies are gonna come out of the woods.

[SteveMax58]

New meaning to "you want a piece of me?". Felt appropriate for this thread as there is no confirmation that he was not a zombie.

New Jersey man throws intestines at cops after repeatedly stabbing himself | Fox News

[Honolulu_Blue]

"Dead State" has finally launched a Kickstarter.

Dead State is a game I've been tracking for a few years now. It's a zombie survival RPG. It's a turn-based game similar to, say, X-Com or Jagged Alliance. You have a character and your "base" is a school. You have to gather allies, get supplies, keep up morale, build up your base, etc.

Dead State: The Zombie Survival RPG by DoubleBear Productions — Kickstarter

Here's a bit more on it:

Overview

Dead State is a compelling, high-tension RPG set at the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. As society is beginning to fall apart, the player must organize allies, fortify a shelter, scout for food and supplies, and make uncertain alliances, attempting to hold together a group as humanity teeters on the brink of extinction. And although the zombies lurk as an ever present threat, the biggest obstacle to the player may just be other humans with the same goal: survival at any cost.

Interact with dozens of characters in over 10,000 lines of branching dialogue that affect gameplay, story outcomes, and multiple endings. Explore multiple surrounding towns and areas to find supplies and recruit allies. Fight the living and the dead in strategic turn-based combat. Upgrade your shelter to provide new ways of keeping morale high, creating new weapons and armor, and keeping the dead out. Your leadership will mean life or undeath for the survivors of the zombie apocalypse.

Core Features

-A PC RPG with stats, skills, and perks that make a huge difference on your character’s abilities.

-Dozens of characters with branching, reactive dialogue, and randomized events that unfold over months of in-game time – player decisions and the death of loved ones can change relationships drastically.

-Turn-based combat where line-of-sight and noise affect whether you are spotted or not, making for extremely tense encounters.

-Base-building mechanics featuring multiple upgrades, NPC jobs, and item manufacturing.

-Scavenging mechanics that require players to find supplies, weapons, armor, and other items to keep their allies fed and alive.

-A morale system that factors in player success/failure, allies’ faith in the player, and the overall strength of the shelter.

-Crisis Event dialogues that factor in political maneuvering and making difficult choices that affect your whole shelter.

-Reactive AI that responds realistically to combat situations, player commands, and the state of panic from the presence of zombies.

[Easy Mac]

Originally Posted by tyketime

Great... Now all of the Zombies are gonna come out of the woods.

Don't worry, Rick won't see them.

[Kodos]

Finally, serious academic inquiry is being made into zombies and their inherent tax implications.

Death and Taxes and Zombies by Adam Chodorow :: SSRN

[JediKooter]

I love this thread.

[tarcone]

There is an adults only Summer camp in NJ that might interest those of you that visit this thread

No kids allowed: coolest adults-only summer camps | Fox News"]No kids allowed: coolest adults-only summer camps | Fox News

[Lathum]

The city is shutting off all power to my building from 7 PM tonight until 6 AM tomorrow. Some people are pissed, I view it as an opportunity for a trial run for when the zombie apocalypse hits.

[JediKooter]

Nice!

[Kodos]

So the face chewer guy only had marijuana in his system? Guess he got the munchies.

[Grover]

Originally Posted by Kodos

So the face chewer guy only had marijuana in his system? Guess he got the munchies.

Must be some strong stuff. I've never wanted to eat a guy's face.

[JediKooter]

Yeah, seems like that would be too much effort to eat someones face if you're a pothead.

[bulletsponge]

for the 1st time ever ive thrown a few bucks into a kickstarter. Deadstate is the type of game i like to play (like Jagged alliance with zombies!), they are currently over 198K with 6 days left. they might make it to their 210K stretch goal (which has a mall in it)

[Honolulu_Blue]

As good a use as any for all of this vacant urban land around here. I'd be all over this in a heart beat. Atlanta peoples, what's up with this "Atlanta Zombie Apocalypse" thing?

Idea for Detroit zombie theme park catches some attention | City of Detroit | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

[PilotMan]

5K Obstacle Course Zombie Race - Run For Your Lives

[tarcone]

Zombie proof homes

http://realestate.yahoo.com/news/anti-zombie-strongholds-for-sale.html"]Anti-zombie strongholds for sale - Yahoo! Homes

[Flasch186]

This guy mustve just turned because he went after the guy's stomach when we all know that the shoulders hands and neck are much easier targets for food.

