KickStarter Dead State: Reanimated

[Luka-boy]

I can work long hours, I can put up with sometimes insane publisher demands, and I can try and lift the spirits of my coworkers when the chips are down – but I couldn’t stand to lose another year or two of my work because someone, somewhere at the top shrugged and pulled the trigger.

Ah, so that's how he came up with the Davis game over!

 

[Roguey]

And finished. At last, the identity of the t-rex artist:

After pinging Annie's longtime friend (and talented artist) Brandon Vodvarka to try to test out a more comic-like style (evocative of Tony Moore's initial work on The Walking Dead), they decided that a slightly more realistic style might work out better, and Brandon was brought on the team later on as a logo/2D artist instead

Josh Sawyer would have succeeded:

“We actually didn’t even want to have stats in the game at first,” Annie admits, referring to the base character values of the game – Strength, Agility, Perception, and Vigor. “That was how bare-bones we wanted to take things. We wanted to define characters purely on their skills. We soon realized that wasn’t working, so we’d we did our best to make stats as basic as we could.”

:incloosive:

Talk a little about Dead State’s – and DoubleBear’s – commitment to having a diverse cast of characters in the game.

BRIAN: First off, we try to be diverse without being Captain Planet. I don't think it's realistic to represent every single ethnicity, sexual preference, and political point of view. It's just not realistic. I mean, look at who's in central Texas, what the population makeup of that area is, what the probability of certain people coming in are. Who lives in central Texas, who are the groups there – the militia, and the Coyotes – they have real world counterparts.
Two points about diversity here:

First, this is an RPG. We designed it so our players could “go nuts” - do whatever they want with their characters, make their characters whoever they want them to be. As far as people in the Shelter go, we definitely wanted to have a great number of different people from different backgrounds.

Second, I think diversity means including people from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds and ages. In a lot of games, there's no old character, except, for instance “the mage”, “a witch”, or “the old king." Our old characters are some of the best characters in the game. What's the last game you played where the cast was mostly over 30?

ANNIE: The thing about diversity in games is that it doesn’t "just happen." You actually have to try; you have to think about it; you have to care about it. And you very well might mess up or have blind spots. I still look at our cast and see gaps. But you have to be true to these characters as people first because if you're just thinking about them as ticking a box, that's almost as bad. Then you’re just using a recipe because you think “we need this type of character” instead of really thinking about their personalities.

Something I like in our game is that Darlene and Regina are legitimately strong women, not “Strong Women” as some kind of definer – not made strong by a traumatic event. And actually as a contrast, the guy bad-asses are kind of damaged, like Sir Charleston and Getz, and even Bud regresses to a “war mind” kind of state. I know I wanted to have a chair-kicking kind of tough woman in the game, and Brian did too, and there they are. I would be terrified to be facing down a group that had both of them in it!

Alas, the book doesn't cover the aftermath of the release, so no comments on those determined Steam reviewers or the PR disaster.

 

[Perkel]

Regina hammer is legit though. In my playtrough she killed like 85% of all people/zombies to point where i could just clear whole map with her hammer.

Generally character wise game was good. Various realistic bunch of mostly idiots. Though i would love to see more serious conflicts instead of those showdowns of supports.
Though i would love more options to manage people.
It always annoyed me that to deal with problem i always had to choose "good" option because "evil" option was simply 90% of time just "no".

 

[Elhoim]

Where can I get this hotfix? (playing the GOG version by the way, no Steam).

Also, can it be applied midgame or do I need to start a new game?

Should be up on GOG as well. And you can apply it midgame.

And finished. At last, the identity of the t-rex artist:

Nope. Brandon did the logos and some icon work.

 

[Infinitron]

LP on DoubleBear's Twitch channel: http://www.twitch.tv/doublebear_productions

 

[Diablo169]

It's also on flash sale:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/239840/

65% off

 

[zool]

=

Where can I get this hotfix? (playing the GOG version by the way, no Steam).

Also, can it be applied midgame or do I need to start a new game?

Should be up on GOG as well. And you can apply it midgame.

Thanks, it seems they just uploaded it on GOG indeed (wasn't there yesterday).

I must say I had my doubts about the game during the first hour or so but I've been sucked in. I'm just hoping the scavenge-based gameplay won't prove to be too repetitive on the long term (it's fine for now).

 

[TheScarecrow]

Mmmm, the reanimated version costs 10€, it's worth it?

