GameBanshee gives us a review of Dead State: Reanimated.  Here's the conclusion:

Dead State surprised me.  I knew going in that it was a budget title, and so I wasn't expecting anything really fancy.  But also I knew that it had received multiple patches, including its special Reanimated patch, and so I was expecting it to be fairly well polished.  Instead, Dead State feels more like a game that's just been released, and needs that one patch to raise it from being mediocre to good.

Still, I enjoyed my time with Dead State more than I didn't.  It has enough elements that work to make up for the ones that don't.  So if you enjoy turn-based RPGs or zombie apocalypse games in general, then it's certainly something to check out, although you might want to wait for a sale first.

More information.

Mark Richard (TechRaptor) has reviewed Dead State. Some snippets:

Dead State took a long time to grace the virtual PC shelves on a five year development cycle and eventually went to Kickstarter to charm us with promises of building an outpost amidst a zombie apocalypse while tackling all the complex choices such an endeavour brings. When the game officially released at the end of 2014, it was a sadly underwhelming experience that felt unfinished. Now a big update has been released called Dead State Reanimated, and while there’s still a lot of work to do, I dare say Dead State is well on the way to becoming a great RPG.

As the survivor of a plane crash, the player awakens to find themselves in a Texas school surrounded by a disorganized group of individuals struggling to cope with the gravity of their dire situation. They need a leader, someone to take charge, make the hard decisions, and do whatever it takes to ensure their survival. In short they need Liam Neeson, but you’ll have to do. [...]

Leaving the confines of the shelter brings up the region map where players are let loose to freely explore, with travel distance limited by the mode of transportation—horses and cars can be sought out later. Map locations must be uncovered and are always in the same place, but there are well over a hundred of them excluding foraging spots, and each has a little story to tell. Unfortunately, unlike the war-torn survival game This War Of Mine, Dead State gives no indication of what resources are left at each location, meaning it may be prudent to grab a pen & paper and jot down heavy items and unexplored buildings. Also, for some reason, the player character is expected to personally lead every single expedition like a frontline general from the middle ages, so take skills to compliment that and don’t count on playing a pacifist negotiator. [...]

At the end of each day a stat screen brings up morale and resources gained/lost. Morale plays a prominent part of the shelter, the consequences of losing survivors and not coming back with enough supplies at worst can inspire full-on mutiny. It was here my game sadly ended; roughly 40 hours in with me stupidly not producing saves that went far back enough to avoid the calamity. Yes, 40 hours. If value were measured in playtime, Dead State would be a bargain reportedly clocking in at a total number of hours comparable to The Witcher 3! Whether the game is worth buying now is hard to say; any PC RPG veteran knows about gems rougher than sandpaper bedsheets such as Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines that are nonetheless beloved. If you aren’t already totally exhausted from bug-ridden game releases this year, consider taking the plunge.

Final Score: 6.5 Good

Summary:
Rough but charming, an apocalyptic treat if you know what you’re getting into.

German Site hardbloxx.de has interviewed Brian Mitsoda. It is a 6 page interview and you can read it in English here. A quote, then, on the inspiration:

Thomas: Please describe "Dead State" shortly in your own words. What were your inspirations? Brian: Dead State was our attempt to adapt The Wind in the Willows into an RPG. We took some liberties and ended up with a game that is a lot more like the original Dawn of the Dead, meaning a focus on how humans deal with major upheaval in the natural order of things. We made the game with a threadbare budget of $300k, which is almost nothing for an RPG. 

A quote about the new version of Dead State:

Thomas: What is the current state of "Dead State"? In your opinion, is the game now completely finished? Will there be more content from your side? How about the modding community? Will Double Bear release some kind of modding tools in the future? 

Brian: Dead State: Reanimated is probably going to be the last significant update to the game, aside from a few minor fixes. We've never charged for DLC and the downside to that for us is that the game doesn't generate the money to sustain months of developing new content. After years of developing Dead State, the DoubleBear team is ready to move on to our next game.

Although Alec Meer criticises a lot of game systems in Dead State: Reanimated, he pays his respect at the end of his review for Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

I do like it, though. Quite a lot more so than this piece probably suggests, and that’s because it’s a game which is far more successful in theme and tone (harder to convey in text) than it is in features. Getting through another day feels meaningful despite the barrage of numbers and the parroted lines. Fights are chilling, flexible and unpredictable rather than perfunctory. Error is a result of your choices rather than an enforced event. The wider world is a sinister, uncharted mystery, with your never quite knowing what’s out there until you encounter it. Decisions are painful. People are problematic. Murder feels bad. The downbeat prettiness of its world is littered with small details, hints of the communities that once were and the fearful squatters that have replaced them.

In terms of recreating the second act of an … of the Dead or 28 x Later film, that point where the world has fallen, scattered survivors have found shared refuge and now they need to take risks to maintain it, Dead State is probably as close as we get. I would say that Dead State probably has too many parts and doesn’t quite know how to fit them all together cleanly, but it just about manages to be more than the sum of them.

DoubleBear Productions released a major patch for their Zombie Survival RPG Dead State:

​​​​We’ve spent a couple of months of solid development time making Dead State stronger, smarter, and faster, and we’re happy to say that the results are fantastic. We’ve brought new life - or is it unlife? - to every aspect of the game. This isn’t just Dead State anymore - this is Dead State: Reanimated! DS:R isn’t just an update - it’s our definitive enhanced edition with brand-new content, full of improvements and fixes requested by you, our community!

The Highlights

• Major overhaul of combat balance! Core combat systems have been thoroughly reworked to take advantage of all the data and feedback we’ve gathered over the months since Dead State’s original release. Ranged weapons, melee weapons, armor, special attacks, ally / PC healing, and more have been reworked and carefully tested to create an engaging and challenging combat experience. Even the core combat system has been tweaked so that AC is calculated before damage reduction; this change makes combat more consistent and more fair​.
• Smarter AI! Medic, Guard, Grenadier, Sniper, and more - New AI behaviors and schemas exist for human enemies, making them more interesting and more challenging to fight! Enemies will notice your presence more quickly and fully utilize all of their tactical options, thrown weapons, and special attacks.
• New PC Infection option on New Game menu! Create a new game with PC Infection checked and your character will be as susceptible to infection as your allies are. Carefully manage your antibiotics and change your combat strategies to ensure your own survival!
• Hardcore Mode!​​ In Hardcore mode combat becomes more dangerous, allies consume more resources and heal more slowly, and Morale is harder to keep up. Turn on Hardcore, Iron Man, and PC Infection for the ultimate challenge!
• Alarms! That’s right - we’ve added alarms to buildings in several areas. Red, blinking lights warn you that there’s an active alarm on a building. Use your Science skill to deactivate an alarm and prevent a looting distraction from becoming a noisy attraction!
• New areas and random encounters! Several new levels and random encounters have been added. Make sure to keep an eye out for the Chemical Plant, an area with a unique twist…
• New combat sounds and animations! We’ve added new special attack, reloading, and healing animations and sounds. Special attacks feel smoother and more impactful now!
• Stability improvements! We’ve rooted out every crash and progress blocking bug to make sure you have the smoothest possible experience. Several popularly requested usability improvements have been added, such as friendly fire confirmation, looting piled up bodies, and an option to toggle Live Shelter movement on and off.
• Pathfinding improvements! Both allies and the undead have received major pathfinding adjustments that will reduce lag some people have experienced as well as make movement more consistent and natural.

Double Bear posted a major update on Steam this week for Dead State.

Woo, the update is finally here! As promised, this is a content-heavy patch with some popularly requested features. Let’s talk about the big highlights first, then we’ll get the rest of the details down below.

So Iron Man Mode is here, yay! However, it’s different than what we originally had planned. We’ve decided to split up Iron Man, Hardcore difficulty, and Player Infection rather than have the latter two be grouped into Iron Man’. You can see all three of these options when you start a new game now, although Hardcore and Player Infection aren’t implemented yet and will be in a future update. The reason we decided to separate these into three options on a new game was that we wanted to allow players to choose their own experience. Hardcore and Player Infection require a ton more internal testing before we release them into the wild, thus why they’re not in the current patch. Furthermore, we are planning a pretty big balance pass and AI adjustments for a future Patch, so the way Hardcore difficulty works will be greatly influenced by those changes. In the meantime, we hope you’ll start up a new Iron Man mode and challenge your skills!

We added in a bit more resolution for Parisa's storyline - which was never intended to be an ending - plus some more zesty character development. If you'd like to know more about this particular aspect of the game, here's a link to where it lives on the forums (and beware, it contains SPOILERS!): Parisa's Storyline Design Notes.

Gamasutra is hosting a new Postmortem article for Dead State where Brian Mitsoda talks about the rocky development of the game before, and after it's release.

For a new company, Dead State was quite a challenge and has definitely shaped the way we structure, advertise, and consider future projects. The budget was the bare minimum needed and the game has thus far sold on the lower end of our projections; it’s difficult to justify making a sequel or another RPG in the near future considering the amount of time and team size needed to produce one that satisfies the expectations of hardcore fans and press.

Communication and tech issues were definitely a hindrance to getting the game finished in a more timely fashion. Press, for the most part, seemed to want to compare the features of the game to much higher-budget RPGs and strategy games, and dinged us for not having stylized/better graphics, not adding a cover mechanic or interrupts (basically not recreating XCOM’s most recent iteration from 2012) to combat, and not having even more frequent dialogue interaction and animation in the Shelter portion of the game.

The general “zombie fatigue” of the press definitely did not help get us much in the way of release coverage, and we found it fairly difficult to get attention by traditional press outlets, despite the focus of the game being anything but another zombie-killing game.

Despite the limitation of our budget and staff size/experience, our team managed to put out a game that has garnered a strong fan base and much in the way of consistent word-of-mouth sales. It’s done well enough to allow us to make future titles, which is a pretty big win in the indie game business side of making games. We’ve already got some pretty exciting (and very fun) projects in the works, and at the very least, Dead State has given us a solid foundation to launch into the next phase of DoubleBear’s development as an indie company.

Double Bear posted a new February Progress Update on Steam last week with news on what the developer is working on, and what will be included in the next patch.

Hi everyone! We just wanted to check in with you and let you know what's happening behind the scenes at DoubleBear, since we know some of you are wondering.

We're making good progress on the content and fixes for Update #6. As previously mentioned, this one has brand new, somewhat complex features, so it's taking longer than the usual patch turnover time. Right now, we're done with about 75% of the new features, but we need to finish the remaining 25% and squish bugs that surfaced during testing, so there's still some work left to do.

Thanks for hanging in there while we get everything ready! We don't have an ETA yet, but we're *really* excited about what's coming up and we think it will be worth the wait :)

Taylor Woolstenhulme of Cliqist published a new review for Dead State this week. Based on the tone of the review he enjoyed the game, and called it interesting.

If you’re interested in a well-written CRPG, and you’re willing to look past the occasional glitch and somewhat repetitive gameplay, I highly advise you to pick up Dead State. I enjoyed my time with the game, and the developers have released several patches so far to curb the bugs. The next patch is supposed to add in new content alongside the bug squashing, and I’m curious to see what they plan on adding in.

DoubleBear Productions latest update on Steam for Dead State has information about the games soundtrack, and mentions you can now collect Trading Cards.

The title says it all, but we'll say it again because we're just so dang excited: not only have we released the Dead State Soundtrack on Steam, we've also added Dead State Trading Cards!

Let's start with the soundtrack. Anyone with Dead State in their game library can now buy the soundtrack as downloadable content and get their apocalyptic groove on. You can check it out here: Dead State Soundtrack. It's only $7.99 and it features all 26 of the tracks in Dead State, as composed, written, and performed by our amazing composer Leif Chappelle.

Also starting today, you can unlock Dead State Trading Cards and use them to forge Badges; every badge gives you the opportunity to receive unique Dead State emoticons and profile backgrounds. All you have to do is play the game to start unlocking new Trading cards, so you better get on that if you want to be one of the first people ever to unlock a Dead State badge on Steam!

Finally, a quick update for those who are wondering: we continue to work on the next game patch. This one will pack a lot more punch than our previous patches, so we're taking our time to make sure it's perfect before releasing it in the wild. Now that we've finished getting the Trading Cards and the Soundtrack on Steam, we'll have even more time and resources to put into the patch!

Alright, time to get to work, everybody - go get those Trading Cards! If you can't and you're stuck at work, may we suggest buying and downloading the OST to get into the undead-killing mood for later?

HiddenX notified me of a new review on the RPG Codex for Dead State.

Bottom line! Should you buy it? I want to say yes to immediately put money in DoubleBear's coffers. The honest answer: wait for the balance patch that makes this the survival game with hard decisions it was meant to be. Then pay full price – it'll be worth it.

At the end of the day, Dead State is not the perfect RPG – yet – but there is a lot to love about it and a lot to be impressed by. The good news is that the foundation of the game is sound. Individual gameplay elements function well, and if rebalanced properly, this could become a truly historic title.

Double Bear released a new patch today for Dead State that  fixes a lot of the problems since the games launch last year. Here is a short summary of the post on Steam.

As promised, today we present to you a brand new public demo as well as a long-awaited update to Dead State’s full release!

For those who have been following Dead State but weren’t sure if they wanted to take the leap yet, you can now try out the game for free. The demo covers seven in-game days of playtime, and you can even carry your saves from the demo into the full game!

Here's a link to the demo page: Dead State Demo

Demo Features

• Recruit up to 15 other survivors to join your shelter
• Scavenge in 18 unique locations and stumble across a large variety of random encounters
• Cross paths with some of survivor factions, such as looters, survivalists, and a fearsome motorcycle gang called the Coyotes
• Locate new harvesting and fishing spots to help feed your growing shelter
• Get familiar with Dead State's deep tactical turn-based combat system
• Improve your shelter by assigning your allies to work on jobs, build upgrades, and make repairs

Changelog 1.0.0.195

• Added loading screen images and tips.
• Added Nothing Gold trait to allies unable to have a mood higher than Content.
• Added current in-game date, day number, and time to the Job Board.
• Added current in-game date to the Shelter overview screen.
• Added game day number on the Daily Results Screen.
• Added low morale warning dialogue.
• Adjusted dog attacks to cover diagonal spaces as well.
• Adjusted combat balance on some weapons.
• Tweaked some dialogue content.
• Adjusted triggering times for some dialogues.
• Changed item description text on several items for clarity.
• Improved job board ally list tooltips for certain task types.
• Fixed issue causing the car trunk to be accessible from horses.
• Fixed an issue preventing certain ally traits from creating additional daily items.
• Fixed an issue preventing the "Hacker" achievement from unlocking.
• Fixed issues with the To-Do list not correctly clearing completed location-related items.
• Fixed an issue causing unexpected morale losses if allies were killed during certain plot events.
• Fixed issue with allies re-appearing after death in some cases.
• Fixed an issue preventing certain morale and mood changing events from firing.

Double Bear posted an update on Steam with news on the next patch for Dead State.

Hi everyone! We see you're eager to get an update on our status, and we're more than happy to provide.

Since we've been working concurrently on several things, it's taken us a little bit longer to finish any specific item - but the good news is that we'll be releasing both Patch #5 and the public demo next week!

The upcoming patch is more fix-focused than feature-focused, but you'll see a couple nice polish features in the mix as well. We'll give you the full rundown in next week's changelog, though :)  Hang in there, Patch #5 is coming soon!

On top of the update on kickstarter yesterday Double Bear also posted a new update on Steam with news on what the developer is working on right now.

The DoubleBear team returned from our break on Monday, and we've already jumped back into the thick of things. We have several irons in the fire right now, which are keeping our small team plenty busy:

- Working on our next update to the game!
- Creating a free demo
- Preparing for Kickstarter physical reward fulfillment
- Making all the art assets for eventual Trading Cards (a bigger task than you'd think, since that includes card images, backgrounds, emoticons, and more!)

We don't have an ETA on these just yet, but we wanted to check in with you guys and let you know we're back and working hard, as well as give you an idea what to look forward to in the future :)

We'll check in again when we have another progress update. Thanks, all!

Double Bear posted a new post-funding update today for Dead State with information about surveys, and how the developer is ready to process the physical goods.

With Dead State shipped, we've started working on our plan to fulfill backer rewards. While these aren't going out just yet and we're still researching our best options for fulfillment, it's critical that everyone who backed a physical reward tier double-checks and updates their address information by January 21st, 2015 so we can ensure we are working with the most up-to-date information and have as few cases of failed deliveries as possible once we eventually begin shipping.

How to Change Your Address

Please do not email or message us your address information! The only surefire way to make sure your address is correct and up-to-date is to do the following:

1.  Go to the Dead State project page.
2.  Find your backer tier in the list on the right-hand side of the page. 
3.  Click the "Your Response" link underneath your tier.  This allows you to edit your survey responses.
4.  At the top, you should see an option to change your shipping information.  Update your address and save/submit your response.

If you never filled out your survey, you should have a notification telling you that some survey responses are missing and you can click that to find and fill out your Dead State backer survey.

Again, you can update your address anytime before January 21st, 2015.  After that date, it will no longer be possible to update your address.  Thanks for helping us make this process as easy and quick as possible for all parties!

Brian Mitsoda released a statement on X-Mas Eve about the review Controversy that has been overblown on the whole internet. I'm a little late posting it but here you go.

For everyone that has either been a long-term part of the DB community or has jumped on to comment about something without hearing our side, here are the facts.

The review poster was originally addressed on the forums, and after the thread began to get off-topic, it was closed down by a developer.

A second topic, which restated the exact same comments as the previous thread, was started by the same poster, after which it began to also go off-topic and became abusive. That thread was closed by a moderator, and after abusive comments towards both the devs and mods (including demanding a personal, public apology), a mod banned the original poster. The original poster still posts with an alt, who has not been banned.

A third topic has been opened stating the exact same things as the first two threads. It has not been closed.

The poster, after being banned for abusive comments, posted a long review that focused less on the game, and more on DoubleBear as a company. The review contains only one line about the actual game, and instead focuses on the bugs in the game, and reiterates the demand for a personal apology - it does not mention that DoubleBear has released four patches within two weeks addressing many of the major issues. The original poster never stated what their issues were, and has ignored attempts from the dev team to work to get them solved.

We have since learned (this morning) that the review was flagged by someone on the dev team, based on Steam guidelines regarding off-topic reviews - their actions are currently under internal review. We apologize for any confusion or misinformation relating to this, and have been piecing this together (a tough thing to do over the holidays - we're not exactly "in the office")

As you can see, the review is no longer flagged. Additionally, you will notice there are plenty of negative reviews that are not flagged. We do not possess the ability to delete reviews, and we left all of the reviews, positive or negative, up.

It seems DoubleBear has gotten themselves in a bad situation on Steam after trying to take down a review that was to critical of their game Dead State.

I found information on two different websites.

The Eccentric Gamer

Developer of Dead State, DoubleBear, is trying to get a critical review of their game pulled from Steam. Here is the review and why this really should not be happening.

Techraptor

A situation evolved overnight on Steam regarding DoubleBear’s kickstarted game Dead State and a flagged review. We held off on reporting what was going on until we had more information. However, since DoubleBear has released an official statement and neither party has responded as of yet, we feel we need to give you the facts that there currently are.

A new patch for Dead State was released on Steam a day after the last patch.

We’ve released a small patch in response to your feedback on the boards; this patch addresses three of the most frequently reported concerns of players as well as provides some other miscellaneous updates as well.

Changelog (spoiler-free)

Further optimized real-time pathfinding in small areas and fixed issue with stairs.
Fixed a major faction event.
Fixed some scripting issues which made it difficult to recruit a specific ally.
Fixed allies still asking for upgrades once they've been built.
Adjusted the panic threshold for a specific ally.
Updated GUI to list AP required to open inventory in combat.
Updated an ally perk.
Updated names of some neutral characters for clarity.
Adjusted noise levels on dog bite attacks.
Updated character floats in certain faction interactions.

My advice wait a few months to get the game fixed with the cut content added back.

A new patch for Dead State should be released today, and the developers says the next patch will be out in January that will add new game content. Here are the details.

I know you're eagerly awaiting the next patch, so I wanted to give you an update on how it's coming along. We originally anticipated having it live today; however, we're now eyeing tomorrow morning (10 - 11 a.m. PST) as the time the release build goes up.

There are a couple reasons for this. First, we had originally planned to release two patches this week, but instead, we are rolling fixes from the second patch into this one because we got more done than anticipated. However, that means that there's also more to be tested, and we want to make sure Dead State is running smooth as butter before we give it all of you. Second, the holidays are coming up, and we do not plan to release another patch until January, meaning that it's that much more important that the patch we give you now resolves all the most common / problematic issues and runs well without any new bugs being introduced.