Report: Naked man bit man's stomach during rampage | News - Home

[M GO BLUE!!!]

Kelvin Santos, Brazilian Boy Pronounced Dead, Briefly Resurrected To Ask For Water

Zombie babies!

[Lathum]

Thomas Family Farm | Nighttime Activities | Zombie Paintball Hayride

[tarcone]

What do zombies eat if there are no living humans to wat? And how long do they survive is there is no live humans to eat? Do they eat each other?

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by tarcone

What do zombies eat if there are no living humans to eat?

Wander around and look for humans to eat (or, in some cases, may eat animals).

Originally Posted by tarcone

And how long do they survive is there is no live humans to eat?

Zombies do not die of starvation.

Originally Posted by tarcone

Do they eat each other?

No. They only feast on fresh meat.

[Kodos]

Yeah, zombies can't survive because they are already dead.

[Chief Rum]

Okay, so zombies do move. Moving requires energy. Energy doesn't come out of thin air--humans at least need to eat to acquire the energy to move and do anything, or they eventually die of starvation (basically they run out of energy).

So if zombies can't die of starvation, they either get their energy from somewhere else, or they actually violate the very laws of physics.

Are there any theories out there as to how this is?

[JediKooter]

I guess you could say, their bodies continue to decompose and from that decomposition, that's where they get their energy.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

Okay, so zombies do move. Moving requires energy. Energy doesn't come out of thin air--humans at least need to eat to acquire the energy to move and do anything, or they eventually die of starvation (basically they run out of energy).

So if zombies can't die of starvation, they either get their energy from somewhere else, or they actually violate the very laws of physics.

Are there any theories out there as to how this is?

It's the virus. It fuels them. It animates their dead flesh and bodies and that's how they move. That's where they get their energy from.

Zombies don't burn calories. Zombies don't digest the meat they eat. They don't eat it for fuel. The meat zombies eat just sits in their stomachs or slides out.

Though, for the record, zombies don't just violate the very laws of physics, I am pretty sure they violate the very laws of reality.

However, it's EXACTLY this type of hubris, that we humans think we really understand how the universe works and what the "laws" of physics and reality actually are that leads us to create some virus or something the reanimates the dead and shows us that we really have no idea how things really work...

[mckerney]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

Okay, so zombies do move. Moving requires energy. Energy doesn't come out of thin air--humans at least need to eat to acquire the energy to move and do anything, or they eventually die of starvation (basically they run out of energy).

So if zombies can't die of starvation, they either get their energy from somewhere else, or they actually violate the very laws of physics.

Are there any theories out there as to how this is?

Uh, yeah, well, whenever you notice something like that... a wizard did it.

[tarcone]

So this will be an altered reality for everyone. We will all be walking dead.
Will we just stumble around or will we evolve. Will aliens come down and put a monolith somewhere that a zombie will touch and that zombie will gain intelligence and understanding. Then there will be zombies that become smart.
Will there be any need for procreation? Will zombies (or us) need to breed?
After zombies touch the monlith will sex be something that zombies seek out?
What about technology? Will a zombie want an iPad after he/she touched the monolith?

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue

Holy shit.

I have never heard of this until just now. This is exactly the type of PC zombie game that I have been thinking about for years now. YEARS.

It sounds awesome:

Dead State: The Zombie Survival RPG

A Blood Red State: Dead State Revealed | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

When the Obsidian/Troika veterans Doublebear announced that they were making a Zombie-themed RPG, there was an immediate response in our comment thread. Namely, posting comments. It was then codenamed ZRPG. Now, it has a real name. It’s going to be called Dead State and we’ve got the first hard information, screenshots and an interview with head Doublebearer Brian Mitsoda.

Dead State is set in Texas in the fictional town of Splendid, in the middle of nowhere. The idea being to create a landlocked place with few large cities and a distance between towns – and, metaphorically, a dying area in real life too. The game is predominantly rural and suburban in design, with the major cities basically forming a natural border for the map area. Because, frankly, due to the disaster, the cities aren’t where you go.

You’re in charge of the local shelter – a school – which works as your base of operation. The basic mission is survival. You go out, gathering food and finding allies – and every person who can join you is a defined personality. You stay in, improving your defences and upgrading equipment. The sort of elements of the game are discussed further in the FAQ but the key element is freedom. The game doesn’t have any defined enemies. Yes, it has people who you’ll likely end up hostile to, but other groups of survivors will like or dislike you based upon your actions to each other.