 

[Brutan]

Yes.

 

[Gozma]

Is there a build that will let me kill zombies extremely quickly in terms of real time, cause pulling them one at a time over and over so they waste their encounter turn getting into melee so I can tag team them is exactly what I imagined fighting zombies in TB would be like, in a bad way

 

[Zombra]

Is there a build that will let me kill zombies extremely quickly in terms of real time, cause pulling them one at a time over and over so they waste their encounter turn getting into melee so I can tag team them is exactly what I imagined fighting zombies in TB would be like, in a bad way

Might save yourself some administration time if you just find a doorway and pull them all at once

 

[Gozma]

I wanted to make a 1 AP screwdriver hurricane stabber with ten attacks a turn but they wisely made screwdrivers break really fast. Plus it takes forever in real time anyway

 

[sser]

There's a demo. Not sure if it has the 'updates' though.

 

[Perkel]

yes it is worth it

 

[Gozma]

Baseball bat/Aluminum baseball bat + the -1 AP on melee attacks + 10 AP gives you a reliable 1 man 1 turn kill on zombies. Still takes too long. Is there a way to get the equivalent of the Fallout "bonus move" where you have some bonus AP that can only be used for movement?

It's funny that they set Doug up as a blowhard nerd but he actually sucks at nerd stuff and is really good at fighting. Titanium bones, clear 'thal, hope Cleve gets royalties

 

[Elhoim]

Doug is a socipath, he has no qualm in killing. He even gets a trait that gives him bonus THC and CS against panicking opponents.

Have you met Clifford yet?

 

[Elhoim]

Something that's quite cool is to get some characters infected and having a chat before killing them when they run of antibiotics. I doubt many people saw them, and the scenes are quite good.

 

[Roguey]

The examples I saw in the making of book looked bad and melodramatic.

 

[Jimmious]

This shit is hard man. But I don't allow my self to go without all the hard options checked. People dying in the first mission haha

 

[Jimmious]

Update: I decided I'm a pussy and will start over with Iron Man off. My dude got infected in like the 3rd run. Wow. The game is actually fun and has a lot of content...and it's hard. I wish the developers stick to making turn-based RPG games, they're into something

 

[Cassidy]

Update: I decided I'm a pussy and will start over with Iron Man off. My dude got infected in like the 3rd run. Wow. The game is actually fun and has a lot of content...and it's hard. I wish the developers stick to making turn-based RPG games, they're into something

I'm afraid that the only chance of that ever happening is Brian somehow redpilling/becoming a MRA then getting a divorce after a terrible ideological breakup. Otherwise get ready for DoubleBear's Done Home, Depression Adventure, Social Justice The Super Artistic and Progressive Not-Game for that is what they will likely develop in the coming years. In any case, they should have done what they could to officially release Dead State Summer 2015 instead, and they would have had a much better reception and, specially in the long term, possibly better sale income. What they did alienated a lot of potential customers or kickstarter patrons for CRPGs except for the usual few dozens of totalitarians hipsters who donate to patreons and want every game to highlight their special snowflake status and tyrannical incloosive ideology.

However, while some fedora tippers may argue spending the rest of your life married with a SJW is a fate worse than solitude, nobody's personal life is worth sacrificing for an uncertain chance of more incline.

 

[Gozma]

Something that's quite cool is to get some characters infected and having a chat before killing them when they run of antibiotics. I doubt many people saw them, and the scenes are quite good.

I kinda wish that they'd had a more roguelike model where bad stuff happens for no reason and you react to it, rather than it being a product of your failure as a player.

I really dig the writing in the computer files.

 

[ColCol]

Enjoying the game, but Christ is it glitchy.

 

[Gozma]

I've had one CTD and no other trouble. It happened while I was clearing out an insanely boring zero danger zombie filled map and I was like I'm probably gonna drop the game if I have to do that shit again but by a zombie miracle I'd saved only a minute or two before the crash.

I like almost everything except the corest of core problems, which is that zombies are incredibly fucking boring to fight. They're so bad it keeps reminding me how useless zombies would actually be in a fight and how there would be zero chance for a zombie apocalypse to happen no matter how bad anyone fucked up their epidemiology.

 

[Jimmious]

I didn't have any crashes or noticable bugs so far.
What I'm missing are some UI features that would be cool, like an icon of already searched shelves etc or a bit better trading/healing functionality - the right-click thingie is a bit flimsy. I still like it a lot though