We don't want to rush anything and cause you, the players, to have a worse experience because of it. We really appreciate your understanding and patience as we give the build one final round of testing and put some spit and polish on it before delivering into your waiting hands. Okay, those metaphors didn't mix as well as I thought they would... forget the spit part, eh? ;)

On the bright side, tomorrow's build will address many things, such as:
- including a new autosave feature
- providing the ability to load your own photo at character creation
- providing far more info about weapons and armor on the inventory screen
- addressing issue with status effects not wearing off over time
- resolving a case of save corruption
- improving stabilit

Update: New Patch is now live click the following link for more information.

In addition the Rock Paper Shotgun posted a few days ago, there have been a few other interesting reviews:

Eurogamer gives it a 7/10:

There's nothing here that can't be fixed with a few well aimed patches and balancing tweaks however. For all its lack of technical polish, there's nothing game breaking and even as the challenge diminishes in direct proportion to your playing time, the stories that come out of the cast of broad appealing archetypes will keep you on the wheel through another day and night cycle.

Nothing much to look at, and with a premise that has been dulled through repetition, Dead State is a game that requires you to approach it with an open mind and a forgiving nature. Make the effort, and you'll find a game that makes up in charm what it lacks in polish.

Gamefront, similarly, gives it a 70/100:

I’m sure future patches will resolve these problems, and the majority of them tend not to be game-breaking. But it does prevent Dead State from feeling quite as polished as it could have been.

That aside, Dead State remains a solid and engaging experience into which RPG and survival fans will sink hours. It may not have ended up being the first, but Doublebear has certainly earned its place among the zombie survival greats.

The Caring and Feeding of Nerds has also had an in depth look:

But it makes me wonder: why not leave it in Early Access to give the polish it deserved and needed? This isn’t AAA; there are no arbitrary deadlines set by demanding overlords and, from where I sit, it seems the hasty removal of the Early Access label hurt Dead State's release more than it helped. I know lots of games have Day 1 patches, even major titles like Dragon Age Inquisition. DoubleBear certainly is not working with the same level of resources as EA and Bioware, but how did this become an industry standard even for Indies?  

   

Before I go back to boarding up the windows and stockpiling canned goods along with other non-perishables, I want to stress that I DO recommend picking up Dead State. Don’t let my remarks in the paragraph above drive you off from what I feel is a worthwhile game. While most zombie games are about action or horror, ultimately Dead State is a narrative-heavy game that is as much about how pockets of humanity can cope with disasters on a scale they can’t possibly control as it is about killing zombies and making experience bars go up.

Rock Paper Shotgun has posted their review of Dead State.  Their conclusion:

Despite these issues, do I like Dead State? I think so.

The mountainous list of responsibilities quickly becomes a second heartbeat. It flows with you. It orders your steps, your decisions, becomes central to all your major decisions. And when you’re least careful, it swallows you whole, dragging you into the heart of the experience. Dead State, like any good simulator, makes it easy to forget that you’re just a tourist, a visitor to this terrible land. Its ability to cultivate a suspension of disbelief even makes the game’s banal locations — supermarkets, pharmacies, and sleazy bars are everywhere on the map, just waiting to be unearthed — interesting. Dead State might well be the first game to have me excited at the discovery of an abandoned picnic.

According to today's Kickstarter Update, Dead State is being released today!

This is it - Dead State is finally out! I know I’ve said this many times before, but truly, this game could not exist without Kickstarter and backers like you. Delivering the game we promised has been an obsession for us, and while we worked many long days and nights to create it, the release day has finally come. Thank you all for your patience and your patronage!

Please check out our last Kickstarter update for an FAQ and details about how to get your Steam copy if you haven't yet.  Those who opted for non-Steam will start seeing their GOG codes arriving in their KS message boxes shortly.  For those who backed at a physical reward tier, rest assured that getting those straightened out is our first priority post-launch!  

Don't forget to take a look at our manual - Dead State is a complex game with a lot of depth, so this is a very helpful resource for anyone hoping to master combat and exploration!

If you have any questions about Dead State, the launch, or anything else, the absolute fastest way to get them addressed is to post them on Dead State's forums; devs, mods, and veteran Early Access players are available to help you out, especially those of you playing the game for the first time! 

Personally, I'm already behind on Divinity, Wasteland 2, Lords of the Fallen, and Dragon Age Inquisition, but I can't wait to get to Dead State and give it a proper try.

The final Pre-Release Patch for Dead State has been released. Following the link you can find a complete changelog.

his is it - the final patch to Dead State's Early Access Beta! Patch #5 is bursting at the seams with features and fixes, including many requested or suggested by YOU, the Dead State community. Now, while we’re giving you lots to chew on today, we want to remind you that this isn’t the final game - endings are being reserved for the final release, and there will still be many improvements coming before the final launch. In other words, there's still plenty to look forward to! With our upcoming release in mind, we’ll be updating the Known Issues post later today, so make sure to check there first before reporting bugs; that will help keep the forums and boards laser-focused on tracking brand new issues. Thanks so much for all your assistance, you guys are awesome!

Thanks Arahael.

As promised yesterday Double Bear released the fourth patch for the new Dead State Beta, and posted a new update with more information on the games kickstarter page.

Patch #4 is now live as promised! In case you missed our last announcement, I’ll go ahead and repeat it: we have a final release date for Dead State, and it’s 12/4/14. We hope you’re as excited for the launch as we are :)

For our spooOOooky Halloween patch, we have a lovely mix of tricks and treats, including: an exciting new intro showing the player’s unpleasant welcome to Texas; night combat penalties and fatigue status; a recycling upgrade; adjusted healing mechanics; and lots more. Check out the changelog below for the full list, then get in there and start bashing in undead heads.

Well hope the news title got your attention as DoubleBear released a new Halloween update with news that Dead State finally has a release date.

Big Halloween News: We Have a Release Date!

The DoubleBear team has some extra-special, ultra-awesome news for you to celebrate Halloween: Dead State has a release date!

That's right: on December 4th, 2014 - just over a month away - Dead State will emerge from the cocoon of Early Access and transform into a beautiful, fully matured game! 

On top of that, later today we plan to release Patch #4 chock full of delicious, gooey content, features, and fixes, so keep an eye out for that.  Pretty sweet Halloween treats, right?

Aside from Patch #4 going out later today/tonight, we plan to release one final patch before the launch; after that, we’re going to focus our full attention on fixing, balancing, and polishing Dead State until we run full speed across the finish line. All you have to do is keep playing, having fun, and sharing your feedback with us, and we’ll do the rest. 

Please help us out by spreading the word about the launch date - take to Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and your other social networks / forums of choice and give them the good news.  After all, it's only decent to warn your friends about the coming apocalypse :)

Happy Halloween, everyone - may your undead slaying be merry!

P.S.  Another bonus for you - check out our preview of the Dead State OST.  Five full songs for you to enjoy!

Double Bear released a bunch of hotfixes to fix the last patch for Dead State, and posted more information on the games Steam page.

We decided to release a hotfix update to resolve some unexpected issues introduced in our recent Beta patch #3. We also included other miscellaneous work that’s been done in the meantime. Here’s the rundown:

Fixed broken Leadership Commands
Fixed issue with excess medical charges not stacking with existing bandages
Added exit tiles to History Museum map
Added exit tiles to Hospital map
Fixed an issue where adding a Stat point to a Stat currently reduced by equipment caused character to lose a Stat point instead
Fixed issue with broken usable items and related crash
Sized down combat status icons above characters
Fixed an issue where you could “throw” bullets infinitely
Fixed an item destruction bug related to unloading
Added more random encounters
Fixed issue where healing used two charges from the medical satchel instead of one
Fixed a combat crash related to an item database error
Fixed a few dialogue issues
Performed more combat/loot/doors/blocking work on a few levels

Thanks for your patience and for drawing our attention to some of these issues!

Double Bear released the third patch for the new Dead State Beta, and posted a new update with more information on the games Steam page.

Beta Patch #3 Released

The third patch to the Dead State Early Access Beta is now live! This update features substantial improvements to the combat system and introduces a new 'wounded' mechanic to healing, as well as fixes for several long-standing bugs and exploits, a bunch of new random encounters, fixes and improvements to AI, functionality for the adrenaline shot and other one-use items, and many other things.

Animals need some more work before they are ready, so they're not included in this patch.

Beta Patch #3 Changelog

Added twenty-five new random encounters
Added functionality to adrenaline shot, Stuporax, Soothinum, and Flashback
Reworked healing system and wounded status
Improved AI: fixed the endless combat round issue
Improved AI: fixed undead ‘sleeping’ during combat
Adjusted Leadership Commands: all players now start game with the “Go!” Leadership command
Fixed numerous blocking and loot issues in levels
Added an ally
Added additional crisis events
Added additional trait and perk icons
Fixed the issue where party slots still counted as full after an ally died
Added hotkey “P” to pull up Leadership Commands
Fixed issues with repeating dialogues
Fixed identical ammo not stacking with itself
Fixed an issue with the “Backstab” perk
Fixed an exploit for duplicating items using maximum stack size
Fixed an exploit for duplicating medical items by overloading the Medical Satchel
Adjusted balance on all weapons and special attacks

Combat is more dangerous now, and it will be harder to patch up your top allies after a rough fight. You'll have to leave them to recover over time at the Shelter and take your B-listers out to scavenge in the meantime. Let us know what you think, and how this update affects your combat strategies!

The next Monday Design Update from Brian Mitsoda released this week asks for help on spreading the news for his game, and talks about the upcoming  new patch.

As you may know, we've been updating the build pretty quickly these days. We've been finishing up the last tasks on our plates, closing out bugs, and figuring out the priorities for the polish stage. We're finally getting to the point where we are looking at a definite time period for release and we will be announcing a release date soon. However, as Early Access/indie titles tend to be overlooked by press - especially in a season full of major AAA releases - we really need your help to get the word out about Dead State. To build awareness for the release this year, any word of mouth you can generate will help build buzz that will make our eventual launch a lot more successful and allow us to continue to work on fixes and expanded content in the future.

Here are some of the things you can do to help us get the word out:

-Post about us or link to our 2014 trailer or our eventual release date announcement on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
-Discuss or recommend Dead State on game forums. If someone hasn't played since the 7 Days build, let them know how much the game has changed. Remember to emphasize that we're not just another "kill zombies" game. Please be mindful of forum rules and basic courtesy.
-If you like the game, review the EA build on Steam. The more positive reviews we have at launch, the higher the interest from new players.
-Add us to your Steam wishlist if you haven't bought the game already.

With all the holiday releases coming out this year, it's going to be easy for our game to be overlooked. Remember, we're a group of ten developers with a small budget - we don't have a dedicated PR team or even a PR person. Every bit of attention we get right now is because of positive word of mouth. Additionally, with all the negativity about Kickstarter projects lately, many players have written off Kickstarter and Early Access titles completely - we need to make sure that people understand that we have not abandoned development and that we are releasing the game this year. With your help, we can help reach a greater amount of potential players and gaming press, and that's a good thing for Dead State and DoubleBear's continued operation. (And no, don't worry, we're not close to closing up shop or anything, but a successful launch gives us a lot more freedom on future projects.)

Now, as for the patch, we intend to (hopefully) have another patch out this week, and it's another content-heavy patch. Here's a few things to look forward to:

-Fixes for many of the major dialogue freezes (Aimee, Corbeau).
-New Crisis Events.
-25 new random encounters, some that are reactive to attacking factions.
-Wounded system - if you've played Jagged Alliance, it will seem familiar, but starting with the next patch, healing will create wounded HP that can only be healed with time/infirmary treatment. This feature was supposed to go in at beta, but slipped back a bit due to other priorities.
-Additional balance to weapons, melee special attacks, and certain stat effects (carry weight adjusted up again).
-Additional areas with loot passes.
-Additional system and bug fixes.

As of right now, we have a few other additions that might make it, but I don't want to promise them yet as they haven't been 100% tested yet (*cough* horses *cough*). As I'm writing this on Sunday, you might be able to infer that we're working overtime to get Dead State into the best shape we can. We want the game to be as polished and bug-free as possible at release, so keep that feedback coming in - we appreciate the dedication of our Beta players in helping us track down these issues. Okay - back to work for me. Thanks for your continued support and remember to spread the word about Dead State!

Double Bear released the second patch for the new Dead State Beta, and posted a new update with more information on the games kickstarter page.

Beta Patch #2 Released

The second patch to the Dead State Beta is now live! This week comes with a lot of content-side work - new levels, new allies added to the world, more dialogues, new crisis events, and more loot, among other things.

For our next patch, we plan to include major AI improvements, healing system changes, and a boatload of new content, among other things.  I hope you're excited!

We know we've been quiet on the forums and Steam lately; everyone's working around the clock trying to push out more frequent patches with more features, content, and fixes, so the time flies by before we even realize it. We really appreciate that everyone's continuing to report their issues on Steam and on the Dead State forums. Though we may not always comment, we're still reading your feedback and using it to guide our priorities for each patch. Thanks for all your help!

Beta Patch #2 Changelog

Added unloading weapon ammo, as per popular request!
Added a few missing traits and perks
Fixed and updated existing traits and perks
Added dialogues and scripting for various faction encounters
Added loot to several existing levels
Added combat to several existing levels
Added props to several existing levels
Added several new levels
Added new crisis events
Added code to hide conditional maps until conditions are met
Added more PC character models
Added variation to panic behaviors depending on character
Added Memorial Wall and Suggestion Box content
Added a couple more fence attackers
Added new icons for job board tasks and armors
Fixed a bug where transferring items crashed the game
Fixed a crash that occurred when a character panicked with med. satchel in item slot 2
Fixed a crash that occurred when pushing characters back with two-handed weapons
Fixed a soft lock that sometimes occurred where characters would endlessly heal during panic Fixed an issue where you could trade with neutral NPCs
Fixed a couple bugs with leadership commands
Fixed an issue involving item destruction + duplication occurring from panic
Fixed issues with loot containers on several levels
Fixed issues with ‘ghosts’ appearing
Fixed some issues with building models
Fixed an issue where KOed allies would follow the currently-controlled character
Balanced carry weight values
Balanced walking speed on area map

The latest Monday Design Update from Brian Mitsoda was released this week, and they also posted new information about a new team member to help Q&A.

When is Dead State being released?

Fall 2014.

Very obviously from the demo, we're still in production, but are quickly implementing the last bits into the game internally and will be polishing up the game as much as is possible. We want to release the best game possible and will postpone release to crush critical bugs and finish major polish tasks, but at a certain point, we need to release the game. We will, however, continue to support Dead State with content and fixes/polish after its release for a good long time. We have no plans to dump the game on Steam as-is.

Why don't your game's graphics look as good as ?

We chose to make our graphics functional over detailed because it's a big game with lots of locations, items, and characters. To make it easier on ourselves, we went with a low-poly approach because with so many assets, we needed to turn them out at a higher rate. Doing detailed graphics takes a lot more time and requires a bigger team to divide tasks between. Given our budget ($300,000) and scope, I'm pretty impressed with what the art team has managed to do given the time, size, and budget of the game.

Why aren't there more NPCs out in the world?

They are coming. They're easy to add and many are written, we've just got bigger priorities right now. Some of them are out there, they just aren't working as designed at the moment and are being fixed (this goes for bugged ally conversations as well). We'll be adding more NPCs, ally/enemy bark triggers, and events out into the world. Remember that many of the events in the game are spread out over the course of months. We're quickly approaching something like 15,000 lines of dialogue in the game (not counting all the other text) – there's an insane amount of dialogue in this game and we're adding little bits here and there all the time.

I have feedback, but I decided to post it on a random game forum. Does that help?

Not at all. If you really want to help us out, make sure you give us your feedback on our official forums or Steam forums. We really do want to make the game better and address the biggest issues you have with it, but we can only do that if you leave us your feedback.

The February Early Access release was too limited and rough. Is it better?

Yes, I would say so and so would many of the beta reviewers on Steam and our Kickstarter backers. We've added a lot more content and features that the original Early Access version was missing. But don't take our word for it – if you downloaded the 7 Days version, you now have the Beta version. Or wait a few more weeks for the final release. But if you really want the game to get better, play through the beta and leave us your feedback.

And the new team member named Chase.

Hi everyone!  I wanted to briefly introduce you to a new member of our team: Chase.  He'll be assisting Jake with responding to, reproducing, and tracking bugs you guys bring in, performing speed progression runs, and other QA tasks. Chase is another Seattle-area local and he comes to us with plenty of previous testing experience under his belt, so he'll be a great help to the DoubleBear team!   You'll start seeing him around more once next week rolls around. Please give him a warm welcome,

Double Bear released the first patch for the new Dead State Beta, and posted a new update with more information on the kickstarter page.

Beta Patch #1 Released

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve been enjoying playing the Beta. We’re super grateful for all the feedback and bug reports that have been pouring in - you guys are totally awesome! You also did a fantastic job working together to identify potential causes of a couple major bugs, which helped us track them down and resolve them a lot quicker.

This first update addresses the biggest issues you guys reported, fixes various miscellaneous issues, tweaks balance, and extends a couple of features.

DoubleBear Productions finally offers a full beta for Dead State on Steam, and shares more information in the games latest kickstarter update.

Dead State Beta is LIVE!

The Dead State Beta is finally here! If you've activated your Steam key, your copy of Dead State should automatically update. If you never received your key or lost it, please message us on Kickstarter and we'll try to get back to you with your key as soon as we can.

Since I don’t want to keep you in suspense, I’ll kick off this announcement with our impressive changelog:

- 75+ new locations
- 30+ new allies
- 500+ new dialogues
- Crisis events
- New enemy types & factions
- Vehicle travel
- Skill perks
 - Ally traits
- Thrown weapons
- Data system (basic)
- Dog allies and enemies
- Special weapons
 - Neutral encounters
- Tutorial elements
- Pause menu
- New save & load screens
- New goals
- Allies tracker on Goals screen
- Fence attacks
​- New jobs
- Shelter upgrades

 … And a whole lot more cool stuff!

Don’t skip off gleefully to launch the game just yet, though - read on to learn more about what you should expect when you fire up the Beta.

Now excuse me as I have a beta to play.

Fluent talked to Brian Mitsoda on why a sequel to Vampires: The Masquerade - Bloodlines never happened and Dead State.

RPGWatch: For me (and hopefully some of my readers! :) ), deep RPG systems are the most important thing in an RPG, and the more complex the system, the better! What type of RPG stats, skills and perks can we expect to find in Dead State? Can you give us some examples of their design?

Brian: All of our stats and skills are fairly straightforward and have been cut down to be as useful as possible so that you don't feel like you put points in a useless option. Melee and Ranged are straightforward combat skills, while Mechanical, Medical, and Science have combat and Shelter applications, specifically building upgrades, healing allies faster, and building new armor or items. Survival is all about getting around the map quicker and more safely while also opening up potential wild sources of food. Leadership has dialogue applications, but can also be used to issue commands that can change your odds in combat. Negotiation helps you keep order at the shelter, but also allows you to more successfully deal with the demands of enemies and allies. Each skill has a choice of perks at levels 3 and 6, with a very useful perk unlocked at level 10. Pretty much whatever skill you pick is going to give you better odds of survival, but your specialties and perks will change your game experience quite a bit.

Double Bear posted a gameplay trailer for Dead State I missed in June. So here it is for anyone like me missed the video when it was posted. Sorry about that everyone.

Short video that shows off several different features of Dead State gameplay, including dialogue, looting, job board and shelter management, and tactical combat.

DoubleBear Productions has a new kickstarter update for Dead State with information about the next PAX convention, and the new beta release coming next week.

Dead State PAX Announcement and More!

We're very excited to announce that DoubleBear Productions will joining the Indie MEGABOOTH at PAX Prime again this year, showcasing Dead State alongside 60+ other awesome indie developers!

You can check out our Indie Megabooth page here: Dead State at IMB  Take special note of the new gameplay video, too - it's sort of a sneak preview of new content and features coming in the public beta :)  We'll have an exciting professional trailer coming soon that we can't wait to show off, too!

 If you'll be at PAX and you'd like to check out the demo, buy a Steam code for a friend, or just say hi, you can find us at Booth #29 in the Indie MEGABOOTH, towards the back of the 4th floor exhibitor area.  We're conveniently located by an exit aisle on the right so you can make a quick escape in case of sudden apocalypse ;)

Oh, also be sure to check out Annie's panel while you're at PAX:  "Be So Good They Can't Ignore You: Tales of Successful Indies" at the Sandworm Theater on Friday, Aug. 29, at 11:30 a.m.  Annie will be talking about her experience in the trenches of the industry along with Fryda Wolf, voice actor; Michelle Juett Silva of Ska Studios; Megan Fox of Glass Bottom Games; and Alix Stolzer of Robot Loves Kitty.

