Dead State - Zombie Survival RPG from the Designer of VTM: Bloodlines

[epmode]

You might have heard of this when it was called ZRPG. It's been in development for a few years now, mostly held back by the sheer scale of the project as well as a lack of funding. Money will be much less of a problem in six days when the already-successful Kickstarter campaign finishes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLwvOka3_GE

Dead State is a turn-based survival RPG from Double Bear Productions, a new studio being run by Brian Mitsoda. Brian Mitsoda is best known as the lead designer and writer for Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. A lot of the other stuff he worked on never saw the light of day, what with the game cancellations and studio closures. but he's also responsible for the excellent dialogue system in Alpha Protocol. So it's a good thing that Dead State is really focusing on human interaction instead of the mindless zombies.

From this Forbes interview:

This is the selling point of Dead State: it is not set during the first desperate struggle to survive, but in the long, dull period when zombies have become a fact of life (or unlife). If you make too much noise, or fail to pay attention, or let them gather, they might be a problem. But the real challenges are resource scarcity, morale, starvation… and other people, who might have their own very different ideas about your role in the post-apocalyptic food chain.

Dead State is all about human survival and psychology in the wake of a global disaster. You need allies for security, but they also need food, and that can lead to morale issues. Your goal is to keep the shelter from falling apart, going out into the dead-filled streets and towns looking for food and other supplies, dealing with the much smarter and unpredictable humans, and trying to keep your shelter fence up while improving the conditions inside.

Allies bring issues to you, are assigned jobs, build items, upgrade the shelter and handle crises. On the area map, you can travel to known locations, find random encounters or events, and harvest wild sources of food. On the combat maps, you can explore in real time, find items and supplies, enter turn-based combat with humans or zombies, and sometimes meet other characters or groups.

I think it sounds pretty good!

Even though the Kickstarter is already successful, more funding brings in all sorts of neat stuff. Further press coverage here:

http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=4534
http://justpressstart.net/?p=10205

[Thief Silver]

I would be absolutely uninterested if the guy who wrote the masterpiece aspect of Bloodlines wasn't in here.

[epmode]

I think the premise is excellent. Mitsuda just legitimizes it.

Zombie games are played out for sure, but there aren't many (any?) like this.

[jyoung]

I don't see why developers have such a hard time coming up with other bad guys besides tired ass zombies.

[epmode]

I love the Romero films mostly because they aren’t about the zombies. The Romero films concentrate on the social and political breakdown that something like the dead coming back to life would cause. They show just how easy it would be to slip from civilized society into desperate tribes of survivors. There really aren’t many other zombie films that concentrate on that.

There are too many zombie games out there, period. And I don’t mean that in an “afraid of the competition” way, but in a “just stop it” way. There are zombies slapped in just about everything now – zombie shooters, zombie pajamas, zombie toilet cleaners – and it’s getting to the point that people just zone out when anything vaguely zombie is mentioned, especially games.

Which makes it kind of difficult to sell a game that’s trying to get back to the roots of the zombie genre – the human aspect.

[Diff-chan]

Was this guy responsible for Bloodlines' sewer section? That's a deal breaker.

[Thief Silver]

Heh that's true. His writing is great but that sewer section was kind of abysmal.

[epmode]

Bloodlines was one of those unfortunate games brought down by financial trouble at the studio. From what I've read, the fact that it was released at all is a minor miracle. I only played it after all of the fan patches (which also disabled enemy respawns) so I never saw the miserable state it was in at launch.

[Diff-chan]

Troika's gonna Troika. All their games were rough at release. Not surprisingly a lot of them moved on to Obsidian.

[Some Stupid Japanese Name]

Where are all these (console) Zombie games you guys are sick of?
There's Left 4 Dead, Dead Island,...? (Resident Evil 5 and Dead Space don't count)
I don't care stupid indie games or PSN.
I'm talking about real games with a real budget. There aren't any.