Zombies, of course, won’t like you at all. It’s a zombie purist game, concentrating on shambling brain-eaters rather than any manner of super-sprinting-zombie. Alone, they’re not really much to worry about. In large mobs, attracted by gunfire – like, for example, you may engage in when fighting other survivors for precious supplies – they’re rather more troublesome.

In short, with its freedom to explore and lack of a classical arc, this seems to draw heavily from the Fallout well. Marrying that to an unexplored (in this particular genre) theme, and we’ve got something that’s terribly exciting for anyone who cares about RPGs. We talked to Brian Mitsoda (ex-Troika, ex-Obsidian) about what’s waiting out there in the desert…

RPS: Can you elaborate on your vision of zombies? What are you trying to evoke in the game? What kind of things have influenced you?

Brian Mitsoda: On paper, our zombies are really not supposed to be threatening. They’re dumb, they’re slow, they’re unorganized – your very basic shambling corpse. They’re only dangerous when you forget about them. Make too much noise, get cornered, ignore them – that’s when they get dangerous. Most games deal with a Night of the Living Dead scenario where you have to survive one night, one wave, one map. We’re dealing with a long-term zombie threat, where you have to worry about keeping people fed, friends getting bit and infected while scavenging, and the desperation of other human beings. Honestly, the game is not about the zombies, but about how people react to a crisis and what they are willing to do to other human beings and even members of their group to stay alive or protect their own. The zombies are just a cause, like economic collapse or a massive earthquake, and it’s really the human self-preservation instinct and the survivor mentality that we’re interested in portraying.

I think the interesting thing about a disaster is this mentality that everything is going to be okay – that “someone” is going to come in and save me, of course. This idea that as long as you aren’t in immediate danger, you can keep your head down and hope the problem will go away. We’re short-term thinking creatures and we don’t like to think of the big picture implications of our actions – global warming, borrowing money, cutting education/space spending. I think rationally we want to believe the governments of the world would mobilize quick enough to stop a zombie plague (only infected people rise from the dead in our game) but I think that generally we’re only mobilized when we are directly threatened. By the time people start to notice the dead walking in their neck of the woods, the problem has spread beyond containment. The zombies in Dead State are a faceless (sometimes literally) force and dealing with the zombie problem is a lot like waging a war on an ideal.

RPS: You’ve said that you don’t want to have “The bad guys” and can find ways of working with or pissing off anyone. Care to elaborate on that?

Brian Mitsoda: Allies in the game are people who have asked to join or have been convinced to join your group. We did this because we wanted a large pool of unique survivors and also because we wanted some randomness in the makeup of your group. You probably won’t be able to find everyone in one game, and your dealings with many of the survivors may be different depending on how you govern the group, how much they get along with some of the others, their mood/morale, and when you bring them in. Morale tracks the overall mood of the Shelter – if it’s positive, mostly people are happy, if not, you need to start raising mood and accomplishing goals that will make people forget about the horror outside. Allies won’t be 100% loyal to you once they are in the Shelter, so you’ll have to throw them a bone every so often or impress them to make them stay. In a way it’s like being a real leader – you can’t make decisions that please all of the people all of the time.

When we say we don’t have bad guys, what we mean is, we want to leave the moral judgement up to the player. There’s a very specific type of person or organization that might survive a major catastrophe, as you can imagine. We have some other groups in the game, and a few that had a head start over the player’s ragtag bunch. For example, we have a group that is primarily made up of members of a militia. They’re pretty much the kind of people you think you’d find in a Texas militia group, but they were quite prepared for a social disaster to hit the area. You may not like them, but you might be able to come to an arrangement with them (especially if one of your allies knows them), though they may not be keen on it if you’re aiding a group they hate. It’s more likely the militia doesn’t want anything to do with you.

Most of the groups either don’t want to deal with you or they just want your stuff, so convincing them to work with you or teaching them to fear you will take some doing. Not everybody wants to be found and most people will see you as a potential threat. NPC groups will act against each other, so sometimes your help or inaction can have an effect on other groups. We let the player choose their allies and their enemies – there is no ultimate bad guy threat to all the groups, well, I guess unless the player manages that.

RPS: The Combat system will be turn-based, without full party control – though with room for you to equip characters – and heavy on psychological modelling. What are you trying to evoke with the system?