 But wait, there's more!

I'm happy to say we appear to be on track for releasing public beta next week, barring any unforeseen complications. We've been working double-time to make sure both Dead State's public beta and our booth at PAX would be as awesome as possible, and we're pretty dang excited to show you everything we've done in the last couple of months!  Next week is going to be really crazy for us, so forgive us if there's a bit of radio silence in the meantime. I promise the end results will be worth it :)

DoubleBear Productions have updated the game's Kickstarter page with news of the progress they've made since the latest Early Acces update.

Here are some of the progres since the last Early Access Update:

* Our programming team is working on implementing dogs, shelter upgrades, and character perks and traits, as well as the usual bug-fixing;

* Our animator is working through importing a number of new and existing animal, human and undead animations into the build and creating new dialogue gesture animations;

* Our design team is crafting crisis events, adding ever more allies and their corresponding dialogues to the game, and working on new and old levels;

Also, Brian is bringing back Monday Design Updates to the forums.

Brian Mitsoda has posted two interesting updates on the forum for Dead State where he talks about why the game isn't released yet. So here is the first post.

Why isn’t Dead State Done Yet?! Pt.1

Without a doubt, some of the most frequent comments we get at DoubleBear are about how we have been “Making this game forever” and “What’s taking so long?” and I’d like to take the time in this Design Update to talk a little about the business of game development and set the record straight about how this game in “5 years of development” could possibly not be done yet. If you’re one of the people who are frequently upset about the time it has taken for the game to be completed, please take the time to read this update.

And his second post on the topic with more infomation.

Why isn't Dead State Done Yet?! Pt.2

So, you might be wondering: “It’s 2014, and if the game was Kickstarted and put into full-swing production in 2012, why isn’t it done?” Software development imprecision aside, as I said before, the skeleton crew needed for swift(er) RPG development is about 30-ish people. After the Kickstarter, we were at about 8 full-time people, 1 part-time team member, and 2 amazing professionals who were contributing sound and music support on the side for us. Most of the staff was inexperienced and was still getting used to working on a schedule and working together remotely (inexperienced does not mean bad at their job, it means not as fast as senior staff that have worked together before.) Our first shot at a production pipeline was enough to get the ball rolling, albeit very slowly. Usually an RPG has several people just on the design side (writing, systems/combat, level leads), but we didn’t have the budget for additional seniors or the time to train up anyone on the design side, so most of that fell to me. By late 2012, we were starting to get the game in shape, but it was obvious that we needed a few more people and a more efficient system to coordinate departments and keep track of finished assets.

So, you might wonder why I’m telling you this, and the truth is: it flat-out sucks to hear that our game is “taking too long” or starting an interview off with questions like “So your game has been in the works for a while now…” I know I’ve said it before, but I promise you, no one wants Dead State out more than us. The truth is, games don’t manifest out of thin air the moment they’re announced. Concept art, ideas, and mockups are not a game. If you’re hearing about an original game for the first time at E3 or PAX, chances are it was being developed 2-3 years before it was ever mentioned to the public (remember, we announced DoubleBear the week we formed a company with no budget and with a handful of people.)

DoubleBear Productions has news on Steam for Dead State about the games next Early Access update. It's a wall of text but at least the game is close to Beta now.

Update #3, Change Log, and Big News :D

Today, we’ve updated the First Seven Days build for the last time. Before you panic (man, I hope you kept reading), what we mean is future updates will open up the build beyond the first week. Internally, we have been working on creating content, implementing progression, and refining or fixing systems. The system changes are reflected in the 7 Days build. Some of you have written to us (or shouted at us in all caps) about why we limited the build to 7 Days and the simple answer for why we didn’t open it up more is this: You would hate us. A lot.

What I mean is that a lot of testing and polish goes into “final” content before it’s ready to be released to the general gaming public. With a big game like Dead State, this is especially true. While there seems to be this prevailing idea that developers create games pretty quickly and then piece them out or sit on finished work until they see fit to distribute it, the truth is that much of this content is constantly in flux between the original idea to a basic first pass on the design to a kind of okay but buggy version and finally to a state where it feels like it belongs in a game you would actually want to play. Some of the content in the Early Access build is still unpolished, but many of the levels, encounters, and game events that you will eventually experience can be in an entirely too early state to release to the public. For example, a map without enemies… or loot… or exits. Encounters that may be too hard for the first week, might be way too easy 30 days in. NPCs will die… and then show up alive again in places they weren’t supposed to. It’s like watching a rough cut of a movie – the pacing isn’t quite right, you can still see the wires in stunt shots, and instead of CGI, there’s a guy holding up a mark to show the actors where the dinosaur will eventually be.

While there’s still a lot of work to do and some of the future content will still be rough around the edges when the time limit is lifted, rather than focus on two separate builds, we’re going to focus all our attention on our Beta progression build for the next update. This means a lot of pieces are being assembled as a whole for the first time and there are likely to be mechanical problems. But, we’re going to be taking a lot of time to get as much of it right for the next update as possible (design has mostly been focused on this for the last few weeks). It’s been something we’ve been planning to do, but we wanted to make sure that we took care of system priorities before we tackled the bulk of progression testing.

But more on progression next time. For now, please check out the new features in the current update – we’ve added tweaks to statuses and armor, AC/Resistance info on the equipment screen, a whole lot more thrown weapons, and many bug fixes. We would appreciate any feedback you have on the build. If you still want more info, you can keep up with the latest from design in our Monday Design update series on the forums. We are also able to answer your questions right on the Steam forum. As always, thanks for your continued patience and support.

(On a more personal note, development during Beta implementation can be highly stressful for the devs and many of us are working 10+ hours a day to get Dead State in the best shape we can. We would greatly appreciate if some of you don’t read this and post “where’s the Beta?!” every day until we release it. We tend to not give dates on the off chance that something goes horribly wrong on the day of an update and we’re forced to push it back, which tends to ruffle a large constituency of our forum-going public. So, please, bear with us while we assemble this big ball of scripting logic that is progression testing. Thanks!)

A site called Enthusiacs has interviwed Brian Mitsoda about Dead State. In the interview, Brian talks about what features we can look forward to in the full game.

Here's a snip about the threat in the game:

Wastey: There seem to be a lot of elements that the player will have to contend with on a regular basis to keep his group happy. Food, morale, rest. Other humans. If you had to, what element would you say players should watch out for the most?

Brian: This game is all about the human threat, both internally and externally. It's pretty easy to look at the game and write us off as another zombie game, but if you play the game, you'll learn that the zombies really aren't that huge of a threat, but other humans scavenging for the same resources or allies that are at each other's throats?

And a snip about a defined narrative:

Wastey: Now, will the game have a defined narrative (beginning, middle, end), or a continuous flow of survival until the inevitable end? Brian: There's definitely story beats spread throughout the months in the shelter, but we're more open in structure like the original Fallout. Most people have only played the first week so far, which is a tutorial week and is much more linear than the final game so that we can teach the player the basics of running the shelter and scavenging. Much of the game depends on the allies you have, the people you meet, how many supplies you have, and what decisions you make.

Thanks to Infinitron at RpgCodex.

DoubleBear Productions has posted the next post-funding update on the kickstarter page for Dead State with news about the games next big Early Access update.

Early Access Update #2

We’ve got a major new update to the Early Access build for you today!

We’ve added character creation, basic goals (experience system), two new locations, two new random encounters, combat bark functionality (note – allies will eventually have unique barks, grabbing from generic list right now), an ambient sound system, and many bug fixes and combat balance additions (although combat is getting even more polish/balance soon.) This update introduces the rest of the functionality that forms the backbone of the entire game. From here on out, much of the work goes into improving on and building out the systems of the game rather than adding completely new functionality and screens.

Also, keep in mind that the updates only represent a small amount of the work in the game and that the majority of our work is going toward our progression playthroughs of the game. This includes maps, characters, events, weapons, enemies, neutral AI, and minor systems that are getting added or tweaked constantly these days. Crisis Events have turned out especially well – they’re definitely feeling spot on to our original outline and navigating the subleader/shelter political layer is as unique a gameplay experience as we hoped it would be. If you were looking forward to putting a lot of hours in the final release of Dead State, you will not be disappointed. And as soon as the update goes out, we’ll go back to making more maps and implementing additional dialogues to make sure that the roads out of Splendid will take you to an ever-increasing amount of destinations. Think the Coyotes are a threat? Oh, just you wait…

As always, please feel free to contact us here, on Steam, on our boards, and let us know what you think or if you’re having any problems. Even if we can’t respond to everything, we do hear you and we’re taking notes. We’re firmly committed to giving you the best survival RPG experience you’ve had, so if you don’t hear from us, it’s probably because our screens are filled with editors, emails, text files, and team chat programs. Thanks for all your patience and continued support!

DoubleBear Productions has posted the next post-funding update for Dead State with a small progress update, and shares some new screenshots.

New Screenshots!

While we work to finalize the next big update for Dead State’s Early Access, we want to share some screenshots of the many new buildings, props, and levels we’ve been adding to the game. You’ll most likely see at least some of this content alongside a big ol’ truckload of new systems, including character creation, in the upcoming update. Thanks for your patience while we finish polishing up the next update - we hope you’re looking forward to checking out all the improvements and new content we’ve added!

DoubleBear Productions has a post on the Steam forums with a new development update for Dead State were they share news on what the developer has been up to.

What We're Up To + Official Wiki Announcement

First, DoubleBear is pleased to endorse Gamepedia.com’s Dead State wiki[deadstate.gamepedia.com] as our official wiki for the project. The wiki has existed for a while as an unofficial resource, maintained by our most active community members - it just seemed like the logical step to make the whole thing official! If you haven’t checked it out yet, I highly recommend you visit it and consider becoming a contributor. Please spread the word to other members of the gaming community who either already love Dead State or are curious to learn more about it. Right now, there’s still a lot of content on there waiting to be fleshed out, so this is the best time to get involved and really help expand the Dead State wiki. If you’re looking for more ways to help us out in addition to playing the Early Access build and providing feedback, this is a great option! I hope this wiki proves useful to everyone, and I look forward to seeing it grow and develop!

For those who are curious what we've been up to since Update #1 - we're finishing up Systems beta, and while it may be anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month before you see our next update, it'll be a HUGE one. You'll be getting character creation, combat barks, experience progression, and more content. As always, we'll need your help and feedback to improve and tweak these systems and your bug reports to make sure we don't miss anything in the final game! In the meantime, we appreciate your patience and love seeing all the screenshots, videos, and more coming out of the community. It just makes us that much more excited and motivated to get the updates - and then the final game - out sooner!

Game Grin previews the Steam Early Access version Dead State. They find the game interesting and writes the game will do the zombie apocalypse justice.

What sets Dead State apart from the rest, however, and makes the game an interesting sell, is its defence building element. Back at base you need to manage your rag-tag band of survivors by assigning them to roles in an X-COM style base-management mechanic. Firstly, you’ll want to assign combat experts and medics to your main party to scavenge out on the world map, but for those that aren’t so handy with a scalpel or machete there are still important roles to play: you can assign them upkeep roles to improve the morale of the base; crafting roles to create specialised items or construction roles to build fortifications such as fences and lookout towers. Almost everything you do at base, including simply living through the night, requires specific resources. Resources which - you guessed it - have to be found out in the zombie and looter infested world map. As such, with the large world map open to you from the start, you aren't propelled along so much by a standard story but more so by the need to survive; each time you set foot outside, it isn't to respond to a distress call or beacon but because you need, NEED, supplies.

DoubleBear Productions has released the first Early Access update for Dead State. Here are the details fresh off a Steam annouccement. Read the link for the huge changelog.

Welcome to the very first update of Dead State’s Early Access! In this update, we have a healthy mix of stability improvements and content additions. We’re happy to report that many crash and soft lock issues in the previous build have been eliminated.

We will be updating the Known Issues list here on Steam and on our forums as soon as we can with more detailed info about the bugs we’re aware of so far that aren’t yet fixed in the Steam build. We hope you enjoy the new update, and as always, please continue to share your feedback and bug reports with us either here or on our dedicated forums.

We have a special bug-reporting subforum available where you can provide your quicksave files and screenshots, which goes far in helping us track down and squash those more elusive bugs. Speaking of which, we want to say a big ol’ “THANK YOU” to everyone who helped us track down issues before now and reported reproduction steps to us on Steam EA discussion boards and on our forums. We’re also particularly grateful to our mods, Caidoz and DrunkZombie, who have worked tirelessly to answer questions, track down and report bugs, and help compile all the bugs being reported by the rest of the community. I don’t know what we’d do without them!

Have fun, and thanks for playing Dead State’s Early Access!

Strategy Informer played Dead State, and shared their impression of it. Keep in mind the game is still not finished, and the preview is based on the Early Access demo.

There's still a lot that needs implementing, like more things to do at the shelter and some clearer instructions, but if DoubleBear can polish up all the features there should be an interesting RPG here. Dealing with the survivors and their personalities, building up and maintaining the Shelter, finding and raiding interesting new areas, it all looks very enjoyable. I'm already really into it, and if the experience hangs together well and presents you with the consequences of your actions (obligatory for a zombie apocalypse game these days I feel) Dead State could be another fun notch on Kickstarter's belt. I guess the walking dead do still have some life left in them after all...

IncGamers takes a look at the Early Access version of Dead State in a new preview.

There’s enough in Dead State’s Early Access demo build to give you a strong sense of the title DoubleBear is trying to create. Tactical, turn-based combat, party management and shelter organisation are all present (to an extent) to play around with. If you do plan to pick it up, be aware that you’ll have to deal with a fair few crashes, bugs and user interface quirks at the moment. It may take several months and a whole lot more updates before Dead State is fully re-animated, but the signs of a absorbing, traditional RPG are already there.

PC Gamer has posted a new article called the Early Access Report. In the report they talk about Dead State. Here is their opinion on the current state of the game.

You can see the bones poking through Dead State's flesh: escaping to the menu leaves you vulnerable to attack, there are buttons that don't work, it crashes, and turns can take a long time for the game to calculate even with relatively few people on screen. There are some UI elements that go without being explained, so it took me 30 minutes to figure out how to leave the school and go on a raid (there is a map button on the UI that only works if you're standing in the exit zone). But the biggest problem is brevity: this is an open-ended game and the demo has an end-point. I'm already convinced it'll be a good game when it's all completed, it needs more for me to recommend it to you if you want something to play now.

PC Gamer played the Beta of Dead State and shared their opinion in a new preview.

As it stands now, the $25 buy-in for the First Seven Days isn’t enough of a price cut (a $5 discount off of the final release) for a build of the game with a lot of problems left to fix. As much as I enjoyed the story Dead State starts to tell, the work-in-progress combat and game-ending bugs don’t deserve your money right now.

DoubleBear Productions has a new update on Steam about the upcoming Beta Updates for for Dead State. Here are the details, and read the link for more of the list.

Upcoming Updates

We at DoubleBear want to thank all who bought the Early Access version of Dead State for your support. It’s been a crazy week for us. While we haven’t been able to respond to everyone’s feedback, we want to let you know that we have been reading it and collecting info on issues you’ve been having. We’re working on fixes for some of the biggest technical issues and crash bugs and we hope to have a patch for those up soon.

We hope to expand the demo features over time, and we’re working on a few key additions to help flesh out the Early Access build.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, some of these updates may be slightly delayed. Three members of our team are in the Ukraine – if you’re not familiar with what’s happening there, please read up on the latest news. In the short-term, their schedules have been impacted by the events unfolding there right now, so please be patient with us. They are still working on the game, but sometimes they have bigger concerns to attend to. We have a pretty small team for an RPG (about 12 people!) so we definitely feel it any time a team member has to take time off for personal reasons.

If you have feedback or need help with the game, please feel free to stop by our forums and ask us there. We appreciate your thoughts and participation and we look forward to bringing you more updates and news about the final release in the future.

DoubleBear Productions has two new updates about the Early Access of Dead State.

Update #39 - Codes Going Out - Check Spam Folders

DoubleBear Productions has finally released the Early Access demo of Dead State. They have information for bakers in a new update.

Dead State on Steam Today, Info About Codes

Dead State is going on Steam in a matter of minutes. We're going to be sending out the codes for KS backers and Pre-Orders as fast as we can. Email server limits and issues may prevent us from sending them all out at once, but we will process them until we're done. If you don't get a code right away, don't worry, it's coming. If a day or two passes and you still don't have a code, message us and we'll see what we can do. At this point, the team is pretty wrecked, very little sleep, two leads down from fevers, etc. We're hoping to make this as smooth as possible, so please be patient.

DoubleBear Productions has a new update on Steam about the Early Access demo.

Many of you have astutely noticed that Dead State: The First Seven Days, our Early Access demo of Dead State, is slated to be released tomorrow. Right now, this is still our plan, although we may be forced to delay a day or two if any unforeseen obstacles arise. Either way, we want to clarify how we anticipate the launch process will work in advance of the demo release.

We have a large backlog of backers and pre-purchasers who are our first priority for generating and sending keys. We're going to do this as fast as we can, but we cannot guarantee everyone will get their copy right away tomorrow (especially since it can take up to a day to receive approval for a new batch of keys to be generated through Steamworks). Since this is our studio's first time ever releasing a game on Steam and generating/distributing keys, the process could be a little rocky. We really appreciate you all bearing with us while we get everything sorted out, and you give us through Friday to get keys out to everyone. If by Friday you still don't have a key and you haven't heard an update from us about our progress, then feel free to reach out to us here on the Steam group discussion board here or our own forums.

 They also posted another update about the demo being delayed.

After another round of testing the Early Access build, we ran into one new crash that affected a frequent weapon effect in combat, and another that affected the attack menu GUI at a common resolution. We needed to fix these and re-test the build – that was done, and now the build needs to be packed up and uploaded to Steam. Then we need to test the Steam build from a fresh install and make sure there are no new issues from a clean install.

Unfortunately, this build probably won’t get up in time to be put up tonight.
But here’s the thing – we could have put the build up last week or even today. The reason we held off was to polish our work as much as possible and make the EA build feel like a complete game. Yes, it’s still an Early Access game, but we didn’t think crashes or other major progression issues would make for a good experience for our backers and everyone else who bought the game early.

Tomorrow, the game will be released. In the meantime, stop by our forums if you’re new to the game and need answers or check out the manual we posted here: http://www.deadstate.doublebearproductions.com/demo/manual.pdf

DoubleBear Productions has posted a new post-funding update for Dead State about DRM-Free versions, and Steam.

DRM-Free and Steam Copies

This is important, so please read this if you do not want your copy of Dead State activated on Steam. The Early Access demo will activate on Steam and eventually become the full game, which for many backers, will be how the full game is delivered. Read carefully – everyone will get a Steam copy UNLESS you specify you don’t want a Steam copy.

The Early Access demo will ONLY be available through Steam. I’ll explain why at the end of this.

However, if you want a non-Steam version of the game, you will need to contact us here on Kickstarter. There are no current plans for the First Seven Days demo to be released separately from the Steam copy. If you backed us at the USB or box levels, you’re already getting a physical copy of the game without DRM and the Steam digital copy, so you’re covered either way.

I know there are many arguments about DRM and Steam, but here’s why we are distributing the Early Access demo through Steam.

DoubleBear Productions has posted a new post-funding update for Dead State with more information about Early Access.

Early Access Demo News

A quick update – I know everyone wants this update to say “we’re launching today” but we had to put that off for another round of testing. We’re merging in our save/load system into the build to make it easier for players to get through the many hours of the demo, which will have the side benefit of making it easier to test for the team and some of our volunteers. We’re also adding in a few other items we’ve been working on, such as time of day lighting and turn order elements to the new combat GUI. If there are no issues with save/load, we’ll do one more round of progression testing to make sure there are no other showstoppers or outstanding issues, then we’ll package the Early Access build for release and work on getting it up to Steam.

Sunset. Lately, we are more familiar with sunrise.

It won’t be too much longer of a wait (as I said last time, we were already saying early February was a possibility), and as always, we will let you know the minute we start sending codes to backers. Thanks for your continued patience.

DoubleBear Productions has an FAQ for the Early Access version of Dead State.

Dead State: The First Seven Days - Early Access Demo Coming Soon!

