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KickStarter Dead State: Reanimated

Elhoim

Iron Tower Studio
Developer
Joined
Oct 27, 2006
Messages
2,880
Location
San Isidro, Argentina
How many days should the game last, in your opinion?
 

Luka-boy

Arcane
Joined
Sep 24, 2014
Messages
1,688
Location
Asspain
Another way of making it drag less would be having the endgame not be triggered only by the passing of time. Perhaps adding other elements that could trigger it.

Like for example by, after let's say day 30, having X number of resources in reserve and buildings built (or maybe just happiness) that is dynamically increased depending on the number of people living in the shelter. Though I suppose that could be hard to implement and balance.

Or simply allowing the player to be able to trigger it manually after a certain point if things are going well. How exactly I don't know. Just letting the player decide "Well we have a nice shelter, let's live happily here" and then fade to black and a "A few weeks later" message pops up and that guy shows up saying you need to evacuate could technically work, but would likely feel very cheap. Though maybe a small change like changing weeks to "The next day/weekend" could make it work better.

Just throwing ideas around.
 

Ivan

Arcane
Joined
Jun 22, 2013
Messages
7,754
Location
California
2nd playthrough (now that I know how to gift luxury items)
BB11298F7FA56B702DD7AC2F83B177C29662563A


thus far I love the game. exploring the map gives me fallout vibes. I just wish there more unique enemies w/ special weapons (I likes the bit where you enter a store and there are 2 npcs fighting a gang)

So far I love the progression. Day 32 now. I only wish there were a combat speed slider since zombies drag the combat down. Making me alt tab like crazy or listen to music.
 

Jimmious

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 18, 2015
Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I agree with Zombra(as usual) around day 50-55 would be fine. Or just have the late game events be triggerable by player actions/progress.
 

Ovplain

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 23, 2009
Messages
1,890
Location
Down by the riverside
RPG Wokedex

Here's me ATM. It was a successful day! Zombies still aren't a problem, cleared the Ballinger Hospital, Foree Mall & the Lampasas shelter in a row without one scary moment. The humans were a MAJOR pain though. Especially those rogue soldiers after Ballinger. Completely forgot about those, had only one ranged ally with me. Thank the fuck Christ for tear gas! Rocking a team of me & Getz (melee) and Vic & Paul (ranged) now and at least the looters I ran into on my way back to the shelter went down super easy.

Also, as shitty as the game's engine is, I still really enjoy visiting most of the locations, especially the bigger ones. There's just tons of little details and I love that.

I only wish there were a combat speed slider since zombies drag the combat down. Making me alt tab like crazy or listen to music.

There is a combat speed slider (if I am recalling correctly)?

Yep, 'animation speed' in graphics options. Helps. But the way the game cycles through what seems like EVERY zombie on the map during every fight, whether they're involved in the fight or not, is still super annoying.
 
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Ovplain

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 23, 2009
Messages
1,890
Location
Down by the riverside
RPG Wokedex
Beh, forgot about having to assign that kid to teach the nip English.:S Just in case anybody else playing now missed it, you gotta mark him down as an 'English teacher' on the jobs board.

EDIT: Day 30 now. Just got rid of the Coyotes and everything seems to be going fine and dandy. I recall wishing for harsher 'crises' when I first played this and I still think they'd be welcome. Though maybe they happen further on? Currently I'm on day 30 and only had to deal with potentially poisoned water (seemed like a no brainer to have davis fix that shit up asap), the coyotes (again, seemed like a no brainer to just go wipe them out) and what else... probably was something else that caused a shelter meeting but nothing too memorable obviously. Would love if shit could go down when you were away from the shelter.:D Maybe it would even be cool if the shelter's 'sub-leaders' were bigger personalities. Seems too easy to keep them all happy and in line.

Then again, this is all bullshit, I've no idea what happens towards the end of the game and so forth. And obviously this is a tiny budget indie game, not a shock that it's not PERFECT! Haven't beaten the game yet, but I did get it for 15$ and put 166 fucking hours into it thus far, according to Steam. 166+ hours of entertainment for 15 bucks is just splendid!

EDIT:
Holy reference, Batman!
 
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Ivan

Arcane
Joined
Jun 22, 2013
Messages
7,754
Location
California
By around day 40 is when I got into the "I'm not filled with dread and wonder exploring the maps anymore, let's just lock n loud the silenced pistols/bows and clean the map." This has been my mode for the past few hours now and it feels like the game should have really ended by now. I got the car up and running and decided to explore Austin
B4DFA4346BB68791EDCBB278C3E1EA785F2D7208

Nothing to hard. Upset I couldn't use what's at the end. Anyway, I feel like I've cleaned up the map and have nothing left to explore. It's weird not having any more objectives after Vic's "search the 3 outposts."

Takeaways:

-the early game (Day 1-30) is fantastic. Progression is awesome. Zombies are moderately dangerous (don't want to get anyone infected!) but fighting humans early on is tense and fun

-I wish npcs had quirks, some thieve, some get sick more, some get in brawls
do we ever find out who committed the murder?


