A demo video for DoubleBear’s zombie RPG depicts an average day of zombie killing and supply scavenging.
Before Walking Dead and DayZ proved the zombie craze still had life in it (so to speak), DoubleBear Productions was working on a zombie-themed RPG called Dead State. The game’s development has been slow in coming, but thanks to some enthusiastically supportive Kickstarter backers, the project is finally approaching its finished state. To prove it, DoubleBear has released some in-game footage of its protagonist making a supply run in a zombie infested town, controlled by developer Brian Mitsoda. The video provides some pretty conclusive evidence that the game has come a long way: Players can avoid zombies, scavenge supplies, pick locks, break down doors, and fight alongside AI partners. And once your supplies get low, you’ll have to gear up and do it all over again.
Viewers should make note of the fact that Mitsoda doesn’t run into town guns blazing. Outside of that action attracting additional zombies, he does this because in-game bullets are incredibly rare. Enemy humans can even run out of ammunition mid-combat, which means no ammo drops for victorious players after a long battle. If that detail wasn’t practical enough for you, Mitsoda warns that Dead State breaks from RPG tradition by awarding no skill points for combat. Mission objectives and resource gathering are what count towards experience, so anyone trying to clear the map is really just wasting their time. That’s not to say combat will always be avoidable, just that players can’t simply fight their way to the top of the food chain.
For that reason, players are better off sneaking around the level to complete various objectives. The game won’t make it easy; your base consumes a set amount of resources each day, meaning that large amounts of food, supplies, and luxury items are required to keep morale high. That means choosing buildings that contain priority resources, finding a safe entrance, and defeating opposition as quickly as possible. Throwing an additional wrench into the works are human enemies who aren’t reserved about their own weapons, luring hordes of zombies to your doorstep faster than you can say Romero.
As good as Dead State looks, the footage is still representative of the game’s unreleased state with several features requiring further development and tweaking. That said, the gameplay is coming together rather smoothly and should make for a great zombie survival experience once completed. And best of all, DoubleBear intends to have the game in player’s hands this year with an unspecified release date in December 2013.
Source: Kickstarter