Dead State: The First Seven Days is an early preview of the first week of Dead State's gameplay - an opportunity to prepare your strategy for the full game. You'll meet some of your initial allies, explore a dozen or so locations, and settle into your base of operations, the Shelter. There are several solid hours of gameplay in the Early Access alone, and it barely scratches the surface of what the full game will provide.

Q&A:

1. Why is our game in Early Access?

We are releasing on early access to show our progress to Kickstarter backers/pre-order customers, as well as to bring the pre-release game to potential customers who supported us on Greenlight and have been asking us to bring a version of the game out on Steam. We would also like to get feedback on this earlier revision of the game so that we can improve the game for release.

2. How long do we plan to be in Early Access?

Our current goal is no more than 3-5 months, though we would like to release the final game as perfect and bug-free as possible.

3. What is the current state of the game?

The game is about to enter Beta internally, though we may decide to take extra time and revamp some of the current systems and assets.

4. What features are we planning to add to the game?

Right now, we're working on getting additional content/areas/art into the game, revamping some of the GUIs, and working on improving AI. The biggest missing features right now are Save/Load, final intros/endings, our final XP system, some skill/perk functionality, and animal NPCs, but these features along with many others are planned for future updates.

5. What is our pricing strategy during and after Early Access?

Early Access will be discounted to $24.99 until release, at which point the price will be $30.

6. How can the Steam Community help us during our development process?

We will be monitoring gameplay feedback from the Community, tracking technical issues, helping players with bugs/issues, and making sure players are kept informed about changes and release info.

DoubleBear Productions has posted a new post-funding update for Dead State with more information on the Early Access Demo.

Early Access Demo Progress Update

The demo will be going up on Steam Early Access – we’re shooting for the end of this month, though it may be delayed for any major bugs we find late in the process (so please don’t freak out if it doesn’t show up by Jan. 31st!) When the demo goes live, we will be sending access codes to our backers - we’ve got quite a few to process, so they may not all go out at the same time. The game will also be up for pre-order on Steam, which will also allow people who missed the Kickstarter to gain access to the demo as well. We will still be offering the DRM-free final release to backers, however the demo will only be on Steam for now.

We were shooting for mid-January for the demo, but due to some personal complications and the holidays, the demo was pushed back slightly – we apologize for the inconvenience and we want to make sure that everyone understands that we are doing our best to get the demo out as soon as we can. That said, here’s a summary of what you can expect in the First Seven Days demo:

• -6-10 hours of gameplay (especially long if you go everywhere/loot everything/talk to everyone)
• -Over a dozen locations, including areas never shown before, such as Downtown Splendid
• -One “hidden area” and two “conditional” allies
• -First looks at multiple weapons and armor
• -First look at the new and improved combat GUI

If you’re at all interested in game development, this is a chance to see the early stages of a final release and have a voice in the final product. We appreciate everyone’s continued patience and we will post on Kickstarter the minute the codes start going out. We’ll handle minor updates on the forums and look forward to seeing your feedback there. It’s already been a big year for Kickstarter-funded game releases, and we are extremely excited to be bringing you the full version of Dead State later this year.

Double Bear Productions has posted the next post-funding update for Dead State with a new video, and announces the game will be available on Steam Early Access.

Demo Video Update

A look at works in progress and some more information on the demo.

If you have any questions, let us know on the forums. We will have at least one more update before the demo is released, letting everyone know how to get access to it and about when it will be live. Thanks for your patience - it will be worth the wait!

Dead State has a new post-funding update available with info about a new enhanced demo for backers, and gives a progress report on the game.

October Update

As we end October, we close out on one of our most productive months yet.Most of our work this month moved us closer to both getting our game to Beta complete and polishing many of the game’s designs for the enhanced Demo that will be available to backers and pre-order customers in the near future (for the record, the demo will be an extended and more advanced version of the PAX demo). But before we can meet either milestone, levels need to be created, more dialogues need to be scripted/polished, and several GUIs and additional combat features need to be hooked up.

The next step for us is hammering on the content that will be featured in the demo and improving anything that won’t reflect the final quality of the game. Much of the work we’re doing now also folds into the Beta version, and indeed some of the work for November will be getting certain elements of the game up to Beta standards (like dialogue scripting and the Area Map Survival/random event functionality). To wrap up, I’d say we’re making good progress and even in a pre-Beta stage the game feels pretty good and very on target for what we promised for the Kickstarter. We can’t wait to get the demo out there for you. In the meantime, you can always reach us on the message boards. Also look for more frequent Radio posts (a new one went up this week). It's getting to be a very exciting time of development, so expect lots of new info in the next two months.

Dead State has a new post-funding update wiith informaton from the Pax Prime game demo. They also announced that the game has been pushed back to 2014.

Since PAX was the first time many of us have ever been in the same room at the same time, we took the time to study playthroughs and take notes as a group. While most of us had already made a lot of notes on our demo build, having the chance to watch people play through the demo gave us a lot of insight into first-time player issues. We came away with about several emails worth of improvements for our interface, combat, and presentation, which will all be applied in the near future or during beta-testing. In all, the demo prepared us all for the work that needs to be done on the path to the Beta version of the game and will help us polish the gameplay in ways that should be immediate the next time we show off the build extensively.

If you missed out on coverage of Dead State on the showfloor, here’s a link to our segment on Twitch TV: 

http://www.twitch.tv/twitch/b/455418215?t=225m

(Note: if the link doesn't bring you to our segment, cut and paste the link into your browser directly. We're at the 3h44m mark.)

We were also mentioned in PC Gamer’s post-PAX podcast (thanks to Evan and TJ for playing through the demo): 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/04/pc-gamer-podcast-362-pax-2013-recap/

We had two other announcements at the show. First, Dead State will unfortunately slip into early 2014 so that we can take the time to polish up the experience as much as possible. As much as we would like to ship this year, delays sometimes happen with software development and we would rather launch as polished and bug free as is possible. We definitely want to deliver the game we promised, so we would rather take the extra time than cut content or features. You only launch once, so it’s best to get it right the first time.

However, for those that backed us and for those that pre-order, we will make an extended version of our PAX demo available to you later this year, which should give those of you itching to play the game a small bit of Dead State until the full game hits. We’ll have more on this later this year.

I have a Youtube version of the Pax Prime demo from twitch.tv. I know some of you had trouble with the last version. Thanks go to GhanBuriGhan for bringing it to my attention

For the full video please visit TwitchTV and hear about all the other great projects that were at PAX.

This video here was unceremoniously ripped out of a larger lifestream that you can find here:http://www.twitch.tv/twitch/b/455418215

Dead State was at the Indie Megabooth at Pax Prime, and you can watch them in this live demo on twitch.tv. You have to skip to 03:45:00 of the live presentaion.

DoubleBear Productions  has a new post-funding update showing new screenshots, and giving out more information about the Pax Demo.

With PAX only a week away (we will actually be on the show floor showing the game at this time next week, whoa!), we thought we should show you a few more screens from the demo.

Here’s what we’re showing off in the demo:

-The first 2 days of the game (with an abbreviated intro to get into the action faster)
-First look at the starter allies
-Dialogue reactivity to decisions, ally deaths, and ally requests
-The shelter and the shelter’s job board for assigning ally tasks
-Group combat, several weapons and armor types, statuses, and healing
-Zombies grapple, bite, and can takedown humans
-Allies/enemies killed by zombies will come back as a zombie
-A more dangerous group of human enemies
-Daily Results screen
-The Area Map
-Several combat areas
-New music tracks and sounds

Played through completely, it takes roughly thirty minutes to finish the demo, with several factors that can change the experience for each player. We’ll be there to give a brief tutorial and answer questions along the way. The demo is based on our Alpha build, and as a work in progress, you can expect some changes from now until release.

We’ve got DoubleBear pins to trade for evacuation notices (look for our personnel handing them out on the show floor), shirts for sale (including Friggin’ Chikin shirts), and for the first 100 or so people that play the demo per day, a special piece of swag.

If you remember DoubleBear Productions promised a special announcement and here it is. The new post-funding update talks about the game finally being shown to the public.

We can finally share a big announcement with everyone – we will be showing Dead State in the Indie Megabooth at PAX Prime this year! If you’re going to be at PAX on any of the four days this year, swing by the Indie Megabooth and come play a demo of Dead State.

We’ve been working hard all summer to add functionality to Dead State’s build and to get our demo ready for PAX. You’ll be able to see both the progress we’ve made and get a look at the WIP demo which showcases the first two days of Dead State. We can’t wait to show you what we’ve been up to. Swing by the booth and meet Annie, Christina, Oscar, or me, and we’ll give you a guided tour of the demo. Being a part of the Indie Megabooth has been a huge goal for us and we’re in good company – there are dozens of indie developers to come see in the booth this year (we will be just as excited to see their work as some of you will be to see Dead State.)

For those who can’t make it to PAX, fear not, as we will make sure that between press and our YouTube channel that you get a good look at the state of Dead State. Indie Megabooth and PAX coverage should start appearing around the end of August. Expect a lot more information about Dead State from now on. We’re really excited to be able to finally show off our progress on Dead State to the gaming community, so please look for us at PAX and keep watching our forums and Kickstarter for the latest info on Dead State!

Dead State has a new post-funding update available on Kickstarter. The topics cover the development of the zombie turn-based RPG, and tease a "big announcement incoming".

Apologies for the lack of a June update. Actually, if we seem to go dark for a while, it’s probably because we’ve got our heads down and noses precariously close to the grindstone. And that will be the case for most of the next month as well. Here’s an idea of some of the work being done in the game right now:

-Items and item functionality are being added all the time. Right now, our main focus for most of the art staff is adding armor models to the build, though there are now over 200+ items in the game including food, luxury items, weapons, accessories (legs and arms), helmets, armor, and medical items. 2D icons and models for all the items are nearing completion.

-Along with items, we now have attack animations for every class of weapons and their corresponding sound effects.

-Every ally and game faction NPC dialogue is at least at first pass. All “lore” entries (found on USB drives, cellphones, and hard drives) for the game are finished.

-The shelter is at alpha completion – that is, you can upgrade the rooms, heal characters, assign jobs, and manage resources. Groundwork for our daily summary screen, manufacturing, and event progression is being worked on at the moment. 

-We’ve got multiple commercial and residential areas hooked up in game and many of our prop sets complete. 

-As mentioned before, group combat is in and new attacks and status effects are being tested at the moment. Pathfinding and grappling are also being fine-tuned.

-Loot, containers, and loot distribution were given a first pass as they relate to general distribution in the game. We polished some of our shelter supply management mechanics and the way fresh food is stored and expires at the shelter.

Big announcement incoming – probably a very exciting one for a large number of you. Expect to see a whole lot of new game shots and footage in the near future. Thanks for your patience and keep watching the forum and the Kickstarter page for new announcements.

DoubleBear released a nine minute Q&A video for Dead State. Topics talk about zombies, drinking, parental concerns, and a whole lot more

Dead State has a new update on their kickstarter page.

 Our video update is still coming at the end of the month, but I just wanted to announce that we have been Greenlit on Steam and can confirm our availability on the platform. We will still be offering DRM-free versions, but for those who want to activate on Steam, that option will now be available. Thanks again to everyone who voted for us!

Most of you have probably seen our combat video by now. This was an early build of our combat which has taught us a lot about what is working and what isn’t in the design. The biggest change that we have recently made is the following – you can now control your whole party in combat.

We did this for a few reasons, namely to eliminate the wait for the player’s turn and to cut down on the frustration the player might feel from an ally AI’s tactical decision. With party control, you can also switch to characters that have the skills you might immediately need, which comes in handy when you want your mechanically-inclined ally to lockpick a door or your medic to prioritize a certain character’s health. 

We’ve got a very early build that we’re fine-tuning, but expect to see more of full-party control in the future. We think it’s very much an improvement, and for fans of Jagged Alliance or X-Com, it’s going to offer a lot of the tactical options of those games. Our build is getting new features all the time, so we will demonstrate some of the new material when we have a more polished version of the new combat features. 

Also, for anyone following us that did not get a chance to back us on Kickstarter, we now have a pre-order site up for the regular version of the game and the digital deluxe version with the digital soundtrack and digital version of “The Making of Dead State”. 

DB have Deadstate available for voting on Steam Greenlight, and pre-order digital copies of the game are available from their web-site.

Dead State is now on Steam Greenlight, which means that you can vote to see Dead State added to Steam when it is released. If you have a Steam account, all you need to do is go to the Community tab and enter the Greenlight section. The more people that vote for Dead State, the higher chance we have of getting approval to release on Steam, so don’t forget to tell your friends too.

Why would we like to be on Steam?

1. We will launch on Steam.

2. We will be able to provide Steam keys to activate Dead State on Steam to all backers who want them.

3. It's one of the largest distribution platforms and it would really help our game a lot.

Of course, we are still providing DRM-free copies for those who backed us, so don’t worry – we’re not going to force anyone to use a service exclusively. 

For those who missed out on the Kickstarter but have still been following the progress of Dead State, we now have pre-orders available for our digital copies and digital deluxe copy (which is the game plus MP3s and digital “Making of Dead State” book). For more information, go to our Dead State website or click on this link for more details:

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,3248.0.html

Update 25 sees a WIP combat video for Dead State.

What you’re about to see is our work-in-progress combat demo. It shouldn’t be seen as a preview of a final game, but as a milestone that shows a lot of our basic systems coming online as a playable whole. There’s still a lot to create and balance, but the basics of the game that you helped fund is taking shape. Let’s take a first look:

DoubleBear Productions has written a 24th update for this game at its Kickstarter page.
They show some screenshots for this game as well as promise some new footage in the weeks to come. A quote about this:

In the next few weeks, we're going to try to show you all the first post-KS footage of the game so you can take a look at our combat, AI, and one of the near-final areas in the game. Keep watching our Facebook and Twitter for info on the video release, as well as for new developments here on Kickstarter. We're grateful to all of you for your continued support and enthusiasm for Dead State and we look forward to bringing you closer to the zombie apocalypse in 2013.

November's Dead State update describes their current programming tasks, offers a new screen and tells of a new hire:

This month’s progress has mostly involved our programming, design, and art staff plugging away at a few ongoing large-scale tasks. Dialogues for most of the allies have been finished up to first draft standards, which is a lot of writing! We’ve also been finishing up system revisions and GUIs, with most of the GUIs for the game existing in their final form now. Our programmers have continued to add more and more functionality to our combat, loot, and equipment systems and revised numerous tools to help us more quickly construct and implement items. As we get more attack and death animations in place (we just upgraded our model rigs to allow them more range of movement), combat will start looking a lot more like it will in the final game. All the Kickstarter items have been fully designed and balanced against our other weapons. 

DoubleBear has kicked up an October update for Dead State, including a new image. A snip:

It’s October, which marks the beginning of our third month since Dead State’s Kickstarter was successfully funded. Our team continues to turn out new content, GUIs, animations, and gameplay code. We’ve made significant improvements to the Shelter, including finishing all the upgrades, giving the constructed areas a “scavenged materials look”, and finishing off the basement and second level. [...]

Design continues to work primarily on dialogue. As stated before, there is not only a lot of dialogue, but complex dialogue that spans great lengths of time and decisions rather than the length of completing a quest. I thought it might be interesting to shed some light on our ally creation and dialogue writing process. It starts with Annie and I discussing concepts for characters in the shelter. Usually, everyone we add needs to create a potential conflict or interaction with one or more other characters in the shelter, plus bring a set of skills and personality traits that are not duplicated by another member of the group. We usually try to figure out if the character is going to be more useful in combat or out of combat, or if they unlock some other potential aspect of the shelter, like a new type of job or a prized skill (like a doctor). We also try to figure out if the character is traveling alone or with others – if they’re traveling with someone, it instantly creates an interesting narrative point, but that bond needs to be reinforced throughout the dialogue and even in the gameplay. 

DoubleBear has kicked up a new Kickstarter update for Dead State. It's intended for backers only but here's a small-ish quote on the current status:

Work progresses on the game steadily. When I’m not wearing the production or business hats (or customer service hats), I’ve been writing dialogue for the game. I just finished another one of the sub-leader characters, and it was a hefty chunk of writing. Reacitivity and random events can really jack up the dialogue count easily. While it would be easier to scale back the number of interactions, I want to make sure the player has plenty of face time with each of the characters and some special situations that only show up under the right conditions. Most of these dialogues will be revised once we get them tested in the game, so the writing is never “done done” until the game’s out, and even then, it would be easy for us to send out an update to add some new events or even replies to provide some unanticipated options on replays. Being indie and funded by Kickstarter allows us to control our product after it goes out for as long as we want to keep on providing new content for it – thanks again for that opportunity!

We may keep our heads down for the next month, but don’t panic if you don’t hear anything from us for a while – it means we’re hard at work on Dead State. We’re still in the early post-funding stages, and we want to quickly get to the “showing off” stage of development. Until the next update, we’ll be here and on the message boards if you need to get a hold of us. Thanks for your continued support and enthusiasm.

Brian Mitsoda has been interviewed at The Critical Bit, discussing Dead State and previous projects:

Your own estimations have put a playthrough of Dead state at “50+ hours.” There must be a lot of dialogue and written descriptions. Tell me about the process of writing Dead State. What were you going for with this games story, and how hard has it been to achieve it? How does the writing in Dead State compare to the writing you’ve done for other games?

The process started with Annie and I figuring out the location, what would be possible mechanically, and the scope. With the limits defined, we started thinking inside that box and coming up with characters that would provide interesting reasons to keep them around and story hooks that would work alone or on top of other possible characters. Most of the writing was laid out before we started with the expectation that when you’re writing you’re going to improve, expand,  or get rid of some of the pre-production outlines or come up with new and interesting story ideas for the characters. While we have a few similar scenarios for each character – like a random event where allies get sick – many of the situations for the allies are planned out depending on when they become available, who they know at the shelter, who they like/hate, and how much they respect the player. It’s some of the most complex dialogue I’ve ever written for a game, on par with the largest characters I’ve written in other games, but when the game is mostly about the characters, it’s necessary. I think we provide a lot of the story and emotional investment hooks, but it’s the player that will ultimately connect them and write their own story in the game.

Dead State has kicked up a new backers-only update, informing on the work they've done since their successful Kickstarter campaign. Aside from getting Kickstarter prizes under control, here's some of the work on the game itself:

Most of the work the team is doing right now is a continuation of tasks that we have been working on for the Kickstarter presentation. Design is continuing to work with art on new GUIs, writing continues to be a big part of the design schedule, programming is working on fully-implementing combat rules, and art continues to work on new props and level assets to allow us construct the many types of locations in the game. We’ll have a lot more to show off soon. We hope to start releasing video updates in the future to show off the game’s progress. We’re also going to be adding new team members as development continues, especially to help us with the additional content from the stretch goals. We’ve already brought on an additional programmer to help out with the workload. We’ve also looked into some interesting programs that will help speed up some our processes, especially on the animation side.

This isn't new as such but Dead State fan DrunkZombie has collected all the responses given by Brian Mitsoda on the forums over the years, which is an excellent resource if you want an answer to a question. Some of the answers go back a few years, so things may have changed.

A Dead State update has been released, offering a little post-funding house-keeping. A lengthy snip:

So, here we are, a few days later and the team has started to accept that we weren’t hallucinating – we actually made over $330k and we are now ramping up production. So, here’s the first of many post-fundraising updates. 

First order of business – for the few of you who have pledges that have failed to process with Amazon, you only have about two days left to straighten these out. Failure to do so will result in your pledge being cancelled by Kickstarter, so if you want to make sure your pledge is received, you are urged to straighten this out as soon as possible. Only a few of you still aren't processed and Amazon should have contacted you, but double-check your payment status just in case.

Secondly, we are currently working on surveys to get out to you so that we can collect information for fulfilling rewards. We’ll send out an update when we send them out to remind you. Be sure to read and answer them thoroughly. For some info like mailing address (where applicable), be sure to keep us up to date on any changes. If you have questions about fulfillment or backer surveys, check out the Kickstarter FAQ. We should have the surveys sent out by the end of the week. 

Some of you have asked if animals were unlocked for the project. Good news – they were! The reason the goal doesn’t say “reached” is because the $330k mark was reached so close to the end that the Kickstarter closed before we could alter the page and project creators can’t adjust text after the Kickstarter ends. So, every stretch goal EXCEPT the expansion was unlocked. Good job with that! And thanks again to everyone who made it happen right in the nick of time. 

