During the last two months, we've been prepping the Early Access demo of Dead State: The First Seven Days. The demo is a work in progress look at the game as we start to enter the final stretch of development. It should both give players an idea at how the shelter/combat sections will play out, and allow our early access players to give us feedback which will be used to improve the final game.

Keep in mind that, as with most early access games, the game isn't finished and that if you’re looking to “play the game, but a few months early” - that’s not really what “Early Access” means. It’s a living piece of software that is still being worked on, so you can expect that the final product is going to feel similar but play a lot more smoothly on release. If you’re curious about what Dead State feels like and want to provide feedback that we can use to refine the gameplay, do play the demo and participate in the discussion about the game. We would really appreciate gameplay and technical reports, so if you have any interest in assisting us with that, there will be a sub-forum set up on the DoubleBear forums for discussing the demo and reporting your likes/dislikes/bugs – if you haven’t registered for the forums at all, there’s no time like the present.

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.​