Dead State Review

You may not have heard of Double Bear Productions, but you may have heard of some of the games they’ve worked on or the developers they’ve worked at: Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Arcanum. Neverwinter Nights 2. Knights of the Old Republic 2. Fallout. Planescape Torment. Obsidian. Troika. Black Isle. Quite a lofty set of credentials there, and after the sad folding of Troika several folks went on to form Double Bear so at the very least you should be paying attention to their first game Dead State. I did, and will say now that I backed it on Kickstarter, and now I’m here to review the final game. Let’s see how it fares.

After creating a character you find yourself as the survivor of a plane crash in the town of Splendid, Texas. Oh yeah, and there’s a zombie apocalypse. Civilization has immediately fallen apart (I’m sure any players of Beyond Earth will agree with me) but you’re rescued by a group of survivors taking refuge in a nearby school. You have to manage the survivors, the Shelter, and the supplies, and then venture out into the dangerous world to get the things you need. But much like The Walking Dead zombies will probably be the least dangerous threat you encounter.

Life In Hell

One of the highlights of Dead State, although it comes with a caveat, is the story and characters. Well, the events and the characters really. Every in-game day something of interest happens, whether it’s a new survivor turning up on your door or some dispute that has to be handled. These events keep things really interesting and I ended up mostly wanting to get through the game just to see how all my decisions on these played out. Yes, you have a range of options in each situation - for example if a guy covered in blood wielding an axe shows up you can tell him to f*** off, welcome him in with open arms, or welcome him in with a gun pointed in his direction. It really is quite cool and each one can affect how people see you, or the general Morale level of the group.

Morale is the main focus of Dead State, and improving it for your band of survivors is your main goal every day. You make people happy through keeping the generator running, finding luxury items, asking people if there’s anything they want you to look for and then getting it, building new facilities or stronger defences, these sorts of things. People get unhappy if there’s no electricity, if someone dies, if there’s no food, etc. While there’s a Morale drain every day (it’s the end of the world, of course), and if things get too low people might leave or try to replace you, it’s pretty easy to stop things getting too crazy as long as you’re careful and go out for supplies every day.

Apart from people and Morale the other thing you have to concentrate on is the Shelter, which as mentioned is the school. An early disappointment is that you have no say about how the Shelter is designed, and furthermore about 60% of the building is totally useless (even more at first). After that annoyance you can get on with the managing, which is mostly done via the Jobs Board. This unassuming little piece on a wall in the school cafeteria is the heart of the game basically. Here you assign everyone, including your character, to various jobs. You can put them in your party to go out scavenging or you can give them repair and build tasks, which generally take a set amount of hours. Repairing the fence might just take a few hours but building an infirmary will take days, although you can cut it down by assigning others to help too. It’s all about choice and management - yes you can set everyone to build that laboratory and forward time 12 hours but then you won’t have collected any supplies, then again while you’re doing that what happens if the fence collapses? These kind of tough decisions are everywhere in Dead State and this makes the gameplay feel a lot more weighty.

When you get out into the world you have to look for supplies while preferably avoiding attention. If you accidentally blunder into zombies or get attacked by looters then the turn-based combat starts. It does the job, and I like how you have to choose between melee weapons or using noisy firearms that’ll attract zombies, but it’s far too basic for its own good. You can’t select characters during combat. Special extra AP-costing moves are rarely worth it. You can’t stand on the same square as a dead body or even move across your companion’s square. You can’t take cover or kneel to avoid gunfire. You can’t save AP for the next turn. There’s no sneaking either, so no getting the jump on any enemies that aren’t zombies. I like the noise meter but otherwise the combat isn’t as much fun or strategic as it should be.

Here is what a general day in Dead State is like: wake up to new event, decide what to do. Check the Jobs Board, give people various assignments, and set at least a couple of survivors to join your party. Head to the front of the school to access the world map, choose a destination (either marked or just for exploration) and head there by walking, horse or car depending on what you can. Explore a new area, scavenge for all the supplies you can, fight off any undead or looters, then head back to the Shelter. Supplies will be stocked, then you chat with other people to see if they have anything new to say, if there’s time left you can put in some work time on the Jobs Board, otherwise now at the end of day you go up to your room and sleep. You then get a chart of what happened in the day including how everyone is, and then you start the whole thing over again.

This isn't going to go well for me

I did enjoy playing Dead State a whole lot, but one of its biggest problems is how repetitive this state of affairs gets. There are surprises, mostly through the events at the beginning and what you encounter in the field, but it all gets very predictable far too fast. The locations stay interesting but it’s always go there, scavenge that, avoid anything that moves or bash its head in - there’s not enough meeting nice new people or finding other survivor camps. Moreover I don’t like how boring the Shelter quickly becomes, as everyone stands still (even when they’re supposed to be working) and usually say the same thing.

While we’re talking problems with an otherwise fun game, it’s still unfinished. Plenty of important information can only be found in the manual, like how to swap items between characters, or the fact that you can’t upgrade your companions despite their Stat screens showing available skill points. There are still bugs which will hopefully be fixed. Most frustratingly though pathfinding is an absolute nightmare, with AI characters getting stuck or lost easily, or just wandering straight into zombie hordes. Oh, and the UI is pretty terrible, with tiny icons that often rarely seem to have a use. I’m sure Double Bear will keep updating the game but right now it felt like they were desperate to get out before Christmas. It’s still totally playable, but just the pathfinding alone will make you wish they’d waited.