Brian Mitsoda: As I was mentioning earlier, we wanted to make our allies feel as though they were individuals rather than extensions of the player. They can be ordered around by the player, but as to whether they will follow that order or not depends on their ability, their aversion to the task, and their respect for the player’s commands. That might make it sound like they will NEVER do anything you say, but really what it means is if your ally is scared of zombies and you tell him to run into a pack of zombies, he’s most likely going to ignore the order or do it and possibly start panicking as the zombies start to mob him. Each ally has different perks and personalities, and most of these can be altered by your interaction with them. Through dialogue/time they might grow to respect you and be more likely to put themselves in danger to protect you or your encouragement might make them fearlessly aggressive – there’s quite a few ways you can shape their behavior, and not always in healthy, feel-good back-patting.

The big difference in our group and something like Jagged Alliance is these are normal people with little to no combat experience, not a veteran squad of commandos, so they handle like you’d expect them to. It’s best to think of them as intelligent Gradius options – they’re there to assist and absorb damage. They make combat much easier than going it alone, but they can die and you’re really going to have to work at it to bring everyone home all the time. Sometimes you may have to let someone go to get the rest of your group out safely. If everyone else is at the rally point and one ally is still in that house surrounded by ten zombies, let ‘em go, ‘cause they’re gone.

RPS: Care to talk a little about the difference between human and zombie opponents, in terms of how they work in game? I especially like a the genre-staple of a firefight against humans where the gun-shots attract zombies.

Brian Mitsoda: Assuming you’re not hitting a human hideout, humans you meet out in the field are likely to be in small groups, ready to confront you for the same resources or just because. Some of them were working in a frozen yogurt shop up to a few weeks ago, and others might have been hardcore gang-bangers with access to heavy weaponry. Humans are faster than zombies, better armored, and a lot more likely to kill you one-on-one. They might actively seek you out or they might try to stay hidden. Just like our allies, they have their own overriding combat imperatives. They’re unpredictable, which makes them dangerous.

Zombies, on the other hand, are unorganized. They could be anywhere, but their behavior is predictable – they are attracted to noise and will attack the first human they see. They don’t care about sides, so if your opponents are using loud guns, the zombies will go after them. If you can use the zombies to your advantage, you might be able to take on a larger force – and there are some items/strategies that can help with this – but it’s a gamble. It’s generally never a good idea to invite zombies into an area you want to explore. And don’t forget – enemies (and allies) killed by zombies will get back up!

One thing we really wanted to capture with the gameplay was that feeling of dread that was a big part of X-Com. You only have line of sight to what you and your allies see. It’s very easy to be in a situation where you turn the corner and there are five zombies waiting there or a case where you fail to properly sweep a bedroom and one lunges out of the walk-in closet while you’re about to search the dresser. I think that’s a big part of the zombie genre, that experience where your friend gets bit that one time you weren’t careful. It makes the zombies in the game scary and the exploration very tense, rather than just consisting of killing all the enemies in the area and opening all the containers, repeat ad nauseam.

RPS: I suppose leads to another question – what sort of AI does the zombies have?

Brian Mitsoda: Well, we only have one type of zombie – three if you count crawling zombies and zombies that have been set on fire. Zombies are attracted to sound – in fact, you can even make noise to try and lure them out of a building, If you’re unsure how many there are. There’s a noise meter in the combat interface to let you know how much noise has been made. Make noise, local ones will come to investigate. Make a lot of noise and distant ones will start looking for you. Make enough noise and zombies will be lured to that map. It’s okay to be loud once in awhile, but if you sustain noise for too long, they’ll be coming from all over. Stay quiet for a few rounds and they will forget about you if you haven’t been spotted.

Zombies will attack the closest human target that they can see. It may look like they are intelligently mobbing someone, but it’s most likely that the NPC had the unfortunate luck of being the closest or loudest thing in the area. It’s hard to predict where or when they will show up, since they might just be randomly walking around the map. On their own they’re pretty weak and slow. They really gain the upper hand when people get isolated or occupied with another task.

Unfortunately, zombies that see humans will often start moaning, which increases the noise in the area. If a character gets surrounded, generally they won’t have enough action points to destroy all of the attackers in one round. Zombies will frequently lunge to try and knock down humans, to gain better access to the squishy parts. And if an NPC is already weak or wounded they are susceptible to being infected, which is a permanent status, assuming they survive. Infected NPCs will become zombies if they die in combat or stop receiving antibiotics, which is the primary way to control the infection in our game.