We've missed the last updates for Dead State, so they are here. Update # 15 covers this:
Link to the update: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70755535/dead-state-the-zombie-survival-rpg/posts/260381

The quote:

With 24 hours left, there’s a few things we can do to help reach $300k and beyond. A lot of that is going to depend on reaching new backers and reminding people that this is their last chance to pledge or upgrade their pledge.

As you can from their pledged data, they are a bit above the 300K mark now.

Probably because of update # 16 - link:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70755535/dead-state-the-zombie-survival-rpg/posts/260690

The quote:

In fact, we're so close to both the City and animal stretch goals that if 2000 backers at the $15 level upgraded to the $30 tier (which includes the Radio content) then we would nearly have enough for animals, which would most likely still make it from new backers. The game, the Radio content, a soundtrack (or ally pack) AND expanded content for $30? If you're thinking about upgrading, time is running out!

DoubleBear has added a new $21 Kickstarter reward tier for Dead State as the campaign passes another stretch goal level (now at $250k, only 47 hours to go):

We’re announcing a new tier – for $21 (a $6 upgrade from the basic tier) – we will give you access to developer updates and videos. Everyone above $21 already – don’t worry, you’re covered. What might you find in the developer updates?

• Exclusive first looks at game content
• Pieces of fiction from the game before release.
• Videos updates from the devs.

Brian and Annie Mitsoda have tossed up two Kickstarter updates to push the final outcome for their Dead State campaign. With only three days to go, they are currently sitting at $228k - well over the reserve but hoping for $360k to achieve all the stretch goals. If you've been thinking about contributing to this one, head over before time runs out.

Brian Mitsoda and Oscar Velzi have participated in a Reddit Ask Me Anything about Dead State. It's a hard format to quote but here we go:

DoubleBear has kicked up the 9th Kickstarter update for Dead State ($197k, 7 days), offering a piece of fiction that represents playing the game and discussing the writing in general:

One of the biggest components of Dead State is the writing. With dozens of characters, item descriptions, and loads of game text, there’s a lot to experience. We’ve got over 10,000 lines of branching dialogue – to give you some perspective, the average screenplay contains about 1000 lines of linear story. For our dialogue, we need to create reactivity for relationships with other allies, the character’s respect for the player, character mood, concerns for events happening in and out of the shelter, and personal requests. As you can imagine, this takes a bit of scripting and time to write, rewrite, and implement – and every ally in the shelter has dozens of nodes of reactivity, including some random events. 

Another (optional) component of our game involves collecting data. Out in the world you’ll find phones, USBs, hard drives, and other devices that contain information on them. These will unlock blogs, emails, news reports, and even confidential information that will shed some light on what happened to the rest of the world before the game started. Some of this data is unlocked bit by bit, each segment revealing more of a person or group’s complete story. All told, there is almost an entire novel’s worth of stories and fiction in the game.

While we're talking about Kickstarter in some fashion or another, Indie Games Reviews sent in 10 Commandments For Indie Developers on Kickstarter:

“THOU SHALT HAVE ACTUAL GAME FOOTAGE”

How many Kickstarter projects have 2 unshaven guys talking about how cool their game idea is?  Way too many.  Unfortunately it’s a lot harder to executive a concept than it is to chat about it.  Images and stills are just as bad.  The hundreds of hours that go into modeling and engine creation show us, the consumer, that you have the knowledge and expertise to put your vision into action.  DeviantArt is cool and all. but cool images and cheesy videos do not turn into games overnight.

Another update for this game has hit the Kickstarter Page - the link:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70755535/dead-state-the-zombie-survival-rpg/posts/254937

The developers of Dead State will be doing a Q&A 'ask us anything' on Reddit on the 28th of June, this Thursday. Another update will be done tomorrow:

Also, DoubleBear will be doing a Reddit AMA this Thursday from 5-8 PDT. Come ask Project Lead Brian Mitsoda and Art Lead Oscar Velzi questions about Dead State, RPGs, indie development, Kickstarter, or whatever. We’ll be back with another update tomorrow and through the rest of the project. As always, feel free to send us questions here or on our forums. We've got a lot of stretch goals left, so any help you can provide to get extra eyes on the project is much appreciated. Some of you have gone above and beyond to spread the word and it shows in this week's numbers - thank you! Let’s make this the best week of funding yet!

Jay Barnson has interviewed Brian Mitsoda, the boss of DoubleBear Productions, the indie developer behind this game. The link:  http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=4534

A quote on how it is to be an indie gamedeveloper today:

Jay: How’s it like being an indie now? Care to contrast some of the major differences between some of your previous career efforts and your indie experiences with DoubleBear?

Brian: It’s liberating for sure, but it’s a lot of work and responsibility too. There’s no shortage of stuff to do and when no one else can take it on, it falls to me. I’m the business guy and producer, which is somewhat new, although I’ve done my fair share of scheduling and estimates at bigger companies. I’m the project lead, which is always a ton of work as most everything has to pass through my hands for stamp of approval. I’m the primary designer, although a lot of the basic design is done at this point. I’m the lead writer, and writing always takes time. And PR takes up a bunch of time. My lead programmer (Nick) and lead artist (Oscar)do help with most decisions and managing their departments, so that’s a huge help – there are some indies that do it all, and a couple of my hats off to those guys and girls.

There's a new Dead State update on Kickstarter ($177k / $150k) with artist Oscar Velzi fronting the camera to offer a message. From the accompanying text:

Over the weekend, you’ve really exploded support on Dead State, and we’re nearly at our first stretch goal – thank you! As you may know, stretch goals not only allow us to expand our team and add additional team members, but they are important to us in other ways, such as allowing a buffer for Kickstarter costs (5% to KS, 3-5% to Amazon), offsetting reward costs, and increasing padding in case backers’ payment info can’t be processed (happens more often than you think). We’ve made rapid progress in the last three days – let’s make the last ten days the best on the project!

Today, we’ve got a video message from our Lead Artist Oscar Velzi. Oscar has been on the project since the early stages of the game. He got his start in the modding scene, and has since worked on The Age of Decadence, another indie RPG. As often is the case on indie projects, Oscar works on multiple aspects of the game besides art and is a core member of the team. Here’s Oscar with a message for you and a first look at our work-in-progress hospital level.

I've been away on business for a week and have  ton of emails and links to catch up on, so I'll stagger them over a few updates. As you probably noticed, we struggled a little with updates but a huge thanks to Gorath and Myrthos for their posts.

Dead State has passed their Kickstarter reserve, currently sitting on $152 of $150k. Now that thefunding is guaranteed, Brian Mitsoda has released further stretch goals. Here's a partial snip:

YOU DID IT! We have met our goal, and thus, Dead State will be a reality! From myself and the whole team – thank you! 

However, it’s not over - we’ve still got almost two weeks left! That’s plenty of time to keep making Dead State even better. And here’s some additional content to shoot for – our stretch goals:

$180k – Weapon Pack 

-10 Weapons + the top 3 most popular weapons picked in our forum poll.
This pack helps us bring on another one of our model artists full-time. 

$210k – New areas (including the following)
-Military Base
-Regional Airport
-County Fair
-Mall
This goal allows us to hire on a level artist full-time, which means more variety in areas, more props, additional map types, and more unique places to loot.

$240k – More varied attack animations, including more variety in specific weapon set special attacks and kills.
- Two New Allies! Two more warm bodies for your shelter.
- Two new upgrades for the shelter – the shooting range (makes allies better shots) and the gym (makes allies better at melee).

$260k - More cosmetic options for character creation.
-More zombie appearance variety (including an MMM, Bison! mascot)
– Post-release modifiers for fan requests like amount of food needed, effect of antibiotics, and ability to control allies.
This goal allows us to hire a character artist on full-time. 

We also missed an update on the music - samples are included, so head over if you haven't already.

Hello present/future kickstarters! My name’s Leif Chappelle, and I have the pleasure of working with Brian and his talented team on Dead State. Specifically, on its music. I run a small (extremely small) studio (apartment) here in Seattle called Woodland Alien Music.

I’ve decided to take some time and answer a few questions about the music of Dead State, some of the initial thought processes that have gone into it so far, and where we’re planning on taking it in the future.

PC Gamer interviewed Brian Mitsoda on Dead State, talking about several aspects of the game, including their kickstarter adventure.

PC Gamer: Your Kickstarter campaign has been very successful. How does the reality compare to what you expected at the start?

Brian Mitsoda: We’re kind of following the normal Kickstarter trend right now. We started really big and that was really very exciting. It’s been kind of dropping off in the middle, which it generally does. The expectations are that we’re pretty sure we’re going to get funded. Our biggest goal right now is to hit the 150 mark which, if you’ve watched any of the other Kickstarters, a lot of times that’s when a bunch of other people will be like, “Oh, it’s funded. Let’s go fund that now.” And then, of course, you’ve got a huge push at the end generally.

Really, the hardest part for us has been that there’s been a bit of Kickstarter fatigue in the press lately. For a lot of press, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, Kickstarter. That was really big… back in April.”

The other thing that’s kind of worked against us is that we have zombies in our game. And I don’t know if you’re aware, but there are a lot of games that use zombies. And so we’ve kind of tried to deal with this problem of, “Oh, look, another zombie game!” And one of the things we’ve tried to get across to people and the press is that the zombies really are not the major focus of the game. It’s really just an excuse to have an interesting combat mechanic and explain why the whole world has fallen apart: “Well, the zombies have kind of pushed it in that direction, but let’s focus on the humans.”

Thanks Jonathan.

Craig Stern from Sinister Design and IndieRPGs.com caught up with Brian Mitsoda to discuss Dead State:

You’ve spoken in interviews about some of the mechanics that will feature in combat: among them, the need to keep quiet to avoid attracting zombies, the need to stay out of zombies’ line of sight if they do show up, the need to deal with infections, and the fact that allies sometimes ignore your orders. On a more nuts-and-bolts level, however, how would you describe the combat system? Does it use action points? Initiative-based turn order? Are there targeted shots or manual weapon reloading?

Action points are for taking actions (weapons, thrown items, medical items, reload) and movement. Initiative is derived from the perception and then agility, with the player always having the advantage in a tie. There aren’t specific targeted shots, but there are special attacks and weapon modes that can be used to gain tactical advantage. Overall, we want to emphasize functionality over raw power/level advantage in combat. You can have a lot of points in a skill, but if you’re using a weapon purely to spam the basic attack, you’re probably not going to gain the upper hand. It takes delicate balance of squad weapons and armor to come out ahead.

RPG Codex caught up with Brian and Annie Mitsoda and also Oscar Velzi to talk about Dead State. Here's a snip:

You're using the same engine as Age of Decadence - does that make Dead State's combat very similar to AoD's? Are there any special actions you can take in combat? Or will we merely switch between two options, such as fast and aimed shots? Will there be different hit locations that you can aim for, possibly with local damage?

Oscar: The things they share are the grid system with the instructions for movement and the interaction with objects at a very basic programming level. The combat system itself is completely different, and built from the ground up for this game.

Brian: As Oscar said, aside from some skeletal turn-based mechanics we’re a completely different system. For one, we have noise as a big factor. Our combat is probably a bit quicker and maybe a bit forgiving in that we’re likely to give the player more of an advantage in large fights. We have allies and group orders, that’s a bit different too. All of our weapons have a different feel, so that each has their own drawbacks and strengths - a handgun might be weaker than a rifle, but its ammo is more plentiful, it’s not as loud, and it can easily be switched out to another 1-handed weapon. Melee weapons have much different collections of special attacks, giving them unique tactics in combat. Field medics can heal, and allies can be revived before they die if a medic can get to them in time. We’re also aiming to be a bit more frightening, as brought out in that moment when you enter a room to loot it and suddenly combat starts because you forgot to check the back room and now there’s a zombie chewing on your shoulder.

DoubleBear's Kickstarter for Dead State (currently $104k, 22 days to go) has a new update with two new physical reward tiers and other additions. A snip:

The “Save One for Yourself” Tier

A magnum bullet USB keychain that comes pre-loaded with the entire game.

(Note: The final appearance of this item may vary slightly from the example above.)

Includes a digital copy of the game (while you wait for delivery), a digital soundtrack, the digital book, special thanks in the credits, and a silver-level patron badge.

(Please add $10 for shipping to territories outside the US and Canada)

DoubleBear's Kickstarter for Dead State currently sits at $77k, a little over the halfway mark in a few days. A new update has been posted discussing the demand for some improved mid-level tiers and a physical box version, as well as the first stretch goal:

I should probably explain about weapons in our game. While we have quite a few weapons in the game, we believe in functionality over brute strength. There will be some upgrades to basic weapon types, but our weapons are designed with pros and cons that factor in their weight, damage, reload time and ammo scarcity, special abilities, and type of damage. Adding more weapons offers up a lot more strategic options for you and your party and even gives you some new special weapons to play with. Here’s a breakdown of our first stretch goal, the Weapon Pack:

-Tiller – A 2-handed spiky melee polearm that can cause bleeding.

-Kukri  - A 1-handed melee knife that is great at causing limb damage.

-Crossbow  - A 2-handed ranged weapon that is much quieter than guns.

-Flare Gun – A unique 1-handed ranged weapon that is guaranteed to set targets on fire.

-Bola – A special thrown weapon that stops targets in their tracks.

-Bottle of Acid – A special thrown weapon that burns and can cause panic - also it’s acid!

-Bowie Knife – A 1-handed melee knife capable of inflicting a lot of damage.

-Repeating Lever-Action Rifle – A 2-handed ranged weapon that’s all-around reliable.

-Antique Revolver – A 1-handed pistol that makes you feel like a cowboy.

-MSG-10 SMG – A 2-handed ranged weapon – unload responsibly.

But wait – there’s more! That’s right, we’re also posting a poll at our forums to vote on the last three weapons for the pack. That’s thirteen total weapons in the weapon pack! If that sounds like something you’d appreciate playing with in Dead State, consider throwing in a few extra bucks or even bump up you pledge to a higher tier. The money helps us bring another artist on full-time.

And how about this – if we make our stretch goal within five days, we’ll add the FOUR top weapons on our poll as a bonus.  For our first stretch goal, let’s try to reach $180,000.

We appreciate your support and we hope that everyone can pitch in a little more to make the weapon selection in Dead State give you and your allies an even better chance. Thanks for your continued support!

Brian and Annie Mitsoda chat with Rock, Paper, Shotgun about Dead State and their Kickstarter:

RPS: You’ve talked about ‘crisis events’, such as running out of antibiotics. Are these things that emerge out of the simulation or do they occur randomly?

Brian: They occur when certain criteria are met, so in a sense, yes, they are something that is going to happen through gameplay choices. Running low on antibiotics or food will trigger that particular crisis event, which will give you the chance to make a decision that people will buy you some time or a heap of scorn, depending on how you sell it or how much political clout you have with your sub-leads. There are quite a few crisis event triggers and most of them mean making a major decision that will affect the shelter for a time or particular allies at the shelter. They are one of my favorite parts of the game and I think they’re one of the systems that makes Dead State unique. You can see a bit of one in our Kickstarter video for a basic idea of how they work.

RPS: Roughly, how much time is spent exploring compared to dealing with issues back at the shelter? Or will that vary depending on play style?

Brian: It depends on how many allies you have. I think the more you find, the harder the game gets and the more time you have to dedicate to breaking them in and satisfying them. You will probably have to go out and scavenge most days. And, naturally, we’ll make sure some trouble finds you if things are getting routine. We always, always want to make sure that you’re juggling a few problems all at once.

DoubleBear has launched the Kickstarter for Dead State - I know a lot of you have been waiting for this, so head over to pledge. They are looking for $150k over the next 29 days and hopefully some more exposure will get this this cooking (Brian, if you're reading this - make more noise).

The video shows quite a bit of gameplay and here is a core feature list:

-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. 

The latest Dead State Design Update implies the Kickstarter is just days away:

We're gearing up to launch our Kickstarter very soon - I'll post a message on the board when we go live.

You can expect:

-An incredible trailer
-A Kickstarter video with new footage of the game (and me on camera, which is always terrifying)
-A look at our rewards that you helped shape
-Lots of updates and new press

Just a few more days without sleep and we'll be ready to go.

...and also points out a very short interview at PC Powerplay:

With Dead State at its current state in the development cycle, what would be most beneficial for you as developers from a successful Kickstarter campaign?

For us, it allows a lot of the team to quit their day jobs and dedicate all of their time to Dead State, which as you might imagine, gets the game done a lot faster. It also allows us to expand the team and bring on either long-time contributors or staff positions that are difficult to fill without full-time funding. And as I said, it rallies a lot of old and new fans around the project and channels that energy and enthusiasm into the momentum of the project.

Doublebear has released a teaser trailer for Dead State. Don't expect too much - but it feels like we're getting closer to that Kickstarter.

Today's Dead State update offers a blurb and nice screen of the looting/inventory interface:

We’ve got a pretty simple layout for our inventory. The player’s inventory is on the left side, where the container or body is on the right side. The tabs at the top are toggles to quickly find items by category. You can sort through your entire inventory by advancing each page. Most supply items, thrown items, and ammo will stack. Selecting an item will show a description of the item in the 3x5 at the bottom of the screen.

Your carry weight is determined by your strength. On the whole, when you factor in the weight of your armor and weapons, your own inventory space may not be many pages long, especially if your character isn’t strong and likes to wear heavy armor and carry shields. Allies can hold excess inventory, which can be done in a trade interface outside of combat.

Additionally, we would like to tweak this inventory screen to be used for a barter interface, when we have the time. Essentially, NPCs that want a certain item will weigh that class of items higher than of an item they do not want or have too much of. Bartering isn’t common in Dead State, though you may find a few folks who will trade surplus supplies. 

This week's Dead State Design Update introduces the team working on the game (beyond Brian and Annie) and offers a single new screen:

Just a quick update this week. We’re hard at work locking down and polishing what we want to show for the Kickstarter. We want to make sure we show as much of the Dead State experience that we can before we ask fans and gamers to pledge money to our game. To that end, we’ve actually been expanding our team. The GUIs you saw last week were done by Mazin, who also did the GUIs for Age of Decadence. We’ve also added a composer to the team whose work you will be hearing soon.

That brings our team size up to about ten people working on weekly tasks for the game – and that’s not counting semi-regular contributors on the art side. I see my name or Annie’s thrown around as the “people who are working on the game” so I think this week I’ll do a refresher on who else has been working on this game.

Oscar – Oscar is our Lead Artist. Oscar supervises all of the other art tasks, and is responsible for much of the art and level work in the game. He is pretty much the jack-of-all-trades on the project and assists in design and scripting tasks in addition to his art lead responsibilities. Oscar is also responsible for the art direction on Age of Decadence.

Nick – Nick is our Lead Programmer. Nick is responsible for engine modification, content tools and systems implementation, and pretty much anything that has to do with the code. Nick is building upon code he worked on for Age of Decadence, though Dead State has plenty of new features that have kept him busy.

Ivan – Ivan is our animator on Dead State. You’ll be seeing a lot more of his work when we show off footage of the game. Ivan also worked on the animations for Age of Decadence.

Kim – Kim is our portrait and 2D artist. She has done all of the portraits for Dead State and is working on multiple other 2D art tasks such as inventory icons.

Brandon – Brandon is another 2D artist specializing in logos. Any time you see a store logo (of which there are many in a modern day game), mascot, product billboard, or poster in the game, it was probably drawn by him.

Joao – Joao is a 3D artist who did all of the weapon models in the game and is currently working on level objects and level art.

Jason – Jason is another 3D artist and longtime contributor helping out with objects in the game.

Joey – Joey did the 3D models that you’ll see in the trailer and our screenshots.

Mazin – Mazin is our new GUI artist. He also worked on the Age of Decadence GUI.

Leif – Leif is our composer. You will hear his work in the trailer and some of our other promo material.

And that’s who is working on Dead State. Obviously, one reason we’re doing the Kickstarter is to compensate our team and allow them to devote all or most of their time to the project, which will allow us to plan around more rigid milestones. Many of our team members have been working on or contributing to the game for a while now. You’ll find most of them stopping by here on the boards, so feel free to give them a virtual thumbs up. 

Head over to check out the new screen.

The latest Dead State Design Update gives us the first look at the interface and some insight into the design:

This week, it’s time to show off a little more of what’s going on in our game these days. Let’s take a look at the GUI… FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!

But first, let’s examine the process of how we got there. Our GUI starts with design. Design outlines all the key features of the GUI, what’s going in which GUI, how important each feature is, what our art theme is going to be, and the layout. We then take all of that and we mockup a concept of the GUI, which is a very rough idea of what design needs before art makes its final suggestions.

The layout of your main GUI is of critical importance. A good GUI isn’t going to save a bad game, but a bad GUI can cripple a good game. The GUI needs to do the following:

-Draw attention to important information.