All in all I had a really good time with it. I put good money into it (bullet usb) and I really hope they continue to make more rpgs.
I would also like fewer npcs and more depth. At one point you stop reading the "im sick" dialogues and just click "take the day off"
 

Ovplain

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 23, 2009
Messages
1,890
Location
Down by the riverside
RPG Wokedex
I was thinking, it would've been cool if you were forced to switch up your party more. Obviously characters now can get injuries, their health takes a while to rebuild, they can get ill and so forth, but it would've been cool if there was some 'battle fatigue' mechanic as well, like the more you took them out into the field, the less effective they would become. You take someone out 3 days in a row and he gets a 10% accuracy penalty. You take someone out 4 days in a row and he also has one less action point. And so on. And to get rid of these penalties, you would need to leave them in the shelter for a bit to sorta get rid of that stress. The rec room could speed the whole process up. Because once you get your hands on Vic, Getz & Paul, you're pretty much set as far as the party goes IMO. And once everything's up and running, like half of the characters in the shelter literally have nothing left to do.

Then again, I am playing this just on hardcore, not on ironman.:S That at least would seriously fuck up a save-spammer like myself. And it would definitely force me to change up the team, because obviously not every combat situation would go down perfectly:D I don't know. I'm just bullshitting here. Should definitely have given Ironman a shot.
 

Curious_Tongue

Larpfest
Patron
Joined
Mar 2, 2012
Messages
11,905
Location
Australia
Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Serpent in the Staglands Codex USB, 2014
I've got a get a new computer before I can play some of these poorly optimised Kickstarter games.

But from what I've seen from let's plays, this game looks great.

Why is it getting no love?
 

likaq

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2009
Messages
1,198
Why is it getting no love?

1. 3d graphics
2. combat is not as great as ja2. *

* but serpent in the staglands, underrail and D:OS ( none of which is even close to ja2 combat-wise ) are fucking great because rpg -double standards- codex have reputation to uphold.
 
Self-Ejected

Excidium II

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jun 21, 2015
Messages
1,866,227
Location
Third World
Because they released a demo back then and it was p. awful.

Because the zombie apocalypse setting turns a lot of people off.

Because the mitsodas made fools of themselves.

etc
 

fastjack

Augur
Joined
Mar 31, 2004
Messages
347
Location
the south bay
I'd like to add that while I think the game has/had a lot of potential, some of the core of the game's design just isn't fun or doesn't work. The two things that I think kill the game for me are the way zombies work (not scary, quickly begin to just feel boring in every way) and the fact that surviving (and then some) just seems too easy.

I think just having zombies that couldn't easily be executed without acting, weren't easy to completely armor yourself against, and really felt like they mobbed you would have gone a long way toward making it a really good game. I also think more time or resource pressure both on tactical maps with attracting zombies as well as on the overmap with resources going bad or being looted by other groups would have made it fit the genre/theme better.
 

Ivan

Arcane
Joined
Jun 22, 2013
Messages
7,754
Location
California
so how many days are there in the game? I stopped playing at day 50 something because I made all the maps my bitch.
 

Mortmal

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
9,496
I've got a get a new computer before I can play some of these poorly optimised Kickstarter games.

But from what I've seen from let's plays, this game looks great.

Why is it getting no love?

Early acess, was way too early, had plenty of issues and mostly unplayable so people had some grudge agaisnt the dev team, people never forgive, never forget . Few advertisement, no hype ,no brian fargo ,no sawyer; graphics are nice for me and do the work, but not good enough for most people nothing flashy to attract the eye .
Its also turn based combat ,that doesnt really interest many people even when its done reasonably well . It has lot of text, lot to read , if you could learn something after reading he shadowrun hong kong thread is modern gamers absolutely hate reading . Voice over and make it short , another striking evidence on why Bethesda and bioware were so successful, while there's only a few grognards left playing games the like of dead state.

The product as of today is a top 3 contender for rpg of the year in my opinion next to Shadowrun hong kong and serpents in the staglands .Enjoy it and cherish those memories i doubt any similar project will be released anymore.
 

Seaking4

Learned
Joined
Sep 4, 2014
Messages
362
I've been playing for the last few days and this game was lots of fun. Combat was meh but there were some tense moments with food supply and morale. Started off in a huge hole morale wise. Was at about -1200 and right when I was starting to gain about 100 morale a day Davis killed me. I guess I need to restart. Not sure I'll do that now because I don't really feel like replaying the beginning of the game again but it was fun while it lasted.
 

Mexi

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
Jan 6, 2015
Messages
6,811
30 days too many obviously.
Yup, I agree. At one point, combat just becomes a complete chore. You actually dread going out and looting and just want to sleep the days away. Man, they really dropped the ball hard on the combat. This game is proof that TB combat is not always the best. Game would've probably been a whole lot better if it was RTwP or maybe something like Swat: 2. Zombies are just no danger.

swat-2_1.jpg
 

Mexi

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
Jan 6, 2015
Messages
6,811
Joined: Jan 5, 2015

:M

Give zero fucks. I don't spend enough time on here to really care; although, in my experience, this is what moderators look like. Now step off before I expose you again.

Evil-Chris-Priestly2.png
 

Turjan

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
Its also turn based combat ,that doesnt really interest many people even when its done reasonably well .
I guess that's why Divinity: OS failed...

Nah, Excidium pretty much nailed it. Awful demo, zombies and the Mitsodas.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
36,705
I wouldn't call it an awful demo, you can pretty much play that and call it a day. Very 90s shareware.
 

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