RPS: The Shelter is a school. Why did you decide on that – and also, could you elaborate how it leads to interaction. The game ends if it’s taken, I believe, and it’s the place for the whole hotbed of internal interactions, yes?

Brian Mitsoda: We chose a school as a shelter because American schools are frequently used as emergency shelters for many communities and modern school designs resemble prisons more than schools. They’re designed not only to keep kids in, but to keep out people who aren’t supposed to be there – security windows and doors, metal detectors, perimeter fences. We worked off a couple of actual school layouts – it was fortunate or maybe sad that these schools were built like fortresses.
The shelter is where all the allies can be found – and it might seem like a pretty safe place to be, but once the danger of zombies and starving humans is escaped, you have the petty bickering and power struggle of the allies to contend with. Your player is the leader of the group – there’s going to be a lot of people sniping at them and expecting the player to give them special treatment. You’ll have to gain the trust of allies, raise the general morale of the shelter, and make deals with other authority figures to try and keep everyone loyal. Allies will come to you with their problems or requests and they’re going to expect you to help them – sometimes this means favoring one over another or bribing them with an extra ration. Dialogue skills will help, but they usually open up alternate solutions rather than just bypassing the decision. If you make a promise to someone, they will expect you to follow through, and within a certain amount of time too.

We have certain situations – crisis events – that require the player to make especially difficult decisions. These decisions affect the law or policies of the shelter’s inhabitants, and most every ally will lose or gain confidence in you when you make these decisions. If you have authority figures in the school, they will want to recommend a course of action and depending on how well they respect you or if you consider their advice, they may be able to persuade other allies that you made the right choice.

For example, one crisis involves the supply of antibiotics running low and dealing with the school’s infected allies. You might want to make finding antibiotics a priority or give them to a few key people, or kick the infected out, but it’s not an easy decision and some people are going to die, some will hate you, and some will think you run a tight ship. This is the political side of being a leader, and I think it’s one of the more exciting parts of the game’s story mechanics.

RPS: It’ s a survival game. Hence, food matters and such things. Care to elaborate how you see the game working here?

Brian Mitsoda: We definitely wanted Dead State to be about survival, and we needed a resource to reinforce this. Allies need food every day. If they start to starve, it causes morale problems, which can start to impact the ability of the shelter to function. Having to go out for food is risky, but necessary. For gameplay mechanics, it prevents the player from just turtling in their shelter. It also organically raises the difficulty of the game – more allies, more food needed, more (and farther) locations need to be reached to gain access to food (and the chance of running into more hostile groups). Then you factor in luxury items to help with morale and fuel for generators and parts for shelter upgrades and there’s an awful lot of reason to go out and search for more people to help. The more you have, the more you need, and so on. Also, food and other items can disappear over time due to the looting efforts of other groups, so the game gets a bit harder as it goes on, and forces you to start taking risks, like trying to loot riskier areas or take on larger groups for their supplies.

RPS: Thanks for your time.

Well, over 4 years later this game finally got an official release date.

It's been on Steam early release for a while now, but the final game is being released on: December 4.

It's been a looooong wait.

I hope it's worth it.

[DaddyTorgo]

Me too - I've seen it on early release but not pulled the plug. Will be curious to hear how it is.

[mckerney]

I have it on Steam right now from backing the Kickstarter. Haven't played it yet but might have to try out latest patch to see how it's looking before release. If I manage to pull myself away from playing Bayonetta and Dota long enough to load it up I'll let know how it is.

[DaddyTorgo]

cool mckerney.

i'm most interested in the like...dynamics of it. not necessarily the graphics, but how well the interactions play out and you develop relationships with NPCs and stuff.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by mckerney

I have it on Steam right now from backing the Kickstarter. Haven't played it yet but might have to try out latest patch to see how it's looking before release. If I manage to pull myself away from playing Bayonetta and Dota long enough to load it up I'll let know how it is.

Any thoughts?

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by mckerney

I have it on Steam right now from backing the Kickstarter. Haven't played it yet but might have to try out latest patch to see how it's looking before release. If I manage to pull myself away from playing Bayonetta and Dota long enough to load it up I'll let know how it is.

It's been sitting on my Steam too for a while, but I'm holding off until the official release.

[DaddyTorgo]

Fuckers. Someone tell me if it's worth buying