-Be laid out in a sensible way to allow players to jump in (*it helps if it borrows from other games in the genre for familiarity).

-Allow access to important actions and sub-menus without relying exclusively on hotkeys.

-Not be too noisy or take up too much screen real estate.

-Relay tactically sensitive information in an immediate and logical way.

-Have a consistent theme. [...]

We posted last week about the Dead State Ask the Developers thread on the Iron Tower forums - of course, now there are a bunch of answers from Brian Mitsoda so head over and take a look. Here's a sample about their Kickstarter status:

Two Kickstarter-related questions:

Have you decided on your funding target for Kickstarter?

Yes, we have. It's reasonable without leaving us too little breathing room. We've also planned out budgets/teams for if we make 200% or 300% of our goal.

Quote

What are your plans if the Kickstarter drive is a massive success, or conversely, if it is a massive failure?

If it's a massive success, we'll hire on more people to full-time contracts and expand the team. If it's a failure, it's likely we'll have to move to a different funding structure and the game will take longer.

Also: have you decided upon a rough date to start the kickstarter?

Yup. We've got a schedule we're working on. We've done the budget, 99% certain on the tiers, and we know what we want to show off. We're finishing up a few tasks so we can cut the trailer and do other promotional material. When the whole team signs off on the trailer, we'll start doing a press push and launch the trailer and Kickstarter.

And: if you get a higher amount of money from the kickstarter, will you reconsider adding cover mechanics?

I don't know if we can promise to add new systems at this point - it really does add more than you think. Maps, combat systems, animations all need to be tweaked to address one new system. If we get additional personnel because of better than expected funding, they're going to be working on polishing the game and finishing implementing the content faster.  

DoubleBear has kicked off an Ask the Developers thread on the Dead State forums, also telling us about the current rapid progress:

So, two things:

1.   Sorry about the lack of an update last week. I was taken down by a nasty flu, so Annie was going to post for me, was taken down by the same nasty flu, and therefore I spent Monday trying to make up about three days of work.

2.   We’re making great progress on our latest build and adding new art, dialogues, GUIs, music, and code practically daily. Our internal weekly team updates have been massive lately. We can’t wait to show you the progress when we finally debut our trailer.

Now, this week, I thought we’d open up the forum to questions for the developers. Since we have some new members to the forums and quite a few people are still wondering about our Kickstarter plans, we’re dedicating the update to answering your questions. Ask us about Dead State, Kickstarter, RPGs, making indie games – whatever you’ve been itching to ask the devs, we’re here to take your questions.

We have just a few simple rules:

1.   It should be a question. I know that seems obvious, but it has to be said.

2.   If you think it’s a suggestion, snarky comment, irrelevant to this thread, please don’t post it.

3.   Please read the FAQ if you haven’t before – we answer a lot of basic questions in there.

4.   If we don’t answer something, it was probably because of rule 2 or 3.

We’ll answer your questions up until next Monday, so if you don’t have one right now, you’ve got a whole week to come up with a good one.

So… who’s first?

As Dead State gears up for their Kickstarter effort, Brian Mitsoda has released screens and some details of the shelter upgrade system: 

You’ll notice a few changes between the two sets of pics. In the first one, you’ll notice that the only protection the school has is a flimsy chain-link fence. This is going to prove to become a liability as zombies or other humans start showing up and trying to take it down to get inside (which is game over), so it would be in your best interest to upgrade it to the reinforced fence, which is shown in the bottom pic. The reinforced fence ups the amount of damage the fence can take before it needs to be repaired, which makes it less of a daily concern.

Annie Mitsoda has posted on the Dead State forums about the results from their call for Kickstarter feedback. Seems like the fan ideas generally made sense, so hopefully we're one step closer, though it looks like boxed copies are out, unfortunately. An excerpt:

Hey guys! Welcome to another exciting forum update, this time by Annie, the other designer on Dead State (SEE, I'M NOT DEAD). We wanted to let you know how much we appreciated your feedback and suggestions about Dead State's future Kickstarter, and wanted to update you on what ideas we'd collected from your input.

FIRST: what you want to see. We got basically:

 - "Show us videos of the main systems of the game, with basic voiceover explaining what they are, what they do, and what role they play in the overall scheme of Dead State." WE CAN TOTALLY DO THIS AND IT IS A SOLID CALL. We're thinking a little chatter about the dialogue system, combat, the Shelter and its upgrades, and an example Crisis Event. Sound pretty solid?

 - "Say a little more about yourselves as devs." This we'll do our best to put together. We'll try rustling up one of those video-camera things and making a short video about who we are, what Dead State is, and why we could use your help. We can't guarantee you the highest production values (thanks a lot for setting the bar so high, Double Fine! /shakesfist) (just kidding, I love those guys), or that it'll be hilarious, but it'll be honest and direct and will hopefully get across why we love Dead State, and why you should too.

Brian Mitsoda has finally posted a new Dead State update, admitting they lost momentum for a while and asking for feedback as they consider a Kickstarter campaign:

Let’s backup to an internal conversation from a few months ago. Some of us were keeping an eye on this newfangled Kickstarter service that was featuring more and more interesting projects all the time. While there were a few games on there, nothing was really pulling in the money needed for an RPG with a 10+ person team. We were pretty sold on the possibilities, but ultimately it came down to whether or not we thought we had the game in a state where we’d be comfortable asking people to fund our continued development. The reality of the situation was that it was not quite where it needed to be yet, so we put those plans on hold.

Unfortunately, this kind of led to a period where everyone had to take on second jobs/contract work, which naturally resulted in less time being put into Dead State. And one of the worst things that can happen in a creative project is losing momentum, which is what we’ve spent the last few weeks gaining back. And in that time, there’s been kind of an explosion in the realm of crowdsourcing. There is now both an awareness and excitement over the possibilities, and some pretty big projects (way higher than our budget) getting funded through Kickstarter. I’m not so sure it’s “the future” yet and I expect Kickstarter fatigue to set in as every short-on-cash dev tries their luck at the crowdsourcing game. The last thing we want to do is look like a “me too” project trying to ride the gamer goldrush (dolla dolla bill, y’all!) – but I expect that there are going to be quite a few projects that have no such hang-ups.

I still don’t think we’re quite ready for a Kickstarter launch, but we’re starting to head in that direction. I think putting a bit of distance between any possible launch and the massive projects being funded right now is probably a smart move, though I’m not a bizdev guy, so who knows. While we toil away on the latest Dead State builds and features, I would like to open up the discussion to you, the potential supporter - let’s kickstart a Kickstarter discussion.

About time we had a new weapons update for Dead State: welcome to the Brush Hook.

This week's Dead State Design Update is a sample of the original background fiction for the game:

6:30 AM

Woke up. Good, so far. Had that same hope for a few minutes, the one where I walk outside and hear the sounds of traffic and sprinklers and anything but that persistent wail. I remember breakfast at Pam’s for an instant, and then I realize that, even less than a week later, I’m beginning to forget the smaller details of her face.

Ever since Mr. Phillips died in his sleep, I lock my door at night. Can’t even walk in the hallway without carrying a tire iron – I like to call it my bathroom pass. When the toilets stop working, I think then, that’s when we’ll all really start to panic. Until then, the flush is like a hug from Mom. I’m so thankful that she died several years ago.

The Iron Tower forums are pointing out an interview with Brian Mitsoda at a site called grupo97. I've filed it under Dead State but the author is obviously a Vampire: Bloodlines fan because the questions keep coming back to it:

Your work in Vampire Bloodlines is, in my opinion, brilliant. Can we expect to see something similar to the Malkavian dialogues in Dead State?

Not really. Malkavian insanity was part of the game world – there’s not really an equivalent in Dead State. We’ll probably use extra lines to expand dialogue choices and reaction.

Isometric perspective, turn combats, morals, complex IA... We should be thankful that someone dares to engage in such a project. It seems that today only the first person is admitted, while the turn-based role games have almost disappeared, even though that system provided masterpieces like Fallout or Arcanum. Are we doomed to see how turn-based combats become a relic of the past?.

I don’t know if that’s the case. There are so many platforms out there and so many people making games. Isometric turn-based on PC has been lacking as of late, but I’ve played a few on consoles, like the Disgaea series. We went with isometric turn-based because we wanted to build a lot of different environments and maps (which takes much longer in third/first person) and we wanted the combat to be ruled by tactics rather than reflexes. I’ve said it before, but I think the tension in X-Com was a big influence on our game.

Dead State wants you to join their team. Brian Mitosoda knows that there are a lot of people chomping at the bit to get their hands on this game (myself included) and so to accommodate those who can't wait he's asking for help. They're pretty much just asking for programmers. Here's the link to the thread and a snippet of what they need:

We’re not expecting full-time hours – attitude, efficiency, and reliability are key. We’re looking for team members that can complete tasks they’ve agreed to take on within a reasonable amount of time and communicate their progress to the leads. Professional discretion about your work is expected. Working well with the team is a must.

For programmers:

We are primarily looking for someone with game programming/scripting background. Knowledge of Torque 3D and TorqueScript is highly preferable. You will be working with the Lead Programmer and Project Lead on most of your tasks.

Tools Programmer - Developing tools to make implementation of content easier. GUI work a big plus.

Examples of tool duties:

-Script Editor

-Journal Editor

-Loot Container tool

-Art implementation and lighting tools

Scripting Programmer - The scripting programmer uses the engine's scripting language to create scripts for dialogue (a lot of these), for events/event triggers, time passage, tracking stats, and bark text.

Examples of Scripting:

-Global dialogue flags

-Combat triggers

-Quest update triggers

-Scene triggers

-XP/item rewards

If you’re interested in working with us or contributing, please send your qualifications, links to your work, an introduction, and any questions you may have to:

info@DoubleBearProductions.com

Thanks, Lemonhead for posting this in the forums.

We missed this interview a couple of weeks ago and, I'm guessing, most of you did too. Brian Mitsoda chats about DoubleBear's zombie CRPG, Dead State, with Nightmare Mode:

Will the game feature a mission/quest system that the players can undertake or are the players completely on their own in that matter? Will there be major fixed story events that the player must respond to?

There are multiple ways of finding objectives – finding and exploring a building, dealing with threats to the shelter, scavenging large quantities of supplies, meeting new allies, etc. Allies are helpful for guiding players to new places, but they aren’t necessarily like traditional quest givers. You may want to help them out in a reasonable amount of time to keep their morale from dropping, but you won’t get skill points from merely doing a quest, as any ally can die at any time. Story events aren’t necessarily going to happen at the same time or at all for every player, as they are based on personal conflicts, ally death, shortages of supplies, and interactions with other groups. There’s a lot of ways each player’s story can branch, even right from the beginning.

During combat, the players will only be able to issue commands to the NPCs, not take direct control. But how much control can the players assert on the survivors in the Shelter?

In the shelter, the player can assign their allies to jobs, such as crafting new items or guard duty or even just cleaning up the place. Each job has different results – construction of new rooms for the shelter, morale boosts, food production, etc. The player can also assign wounded allies to the infirmary (if the shelter has one) to heal up faster. In addition, the player can strike up conversations with allies while walking around the shelter. Almost every day the player might have requests from allies, or be pulled into an argument, or may just have to deal with someone who is sick or depressed. Micro-managing your personnel and assets is a big deal in the game.

Brian Mitsoda posts about the release date question for Dead State - no actual answers are supplied but Brian essentially explains game development is long and hard. A snip:

We’ve been getting the “when is the game being released?” question a lot on the forums, email, and Facebook. We’ve answered this multiple times in the forum, it’s in the FAQ, and we’ve declared it in interviews, but we’re still getting this question a lot. And in many ways, that’s great, people are enthusiastic – we’re glad there’s a lot of interest. But let me explain the realities and responsibility of independent development a little bit better so that everyone understands why we don’t have a release date. (Note: this is going to be redundant for a lot of forum regulars.)

1. Games (especially with a small team and limited funding) take a long time to make. Especially RPGs.

2. Not everything that goes into a game can be shown off in pictures and video. Posting Nick's code or my design mockups or a door Oscar just modeled isn't going to really excite you much. You want to see what looks like a game, and not everything we're working on is exciting. Believe it or not, many studios spend godawful amounts of time on work that will be mostly thrown out so that they have a facade that looks good for demos but isn't really a real game.

In the latest Dead State update, Brian Mitsoda writes about creating all the visual pollution you find in the modern world:

Dead State is set in the present, which is somewhat unusual for most RPGs. One of the challenges of making the world feel authentic is in recreating the environments around us, which forces us to realize just how loaded the modern world is with advertising. It’s on our roads, it’s on our buses and bus stops, it’s on the logos on stores, it’s on t-shirts and the sides of buildings and trash – everything is covered with ads. If we build a restaurant, we have to have a store logo designed, soda brands for the fountain, possibly a mascot for the wall, and food products with their own names and logos for the inventory. A lot of work goes into capturing the garish, blatant marketing that plasters our reference images.

Brian Mitsoda latest design update talks about his view on death scenes in general and how they will be done in Dead State. Here is a snip:

Movies and TV have frequently relied on death for cheap drama or resolution. While there has been a lot of maturity in the storytelling (especially in cable television dramas) there will always be the good guy lives/bad guy dies, famous last words, and morality plays. But there have been plenty of deaths in movies and TV that have come out of nowhere or that were painful to watch (emotionally) in a very real way. Death of a main or a popular character before half the movie or TV series was over, characters in an unwinnable scenario, and quick and senseless deaths have all been used to elicit a feeling from the viewer that the story is not playing by the rules. At this point, subverting a trope or expectations is enough to shock an audience and make them start worrying about the characters’ fates.

 

Dead State is open-ended – any NPC can die at any time. Some of the death in the game relies on personal player attachment and game mechanics to punctuate the event - for example, having a favorite character get killed while out scavenging. Here one minute, gone the next. Characters react to death of loved ones, but life goes on. However, some deaths are the slow, lingering type – the death of infected, specifically. These are the deaths I’ve been writing at the moment. It’s one thing to have someone get shot by another scavenger senselessly, but watching them die in front of you and having to execute them before they turn (for the good of the shelter) is a more gut-wrenching experience. What’s worse – losing someone unexpectedly or watching them die slowly in front of you without being able to do anything?

Here's a partial snip from the latest Dead State design update, which discusses lore:

Since our last post, some have you been demanding more writing about the game world. This seemed like a good time to explain the mechanics behind our “lore” system in the game.  What I mean by “lore” is the data you can find in the game that reveals fragments of the zombie outbreak pulled from emails, message boards, browser caches, and text that can be found on phones, hard drives, and other pieces of scavenged technology. These are news transcripts, personal stories, leaked memos, and scraps of info that gradually reveal the bigger picture of how the zombie problem spread and what was done to combat it. These range from self-contained data fragments to 10-part sets. Each perspective gives a better understanding of how the world fell apart, as it would have been recorded by individuals or organizations. It’s a collection of observations and interpretations - if you’re looking for some grand conspiracy to be revealed, you’re going to be disappointed.

Every time you find a new data object and bring it back, it will be uploaded to a working computer in the shelter.  From the computer, you’ll have a chance to select fragments and decrypt them to make them readable. Currently, the data decryption process involves receiving a partially recovered password and using the leftover letters to guess the password. Here’s an example of an easy one:

GR_ _ T (A,E)

As I recall, this is the second time PC Gamer has looked at DoubleBear's Dead State:

As project lead at DoubleBear Productions, that’s precisely the experience Mitsoda wants you to have in Dead State: a zombie game with isometric, turn-based RPG combat similar to Fallout and Fallout 2 paired with X-COM’s base management. You’re the leader of a group of survivors that’ve holed up in Splendid Elementary School in Texas. Upgrading the school is essential to survival—like your base in X-COM, it’s the source for facilities and production. “If you want to start building thrown weapons, you’re going to need a lab. A garden will increase food supply by a minor amount per week. An infirmary will make wounded allies heal faster,” says Mitsoda.

To do all that, you’ll need to bring back survivors from surrounding towns. You can choose to recruit them, trade with them, exploit them or remove them from your party if they outlive their usefulness. “A lot of allies are not good at combat. But they will all have some value—some having unique perks that give bonuses to things like speed of production of certain kinds of items. The more people in the shelter, the more people you have to work on upgrades and projects. Of course, this means having more food for them, which in turn leads to more exploration for resources.”

The latest Dead State update talks about changes in the zombie genre over time vs "the reality":

With all the debate about gun stats and what kills zombies the best lately, I thought it was time to bring the discussion back to why we’re making this game. In the last decade, the zombie genre has morphed  from a horror genre into a gunchuks and teenage revenge fantasy fulfillment vehicle. The zombies are no longer scary, but moving targets for whatever badass weaponry people hope to get some use out of after gun show buyer’s remorse. There’s this pervasive personal delusion that a crisis situation is going to unleash someone’s inner hero and they’re going to run around the ruins of modern civilization dual-wielding shotguns and yelling “come get some” like it’s an endless game of drunken paintball. The everybody’s stupid/unprepared/panicked/sheeple but me mentality is in full-effect in the modern zombie fan scenario. 

Here’s what it would actually be like (and what we’re aiming for in our presentation). Imagine yourself outside your usual supermarket. It’s the middle of a sunny day. There are only a few cars in the parking lot. You hear a lot of birds, but no automobiles, no people talking, no music – none of the white noise that makes up the average human soundscape. It’s quiet in a way that modern man cannot fathom, stripped completely of the drone of civilization.

The 9mm pistol is next up in the Dead State weapons updates.

Time for the Hunting Shotgun to take the stage in the latest Dead State Design Update.

The latest Dead State Design Update talks about Portraits, offering one example but also saying "If you look hard enough, you may be able to find a few more “photos” of some of the other survivors lying around somewhere":

Most characters and every ally in the game has a portrait. Last week we showed off the model changes to one of our characters. This week, I’ve included the in-game portrait for that character. All our portraits are done by Kim, our 2D artist. The 2D portraits and our character model sheets are used as a basis for the models that Joey makes.

One of the goals of the portraits is to capture the spirit of the NPC’s personality and give each survivor a unique face. The designers (Annie and me) come up with a general look and feel for the characters, then give a bio and reference material to Kim, who then drafts an initial concept. After a few notes from Annie, Oscar, and I, Kim tweaks the portrait and gives it the full color and shadowing treatment. Sometimes dialogue or character arcs are used by Kim to give the characters an expression that suits their personality without going in too extreme a direction – they’re kept near to neutral to suit the content of most conversations. All ally portraits, info, and status are recorded in the player’s journal.

Another design update over at the Dead State forums. They've gone from having 16 pieces for each character to just two for companions: a head and body. While having three for generic people: head, hair and body. There is a before and after shot over at the forum.

Here are the reasons for this change:

A couple of reasons why we made this decision:

 

- It runs faster. Less objects is easier for the computer.

 

- Less seams. You can see a bit of a lighting issue on old R____'s right arm, near the shoulder. That's the point where the arm would be taken off if it were cut off.

 

- Less wasteful textures. Before, we had to load the texture information for the entire naked body, even if you only saw the head and arms. Now, there isn't any!

 

- Unique textures. Every pixel of the texture can now be unique to that companion, which, for example, allowed us the tattoos, and the personalized face. That means every companion gets his/her own face, and other NPCs will get a few options as well, whereas this was just one male and one female before.

 

- Unique models. As long as we keep to the standard skeleton, we can vary the proportions. R____ here is a bit chubbier than other women might be, and we can make others thicker still. Nothing too radical, but but a bit of character nonetheless.

 

The textures are a bit bigger, but that it won't hurt performance; they're still very small compared to modern games, and don't use normal and specular maps. Again, a comparison between the old and the new, where the red lines indicate the edges of the separate textures (that is, 6 for the old one, 2 for the new).

 

In all, this ought to make Dead State's characters less of a drain on your computer and less of a sore for your eyes.

Gotta have a pitchfork when you have zombies on your tail - so naturally, Brian Mitsoda has kicked up weapon update for said implement.

Rather than a new Dead State design update, Brian Mitsoda has cleaned up their forums a little and created a new Questions for the Dead State Team thread, which is probably worth keeping an eye on going forward.

