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. Additionally, I’d like to present this image:



What you’re looking at may not be a “pretty” area, but it’s pretty exciting to us. That’s the starting area of the game right there. Your decisions are yet to be made, your map is blank, your allies are all still alive, and your enemies and the undead are lurking out there – this is the moment where your story begins. We’re pretty excited about this image, just because we know what’s in store for you. It’s that moment in every game where you don’t know what to expect yet, where you can’t wait to get out and experience everything. (“Experiences” that we’re working on right now.)

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.

After we've come up with the basics of the character, we put together a bio for the character. We use backstory for writing purposes only, to give us a more fully-fleshed out character whose life did not begin when the player met them. While you’ll never see the backstories we create, elements of their lives will creep into their dialogue, and an attentive/inquisitive player will learn a lot more about their allies over time. Sometimes you may not know about certain aspects of the character unless a certain path is triggered, like watching them die from infection or gaining enough trust from a friend of theirs. However, like in real life, you will never fully understand everything there is to know about an ally (unless you’re one of the writers).​