Annie Mitsoda takes over the duties presenting the latest Design Update for Dead State.  Titled School in Session, looking at "where you'll be spending the bulk of your time in the world of Dead State - the interior and grounds of Splendid Unified School":

Honestly speaking - I think the second Brian and I decided where we were going to set the game in the US, we settled on a school as the player's Shelter. It wasn't really something we hemmed and hawed about, because it seemed a natural choice to us: as we mentioned in our grand reveal article in Rock, Paper, Shotgun, modern American schools (such as the ones Brian and I went to in Florida and Arizona, respectively) look a lot more like fortresses or prisons than the traditional concept of a school. The esteemed Vince was even a little curious about our choice, but when we sent him pictures of schools we'd found while researching the area, and detailed the various features of our own alma maters, he was stunned at the high levels of security of modern schools, and agreed that a school did indeed seem like a pretty good choice.

Brian Mitsoda has penned a new Design Update for Dead State, discussing how humans are the "meat of the zombie story":

I’m writing a lot of dialogue lately.  It quickly adds up when covering the player’s decisions, responses to people in the shelter, reactions to character deaths or fates worse than, etc. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that there are zombies in the game. It barely ever comes up in dialogue, except when the player specifically asks about them or when they directly become a threat to a certain plan of action. The zombies are simply there, like bad weather or a chance of the bends while diving. Everyone knows they’re a threat, but there’s no point in constantly bringing it up. It’s surprising how infrequently or casually the undead get mentioned in this zombie story.

Doing dialogue for a character is different from conceiving of a character or quests. You really don’t figure out a character fully until you have to get in their head. Important story points you had listed for the character suddenly become unworkable because the character just doesn’t seem like they would do that. Run with a throwaway conversation idea and suddenly you’ve got an excellent and defining situation set up for that ally. It seems like it should be painting by numbers once you’ve documented every single interaction, but it’s a lot more like experimenting with new recipes. The results can sometimes be surprising, in a good way.

Brian Mitsoda discusses branching dialogue choices and asks the fans their opinions on the matter in this week's design update.

I’m primarily writing dialogue for the game right now. One of the most exciting/frustrating aspects of game writing for me is figuring out which options the player would naturally want to take in certain conversations, and making sure that the choices in dialogue are going to lead to satisfying and meaningful branching in the narrative. The easiest way to do this is with a series of binary like/hate, good/bad, help/hurt kinds of choices, but in this game we have long-term consequences to multiple decisions made with characters and the alternate influence of your handling of their friends/loved ones. Some allies are major figures in the shelter and wield “power” due to their skill or authority, and many of these are the most complex and dynamic of the shelter’s inhabitants structurally. Some allies are not overly complex characters, which makes them the easiest characters to both manage in the game and finish dialogue for. It’s a priority for us to make these characters feel real and also that the shelter is an active society, with all the different types of personalities and motivations you would expect from a collection of people from different social backgrounds forced to exist together.

My question this week has to do with the “too many” brances in dialogue part. Maybe there’s a dialogue/relationship option for a character in an RPG that you would have liked to have experienced, but didn’t know about it until reading a FAQ or message board. Did you feel like the option was difficult to access because of the dialogue/quest structure? Did you feel that it was never a practical or logical choice to make with the character? Maybe you found out it was an odd combination of choices and/or skill to activate that section of dialogue. I would like to know which character’s dialogue or relationship branching made you react with “you could do that?” Is it something you’re pleased to find out about or unhappy about because it didn't feel accessible to you?

Brian Mitsoda's latest Dead State update is an unusual plea for accuracy in disseminating information.  I'd say from my observations this is a hopeless cause but here's a snip:

Everyone working on Dead State is really happy to have you all visiting the forums, discussing the game, and motivating us to make it something really special. Most likely you read other game forums or sites, and sometimes you might see our game mentioned on other forums or sites. We can’t check all of them or comment on all of them, obviously.  So, this week, if we can request one small favor from you all – if you see false or perplexing info about Dead State on another forum you contribute to, could you maybe post the correct info (directly quoted from a dev or FAQ quote) or just point them toward these forums?

This seems like a minor issue, but misinformation can sometimes hurt interest or expectations for the project from a whole group of gamers that read those posts. Sometimes we’re making the game people at that forum really want to play, but one erroneous post turns them all off the project. I’ll give you an example, paraphrased from another forum:

“Dead State? Who knows if that’s coming out. There’s only like one guy working on it part-time. There aren’t even any screenshots for it. Also, I don’t like multiplayer games, so I’m not interested in it.”

They also need help from artists, if you're in a position to make low-poly prop models.

This week's Dead State Design Update actually proposes a hypothetical situation, and asks forum members to vote on three different options:

This week, a poll related to the kind of choice you will have to make in Dead State and its consequences.

The Setup

Several people in your shelter have the infection. The antibiotics are rarer all the time and it’s getting harder to supplement the supply with homemade versions. A doctor and scientist in your shelter think they have an idea on how to slow the rate of infection with a non-antibiotic approach. The only problem is that the medical equipment is very specific and can only be found in a hospital. Hospitals were ground zero for infection and are still crawling with the undead.

Only someone with advanced medical training can identify this equipment. If your character specialized in medicine, they could retrieve it themselves, but this is not the case for your current character setup. To fetch the medical equipment from the hospital for this experimental procedure, a doctor will have to go in with you. That leaves space for you and two other people – the doctor has no combat skills. It’s a big risk and not necessarily going to work. There’s a chance you could lose your only doctor, which would surely hurt morale, yet if the procedure works, it would boost morale in the shelter. The doctor knows the risks and wants to take them to help people.

The Decisions

Do you:

Option 1 - Decide it is too risky and deny the operation. A few may die from the infection and the doctor and other leaders will lose some respect for you. Continue business as usual.

Option 2 - Risk it, knowing you could lose a doctor and others for the sake of helping your infected allies. Success is higher morale, more time for the infected, and respect of the doctor and other leaders.

Option 3 - Convince people to stick to antibiotics and step up the production to counter any shortages. This will slightly hurt respect with doctors, but leaders will support it. You will have to put most other projects on hold while all resources and ally hours are spent on increasing antibiotic stock.

Brian Mitsoda has kicked up another low-tech weapon update for Dead State - the baseball bat, this time.  As before, there's a surprising amount of detail for such a simple otion.

Brian Mitsoda has kicked up a new update for Dead State, the first in a series on the game's weapons.  The first is the kitchen knife, which doesn't sound too exciting, but the detail is quite surprising.  Head over to read the pros, cons, stats and other information.

The only update from Dead State for a while is to flog you some merchandise, although they've also got some exclusive screens in the current PC Gamer, which I find rather annoying :

A couple of minor but rather important announcements this week for fans of DoubleBear and Dead State. Some of you have been asking for Dead State merchandise – well, now we’ve got it! Check out the following links for Dead State merchandise:

http://www.cafepress.com/deadstate

http://www.cafepress.com/mmmbison

We’ve got Dead State logo merch and the ever popular MMM, Bison! fast food chain apparel to buy. All profits fund development of the game. For those who have been claiming they would buy something when they could buy Dead State stuff – you have no excuse now!

Next up, just wanted to mention that the current PC Gamer (US January 2011 issue, Diablo 3 on the cover) has some new info on Dead State and some exclusive screenshots we haven’t shown anywhere else. If you want to get a look at the dialogue system, some new areas, and our first NPC shots and portraits, pick up PC Gamer this month. We’re really excited about the coverage, and hope you guys check it out.

Anything you want to see in the store? Let us know. If you've seen the article, share your thoughts here. Next week we'll be back with a regular update showcasing a feature of the game.

This design update for Dead State deals with helping you cope with zombies in combat. Here are a few ways to help you survive:

2. If you don’t want to confront them, your best bet is to run. The undead are extremely slow, and almost any human can easily outmaneuver them. They have been known to occasionally get “excited” and lunge at humans that are within a few feet of them, so try to keep your distance.

 

3. The greatest strength of the dead is numbers. They tend to group up when attracted to sound, as loud sounds will bring most zombies in the area to a single point. They will also make noise when they spot humans, drawing more to the area. Either kill individuals with melee weapons to keep the noise down or keep your distance. Be careful not to run straight into a waiting mob.

 

8. Keep an eye on wounded or downed allies. If a wounded ally has been knocked out, they will be a priority target for zombies. Allies that are KO’d cannot defend themselves. If a zombie attacks them in this state, they will almost certainly be killed or infected.

 

9. Zombie infection isn’t 100%, after one bite or scratch. Most of the time, their attacks do not get through armor, though the bite trauma is still painful enough to cause injury.

 

10. You can buy yourself some time by closing and locking doors. Zombies will attack doors, but will quickly lose interest if they lose audio and visual contact of a human for a short amount of time.

 

11. Be careful around bodies of fallen foes and allies. If they are infected, they will rise from the dead rather quickly. Destroy the head of a corpse before they get up. Zombies are attracted to “fresh meat” so you may also use this to your advantage when trying to delay them.

Brian posts another update about Dead State. This time he talks about upgrading your shelter with gardens to grow food for your people. Here are some details on what is involved with creating your garden:

Some people have been asking about growing food, so this week I thought we'd talk about upgrades to the shelter, specifically the garden. Upgrades cost time to build and materials (usually parts). You will most likely need someone in charge of building it - the project leader - to possess a certain level of skill to be able to start building the upgrade. You may also need to have scavenged special items that are required for the upgrade. Additional allies (of any skill) can be put on a project to speed up the job.

 

The Rooftop Garden upgrade turns a patch of the school's roof into a small vegetable garden. To start this project, the player or one of their allies has to meet a few conditions:

 

-A 5 or better in Survival

-Possess 15 or more parts

-Seed Packets (Special Item - look for it when scavenging)

-120 Man Hours (Time allies must spend on project - each ally works 12 hours a day)

-Another upgrade complete (more on this one another time)

Brian Mitsoda explains how you will be able to use cars to travel around in and what it will take to get them going in the Dead State:

Getting a car is not as easy as you'd think. Sure, there are cars everywhere, but from a story standpoint, there's a good reason you can't jump in the first car you see. Many cars will have been involved in accidents while trying to escape the cities and are completely unusable. Other cars will have been abandoned with doors opened or headlights on, rendering the battery useless. Some cars will just be too small or fragile to be practical for scavenging purposes. In effect, this means there only a few cars that you're going to find in the game that will be suitable to drive back to the shelter.

Now, you might think that just finding a car is enough, but there's more to it. Before the car can be used on the area map, it's going to need to be transformed into a machine that can withstand the driving conditions of the zombie apocalypse. This is going to require a garage upgrade at your shelter and someone with the Mechanical skill to make these modifications. Once the car is ready for off-road action, the garage can be used to further modify the car (like better fuel efficiency), provided you have the parts and skill to make new additions. Sometimes the car may need routine maintenance to keep it functional, so having someone with the know-how is pretty important.

Cars are obviously much faster than traveling on foot, but at the expense of fuel. Fuel is also used to power the school's generator and in the construction of multiple items (like explosives). Without proper rationing, a fuel shortage could leave the shelter powerless, which could impact Morale. Fuel is also heavy and requires special canisters, so bringing back a lot at once is difficult. The shelter has fuel storage, so you can hold as much fuel in reserve as you can bring back.

Brian Mitsoda explains randomisation for replayability in Dead State in this week's Design Update:

I don’t know how many people replay games – I often don’t – but I do know that I like knowing that a game isn’t always going to offer the same exact experience to everyone or that it won’t always offer the same experience to players who liked it enough to give it a second go. Player decisions and character builds are one way we can change the experience, but one thing that seems to be missing from a lot of games is randomization. Some games will do this with maps, but very few do this with events.  Today I thought we would cover a few ways that Dead State changes things up so that even the best FAQ can’t always prepare you for what’s in store.

In Dead State, there are multiple ways we randomize the events of the game outside of just reacting to player choice or from resource shortfalls. On our area map, for instance, some locations for allies and resources are randomized at the start of the game. You may never even find some of these locations on your first playthrough or you may discover them much later than your first playthrough/friend’s playthrough. Everyone will have the chance to discover these locations – we always spawn them – but prior knowledge of these events won’t make finding them any easier. Some locations/allies will always be in the same place, so you’ll somewhat of an advantage when playing a second time, but not for everything.

After a week of posts it's worth catching up with Brian Mitsoda's Q&A thread on the Dead State forums.  There's far too much to post here but here's a small sample of the responses:

I've been wondering how complex the combat system is.  Will you be able to crouch, go prone and sidestep?  Will the terrain provide various degrees of cover ala JA2, or will "cover" simply involve getting out of the enemy's line of sight?

Currently, you can't crouch, go prone, or sidestep and cover is mostly about staying out of the lines of sight. Most of these options would only benefit long-range weapon users, which would a small percentage of builds. We'd also have to spend time teaching friendly and enemy AI to deal with it, not to mention do additional into/out of animations for hits or grapples to prone/crouching enemies. It just wasn't worth the time, especially since we wanted to balance the game for melee/ranged rather than tailor the game to styles of ranged combat. The zombies tend to keep people moving, which is another reason we don't have a lot of options to dig in and fight. We'll evaluate defensive bonuses for firing from inside a building, probably, but we want to make sure guns aren't completely overpowered.  

A lot of the strategy comes from the different weapon types, how you employ them, how you use thrown items (like noisemakers), where you choose to engage enemies, how much your allies compliment your style, and how you pick your battles.

This week's Dead State update is actually the start of a dev Q&A thread.  Here's a partial snip from the first bunch of answers from Brian and head over to add your own:

How many NPC there will be? How many party memberes can go on mission with me? Do you plan party memberes that can´t be used in combat but have another use?

There will be a lot of NPCs and potential allies. You can take up to three out at a time for a total of 4 people in the party. You can take practically anyone out into combat, though you'll find that many aren't suited to it and that they are better suited to another role at the Shelter.

How do you guys plan on scaling enemies? By level? By location? Over time? Will it be completely random? Or something else?

Enemies don't scale to your level. More dangerous enemies tend to be encountered over time as you spread out your scavenging range or they do. Sometimes encounters may just be difficult because of the amount of enemies or the layout of the level (area exposes you to attack or provides no easy route of escape if zombies mob you). Dangerous enemies have better stats, equipment, and AI (they won't panic).

GameBanshee has a great interview with Brian Mitsoda on Dead State, covering their inspiration, the mechanics, combat and more.  There are too many good potential quotes, so here's an early one:

GB: An atmosphere of stress and survival can be set up in many ways. How important is it to you to add actual gameplay mechanics to immerse the players rather than just writing and visuals?

Brian: The stress and survival aspects were what we designed the game around - if we couldn't get that right, we wouldn't have committed to the project. We started conceiving the game around the hunt for resources such as food, and then thought about the shelter management, then worked on morale and NPC moods and the different ways it could affect AI, such as panic. We looked at what games did wrong with their food systems and adjusted it so that the food, the morale, fuel, are all similar to a kind of currency - I don't think it will take players a long time to grasp how it works. Once we were sure the mechanics wouldn't be frustrating or potentially game-breaking 90% of the time, we began fleshing out the secondary systems and started thinking about characters and game events. The story only reinforces the situation, and provides some characters that react to the player's success at keeping them alive. If we're successful, the player's stress will come from their story and combat decisions - we need food, we need to go scavenging, but if someone dies on the run, morale will drop and it's already low, that kind of thing.

Brian Mitsoda discusses the visual design of Dead State (aka Zombie RPG) at the official forums:

This week I thought I’d talk a bit about the visual design of our game. If you’ve seen the website, you’re seeing a concept preview of the way some of our GUIs are going to look. The style we’re going for is a collage of scavenged items – scraps of paper, battered notebooks, post-it notes, cork boards, and assorted bits of office detritus. When you flip through your collection of survivors, you’ll see taped photos of them on the pages with typed up notes on index cards. Combat portraits look like photos taken before the survivors left that morning.  Everything in the interface will look like some hurried attempt at cataloging the current events and resources of the survivors on whatever’s the player can scrounge up.

One of the challenges of GUI design is not to just make it functional and easy to comprehend, but to make it fit the setting. This is pretty easy when you’re doing high-tech, because it can look clean and glowing without anyone batting an eye. In fantasy, you get the scroll or woodcut theme – kind of a standard now. In modern day stuff, you’ll get a phone or blackberry interface and it works just fine. For our world, with phones and power being gone, we wanted the visuals to fit the theme of people living moment to moment without being able to rely on their technology. Everything has a hasty, worn look to it, as if it’s been shuffled about by clammy hands too many times to count. You’ll be seeing some more of this design reflected in future screenshots, so keep checking the boards for site updates.

So, Zombie RPG has graduated to an official reveal, with the final name of Dead State unveiled, a new official site and an interview with Brian Mitsoda at Rock, Paper, Shotgun that includes the first proper screens.  There's a huge amount of information so this is a must-read but I can only quote so much, so here's a bit on the importance of sound, which I think is innovative for an indie game:

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.

Here's a snip from this week's Zombie RPG design update on Scavenging:

Last week I asked how long people could hold out and where would you go - here is the reason. As expected, most people answered that they would not be prepared for very long, and it's not surprising. I've lived in earthquake and hurricane zones and I don't think I've ever kept the recommended amount of emergency provisions. Most people said that they would have to go out and get supplies, and most people said they would hit a lot of common targets - grocery stores, gas stations, driving out of the city. If anyone has ever been in an emergency situation or even been in an area that has been warned they MIGHT have an emergency situation, they know that stores tend to be packed with people fighting over canned goods and water, gas stations can and do run out of gas, and in the event of an evacuation, highways become parking lots. This is without the threat or terror of the dead coming back to life. 

Update: well, that was embarrassing.  Iron Tower artist Oscar points out I linked to a thread from last year because the thread was necroed.

The real update for this week is about their attendance at PAX.

Catching up on the Zombie RPG forums, Brian Mitsoda introduces the team working on the game in the latest update.  A sample:

Nick

Nick is our (and AoD’s) Lead Programmer. Most teams have a few programmers, but there’s really no reason to have a team of programmers if you have Nick. Nick’s become an expert in the Torque engine over the years and has been able to do some impressive things with it, namely bend it into a hardcore turn-based RPG. He’s been (quickly) rewriting AoD tools to suit the needs of ZRPG and will be working on pretty much all of the code aspects of the project.

Oscar

Oscar’s our (and AoD’s) Lead Artist. Oscar weighs the needs of the art design with the technical specs of the engine to turn low-poly objects and the right lighting into fantastic looking areas. In addition to creating models, he manages all the other artists and gives them feedback on their work or technical tips to get the most out of our poly budget. Aside from myself and Annie, he is probably most familiar with all of the design, and frequently weighs in on design issues with his giant brain full of RPG knowledge. When you see our levels and wonder why they look so good, it’s because of this man.

In the latest Zombie RPG update, Brian Mitsoda expresses frustration that you can't discuss an indie project without someone calling it vapourware:

For example, it’s not uncommon for movie script writers to take six months to a year to finish a script (or longer if you’re Mitch Hurwitz working on the Arrested Development movie), which is on average about 120 pages of dialogue. I’m not going to say a movie script is EASY (they’re easier for me), but I will guarantee you that writing branching dialogue is not easy, and in many cases it can become quite frustrating to balance good dialogue (for every branch) with satisfying player choice and manageable scope.  And unlike movies, RPGs have a far greater cast list – more akin to TV, which of course, usually has a staff of writers – and unless you’re shooting for genre stereotype #36, fleshing out these characters and working in decent quests/situations for them is a major task. Throw on minor reactivity to what the player’s choices or other NPCs, it’s a fair amount of work and words. Not to mention all the support systems that have to be there in the first place for implementation.

A lot of fans will start to panic when a game takes more than a year or two to come out (even factoring in that they may have announced it a year or two after development started). I think around two years is pretty quick for an indie RPG! There are plenty of larger games with nearly infinite resources that take 4-7 years to develop. But when you contrast it against some other creative industries, indie games are sprinting to the finish line. Consider the time it takes for your favorite band to get an album out. We’re talking 10-12 songs, about 30-60 minutes of music. Yes, they might spend a lot of time touring during that time and release a few singles, but still, thirty to sixty minutes of content for around three to six people in two years - wow.  Autolux, a band whose debut album I quite liked, is releasing their second album this week – after starting work on it in 2005. If anything, recording technology has gotten better and less expensive for the music industry. They don't even have to do their own box covers!

Polish site Trzynasty Schron has an interview with Brian Mitsoda on the features of Zombie RPG but here's a snip on the reality of an indie studio:

Jim Cojones: This is the first time You are working on a game You are self-publishing. How does it differ from the previous experience?

Brian Mitsoda: In previous projects, people would pay me money to work, and now I spend money to work. Sometimes I wake up with this feeling that I have maybe failed to grasp the basics of economics, but then I check my notes and remember that my company owns the rights to the game, controls the marketing and release, and owns the eventual profits. It's a different kind of gamble.

The game will get finished, but whether or not we make any money relies on us delivering a fun game, promoting it well, and hitting the magic sales number.

In a studio, you might work on something for years and have it cancelled or thrown out and while you got paid, you have absolutely nothing else to show for it - I was kind of tired of rolling that boulder up the hill. The tools, awareness, and framework for smaller productions are there, and I'm really excited by the possibilities now and in the long-term - also, a bunch of awesome people have worked out the kinks over the years, so by no means is the team flying blind.

Time to catch up on a couple of Zombie RPG Monday Design Updates.  First, from a week or so back, Annie asks for debate on XP systems:

ONE - so what parts of experience systems do you feel are totally played out?  Maybe getting xp for disarming mines (leading one into death-wish jaunts into minefields for a chance at powerleveling)?  Possibly getting more xp for taking the "super good" or "dastardly evil" options instead of favoring a more middle-of-the-road approach?  For a concrete example: Shining Force 2 is one of the old strategy RPGs that I love from back in the day, but the fact that you only really got xp per kill meant that your best characters speedily outpaced everyone else, and you basically had to trap and bleed out monsters so that your weaker units - healers and thieves - could get the killing blow and thus actually level up.  That was some BS.

...then Brian talks about morality:

So, #1 on our list for dialogue presentation was making sure the dialogue was never completely clear cut good/bad moves, or at least that the decisions involved realistic consequences. Allies all have their own codes of what’s right and wrong and while some of them may agree with each other on one point, there will never be a decision where everybody is in 100% agreement. And the player isn’t expected to be able to please all of them all of the time – it is a constant balancing act for any player to not alienate any of their allies. A popular decision might be the most difficult to execute – like taking action against another group to boost food stocks and losing several allies in the process. The player may also use their dialogue skills to try and sell unpopular or difficult courses of action – for example, they might try to convince everybody that rationing would be a good way to extend the food, reducing (but not getting rid of) the Morale penalty of such an action. And decisions are less based on being a good guy or bad guy but on figuring out how much pull you might gain or lose with an ally if you don’t throw a decision their way – unlike a random NPC, your survivors are theoretically in it for the long haul, and they’ll remember what you did.

There's an irreverant interview with Annie Mitsoda (née Carlson) at RPG Codex, covering her background and work history, working on an indie game and, of course, ZRPG:

14. What spawned the idea of a role-playing game involving the living dead? Where any other ideas on the cards for your first game? Why not make Barbie's RPG Adventures? What lead to you finally settling on the ZRPG? What inspired the game? What sort of themes are you exploring and why?

There were other ideas, and once Brian and I decided we were going to work with Vince and co, I looked at Brian and was like "well, what do you think would work best in the AoD engine?" and he said - with a great intense look in his eyes - "A zombie survival RPG." And I closed my Big Book O' RPG Ideas and went "OK. Convince me." And by God he did. (And by that I don't mean naughty things, I mean that he actually convinced me it was a good idea by using words.)

So these other ideas still exist - and we've got other ideas that have come up since - but we're holding onto them until ZRPG is in the can, as it were. We don't want to pull a Molyneux and get neck deep in one idea before we see something shiny and go galumphing after it elsewhere.

Brian has always loved the hell out of zombie movies, and while I was sort of like "meh" on them at first, this was admittedly because I had not seen the original Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead or Day of the Dead, although I'd loved Shawn of the Dead and read The Zombie Survival Guide until its accuracy started to wig me out a little (although its awesomeness was not to be denied, and I actually ended up giving a copy of it to my brother). And the concept of zombies as a force of nature as well as something individually terrifying is really compelling to me - as Max Brooks said in an interview once, "Zombies are also scary because they come to you. " There's something particularly creepy and invasive about zombies that touches on really deep fears of unbecoming ourselves, of being infected with something, of being helpless against a far greater power.

Brian's mentioned as well being inspired by living through Hurricane Andrew as a kid, and the stories he tells about it are the kind of vivid you get when you've really been shocked by something. I tease him about being super paranoid about always locking the door or closing the windows even though we live in a nice neighborhood, but I've lived the comfortable kind of life that involves never having my house broken into or living through a major natural disaster. There's documented evidence about how completely people fall apart during disasters - not in hysterics but more being totally frozen and stunned - and it's a terrifying thing to think about.

What would you do if your world was suddenly populated with monsters, and not only are they outside, but one of them is someone you love? Zombies and zombie fiction doesn't have the neat little trappings of most horror stories - where the world as a whole is still functioning and fine and dandy, and it's only your particular sphere of reality that is being immediately fucked - it's about the breakdown of society, and confronting a whole big basketload of fears all at once and over an extended period of time. You're not trying to survive until morning so that freaky vampire goes away - it's survival of the fittest from now on, because zombies don't give a shit what time it is.

Brian Mitsoda, Double Bear Productions, shares information about the shields and bracers we'll be equipping in this game.

Shields and bracers must be carried in the secondary weapon slot to be considered equipped, but they are never a primary weapon. Bracers can be worn without impacting operation of a two-handed weapon. Shields, due to their size and needing a free hand to hold them, cannot be used with two-handed weapons. This means that to get the benefit of a shield, the player has to have a one-handed weapon (either melee or ranged) in their primary slot.

Brian Mitsoda has kicked up a new Zombie RPG update at Iron Tower.  It's short enough to re-print, so here it is in entirety:

This week continues the defense theme in the form of Accessories. Accessories can further tweak a character’s defense or resistances or provide one of several other benefits as long as they are worn. Each character has two accessory slots – one for the head and one for the body.

Head accessories include items like helmets or masks which are generally used in offering up further protection to the wearer’s head. A bike helmet, for example, offers a little extra defense, but it’s not going to deflect a bullet. The gas mask prevents chemical damage and blindness, but offers no additional protection from physical damage. We also have a few “weird” types of head accessories which sacrifice protection for more imaginative use of tactics – for example, camo paint which makes characters harder to hit when being shot at from a distance.

Since Armor covers the body, body accessories tend to be worn on the arms, legs, or feet. Gloves can either add to defensive/resistance ratings or allow for a better grip on a gun. Sneakers can boost a character’s dodge chance, while boots tend to give additional bonuses to defense. Arm/leg guards can protect characters against statuses that affect the limbs. There are also a few unusual body accessories, some of which could be of great use to characters that possess certain melee or ranged abilities.

When used in combination with armor, accessories can allow further customization of a character’s offense/defense. For example, when wearing the gas mask, a potential strategy for a player surrounded by human enemies would be to drop a gas canister at your feet and casually walk away from the now dizzy and blind enemies. With a little bit of ingenuity, accessories can open up strategies that standard arms and armor cannot.

Bonus: If anyone wants to mention accessories you liked or thought were cheap in other games, feel free to list them here. I'm interested in effects/strategic use of items we may have neglected in our design, not necessarily ideas for accessories that would be cool in our game.

Brian Mitsoda has kicked up a new update for Double Bear's Zombie RPG, looking at armour:

It occurs to me that we have discussed the merits of Melee versus Ranged a bit, but we haven’t introduced the armor system, so that’s what I’m going to talk about today. Our armor, much like the weapons, is up to personal preference/need more than it is a linear boost to the defense rating. Armors have a basic defense rating which is subtracted directly from damage. Most sets also have a resistance to certain kinds of attack, which reduces the attack damage by a certain percentage. Resistance bonus is taken off first, and then reduced by the damage resistance of the armor.

The latest design update from Brian Mitsoda on the Zombie RPG kicks off a discussion on save game systems.  Here's a partial snip:

This week I’m throwing out a design question for a system that hasn’t received much design or thought on our end, but it’s one that can alter the intent of a lot of our design decisions, and that system is the save/load system. I’d mostly like to solicit feedback from the group on this one, but here are my thoughts on save/load:

-I don’t want people to save before/reload after every single time combat doesn’t go their way, so I’ve considered no saving in combat. BUT… I understand that sometimes people need to take a call, go to sleep, or make time for loved ones or their bridge club, so I don’t want to punish those people that need to stop playing the game that moment.

-One possibility would be to allow saves during combat with a quit to menu, then erase those files when loaded, like a lot of console strategy games do. BUT I worry about people not liking the ability to save/reload when they want and if it’s worth implementing special save functionality just for combat.

-One problem we have in the game is that for the game’s narrative to really feel like a zombie movie, the player should expect to lose allies – that they shouldn’t expect to keep all their companions alive BUT there are few games I can think of where losing a genuine asset isn’t an upsetting situation to be in as a player and I can’t think of any incentive to not reload except that it’s one less mouth to feed.

Brian Mitsoda has made a FAQ for his Zombie RPG over at the Iron Tower. Here's a quote dealing with good vs. evil in the game:

 Is there a good and evil solution for everything?
There is no good/evil points, slider, whatever. If you piss off an enemy faction, most likely they are going to be hostile. Some people will agree with your methods and some won’t and some won’t care as long as the Shelter provides creature comforts. You have to weigh every decision like a political decision – you can’t please all the people all of the time, but you can please some of the people some of the time.  Most of the decisions involve sacrifices (not literally) and it’s about what you’re comfortable sacrificing, though it’s not always as cut and dry as that. There is also the question of the needs of the group versus the needs of the individual to consider.

There's a new update at Iron Tower for Zombie RPG, with Brian Mitsoda discussing some of the influences behind the game:

X-Com combat made the end of a turn into as sweaty, heart-in-the-pit-of-the-stomach press of a button. You could have several good turns where aliens were spotted and put down before they could get a shot, and then one turn where the operation was completely FUBAR – a grenade thrown into the middle of a squad, a Chryssalid running into a room and killing your commander, or an unseen sniper getting several good shots in on your best guys – it was as much a game of suspense as it was of tactics. Enemies had to be spotted – not triggered, mind you – but actually seen by one of your party members in order to know its position, which meant that it was entirely possible for an enemy to sneak up on you if you weren’t carefully positioning guys to watch your back. Every time you were about to open a door, you didn’t know if the room was going to be empty or if six Snakemen were going to be standing there with rifles aimed at your chest. The game provided scares and tension that carefully-plotted designs just can’t reproduce.

Annie from Double Bear Productions asks the tormenting question of who would you save during a zombie apocalypse? GameBanshee writes.

Here's the premises:

I'll keep it simple and provocative - in the zombie apocalypse, who would you save? 

Please - keep this to people you PERSONALLY KNOW ONLY, who are within 15 miles of you (I'd want to save my parents, for example, but I couldn't list them here because they live over a thousand miles away). Would you save your sibling, or go mercenary and protect your apartment's custodian because they know how to fix everything? Remember - you can't save everyone... for the sake of discussion, let's say 2 people max. Beyond that... and they have to fend for themselves...

Possible second question: if the person you wanted the most to save WAS actually very far away (see my parental example) would you risk trying to reach them if there was no other way to contact them, or stay put and hope for the best.

Brian asks how long would it take you to take a major threat seriously?

This week, I’m throwing out a question to the forums based on this premise: How long would it take you to take a major threat seriously, if you even did? While I was working on one of the outbreak stories found in the game, I started thinking about just how easy it is to tune out news or how stubborn people can be to accept news that challenges routine. For example, when hurricanes hit, in cases where there is a 100% chance of it hitting a certain area, there are always reporters out asking people when they plan to evacuate, and more than one will claim they are going to “ride out the storm.”

There are multiple ways for someone to be surrounded by information and never actually know what is going on in their immediate area right now. There is criticism of the media for being too sensationalist and media that tailors its “news” to fit the worldview of their viewers, and as a result people that have either tuned out or don’t believe a word of it. There are times when something as minor as not looking at a weather report can get you stranded in the middle of a blizzard. When a major disaster hits, how many people will know about it, and how many people will actually take it seriously? 

This week's update for DoubleBear's Zombie RPG brings news about the characters and their clothing. It is done via Iron Tower Studios, who hosts the game:

Since the team is rather small, we can't do a lot of characters. It's so small, in fact, that we're only going to do two, a male and a female version (personally, I like to call them Zombob and Zombette). That means, for example, that all male characters will share the same face [About the faces, we are going to have a couple of variations. Perhaps a scarred one, and definitely an old guy one, just like AoD - Oscar]. We're hoping that you won't notice with the camera zoomed out as much as it will be. Luckily, we can still make variations, through clothing, accessories and haircuts [Note: and facial hair and skin tones]. I'd have loved to be able to show you that, but we don't actually have any assets that can be swapped here yet. Expect an update specifically about all that when we've got a fancy and varied assortment of moustaches.

This week's Zombie RPG update is about the engine.  Here's Brian Mitsoda:

Real brief update this week.

This week, I wanted to clear up some confusion about the engine for ZRPG. We’re reusing/modifying a lot of the code used to make AoD, although our actual engine is Torque 3D. Torque 3D gives a significant boost to graphical capability and effects. AoD uses an older version of Torque (TGE) and their code is currently being ported over to the new engine for our game. All our models, props, animations, and other bells and whistles are being created for the new engine. We released an in-engine screenshot in December to give people an idea of the visual quality of the game. Some of our artists will be dropping in to introduce themselves and show off some of their work in an upcoming update.

So, this week, if there are any other misconceptions or questions about systems we've already unveiled, leave a question and we'll try to clear things up.

Brian Mitsoda on morale affecting combat in Doublebear's in development Zombie RPG.

This week I wanted to touch on one of the ways that Morale affects combat, and that is the concept of Panic. Panic determines when NPCs lose their will to fight or become frightened.  Panicked allies or enemies will try to flee from attackers and cower or heal themselves, depending on the type of Panic. While in this state, they will have the Panicked status and will not respond to commands.  When enemies panic, the battle tips in your favor, but when allies panic, the only thing that will keep them safe is figuring out the trigger and eliminating it. The player will NEVER panic no matter what – Panic is an NPC-only trait.  Once again – Panic is an NPC trait and does NOT affect the player character ever.

Brian Mitsoda has kicked up the second part of their Morale discussion:

Continuing with Morale this week, and if you haven’t read pt.1, you may want to read that first. Now, you may be wondering, what happens when the Shelter’s collective Morale is less than the Morale bonuses gained that day, and quite frankly, that’s a good question, because it will happen often. The answer to this is found in one of the major resources in the game – Luxury Items.  Luxury items are scavenged from houses, buildings, stores, etc. and are stored at the Shelter as a way to offset Morale losses.  They are creature comforts and distractions, items that make allies forget about the horrors of survival. All luxury items or Morale bonuses contribute to a “stockpile” of positive Morale that can offset losses. Days where Morale turns up negative can be offset by any “surplus” of good will from the player’s actions or collection of luxury items.

I keep forgetting to post Brian Mitsoda's weekly updates for Zombie RPG - fortunately, Rampant Coyote's indie round-up yesterday reminded me to add it to my schedule.  So, this week is the first part of a discussion on Morale:

Morale is one of the major systems in the game.  True to the zombie genre, Morale plays a huge part in the will and behavior of the survivors.  Since it affects a lot of systems in many ways, I’m going to be talking about aspects of it over the next few weeks.

Today I’m going to cover the very basic Morale system and what it means for your character as a leader and what it takes for the Shelter to not fall apart from within.  Morale can be thought of as the sum total of good will generated by the player. Morale is what keeps people’s spirits up, keeps them going, and prevents the pocket society they have created from breaking down. As long as Morale is positive, the player doesn’t have to worry about people leaving, refusing to do tasks, or being difficult in the field. Certain story events, activities, and luxury items can build up Morale. Other actions such as starvation, killing an ally, or having an ally die in the field can reduce morale. Certain allies (especially those with negotiation skills) and upgrades (like the generator) will give the player daily morale bonuses. Like Food, good Morale can be stockpiled, meaning that as long as people have distractions and Food, generally they will forget about the harsher realities of life.

Brian Mitsoda has posted a new Zombie RPG development update at the ITS forums - basically, a short letter of thanks for the past year.

As a gift to the fans, they've posted their first render - a library scene, which I must say looks promising.

Thanks, GhanBuriGhan!

Thanks to the ITS forums for spotting this interview with DoubleBear cofounder, Brian Mitsoda.  The focus seems to be on the use of zombies rather than the gameplay itself but here's a nice snip:

CG: With Zombies being essentially mindless, you’ve mentioned that more focus will be placed on the humans and the psychological effects of a Zombie Apocalypse. What kinds of people can we expect to meet on our travels through ZRPG?

BM: There’s Mystika, the surly thief with a secret crush on the player, Xynax, the stuck-up wizard-in-training who thinks he’s better than us, and M. Byson, the psychic nazi running a secret organization that plans to take over the world by entering a secret fighting tournament. Oh, wait… no, they’re definitely not in the game.

You know your neighbour? The one that’s got the piece of shit car in their yard, keeps weird hours, buys industrial size cans of Beefaroni, and may or may not be dealing meth? Okay, so someone vaguely resembling that could be in the game, except that he’s got the upper hand in this scenario and all the other neighbours that have wanted him to move out for the longest time are already dead. That gives you an idea of the kind of people that populate the game, kind of. There’s quite a few humans in the game and nearly all of them could be allies or enemies depending on how you handle the situation.

I’m hesitant to say too much because I don’t want people to come into the game with preconceived notions about some of the characters, nor do I want to ruin some of the surprise. We’re guarding a lot of the story elements because we’re allowed a lot more control over the story and how much gets shown. It’s the difference between the teaser trailers of old and the tell-you-the-whole-movie-in-two-minutes trailers of modern times.

There's an update on skill perks in the Zombie RPG being developed by Double Bear Productions over at the Iron Tower Studios site.

 Annie writes:

Skills in the ZRPG – unlike, say, Fallout - don’t work on a percentage system, but in a 10-point spread.  Before you get all like NOOOOO about this, it was done so that upgrading skills was a more challenging thing, and that those upgrades felt more concrete and compelling of a difference then “Well, I was at 28%, but NOW I’m at 32%!  …I guess that’s better.  It’s a higher number, right?”  You won’t be able to max out ALL your skills in the game, not by a long shot – where you put those points is a significant choice.  (NOTE: think of the point buy system in Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines and you’re not terribly far off)

Brian Mitsoda talks with Gamasutra about starting up an independant studio after working for larger outfits and, of course, their Zombie RPG.  While they're still not revealing much about ZRPG, there are some interesting tidbits sprinkled throughout the conversation and it's well worth a read.  On the Age of Decadence connection and graphics whores:

Your first announced game, a zombie RPG, is using the Age of Decadence engine made by Iron Tower Studio. While obviously this will allow you to spend more time on developing content for the game, do you think using someone else's engine will limit you?

Iron Tower’s tools let us build the game a lot quicker, but Iron Tower’s assistance in building the game speeds things up significantly. We had several discussions with ITS about their engine and their game and then designed our game to play to the strengths of what their tools do – of course, this doesn’t mean we’re making Age of Decadence with zombies, but that we are using bits like the character creation tool and dialogue editor to help generate assets quicker.

The Age of Decadence team has been transitioning onto our project as they finish their tasks on AoD. We’re partnering with them for our game, and so far, this has been working out great. We’ve also had no shortage of volunteers and contributors, and thanks to all those who offered to help or are assisting us.

To be precise, we’re actually not using the same exact engine as Age of Decadence. The graphics and lighting capabilities have been significantly bumped up for our game. I think as we release screenshots, people will immediately see the difference. We’re still a small team and we’re not going to compete with Unreal visuals or anything, but I think the quality will be “good enough” for most everybody but the filthiest of graphic whores.

Brian Mitsoda has been interviewed at The Reticule about ZRPG but he isn't giving away much yet:

TR – Brian, you used to work with a slew of RPG developers and worked on Vampire the Masquerade, how has your experience working with those companies influenced DoubleBear?

Brian – Ten years of experience on what not to do, that helps a lot. I started DoubleBear because I wanted to design and write for projects that I wanted to do, and didn’t want to spend the rest of my career waiting for the design crapshoot to deliver a decent project and/or having control over a title so that I don’t have to worry about the publisher “Wheel of Fate” landing on “lemon” and getting several years work flushed down the toilet. Again.

Really, when you look at what’s being made in the indie game market right now, there’s not a lot of RPGs or indie RPG companies out there. I knew there was an audience for RPGs that were less ambitious then the bigger budget titles coming out, but after announcing DoubleBear, we found out that that number was much, much bigger than we estimated. We’re taking our knowledge of RPGs and turning that experience into a project that I think that will be able to compete with larger projects, as far as the mechanics and writing goes. We hope DoubleBear is able to turn out a game that is as satisfying as other well-known RPGs, even if we aren’t pushing the amount of polys that the multi-million dollar projects are.

Thanks Resch on the forums.