KickStarter Dead State: Reanimated

Eh. It could have been so much more. Has some great ideas and moments, but it certainly didn't make me want to run out and buy another crpg made by the Mitsodas.

Also left little doubt in my mind that Brian would indeed have as much trouble with Dorn's Deep as some have suggested. The man clearly cannot into good/remotely complex combat design.

 

Turnbased combat with zombies is the kiss of death. They are a cinematic enemy that needs to be able to sneak up on you between camera cuts to fulfill their artistic purpose. They're pretty bad in action games and there's absolutely no way to unfuck 'em in TB. So I'd say it was a failure of imagination at the outset, not in execution.

The big execution error wasn't combat, it was pacing.

 

That's not true. You just need to implement a clever fog of war system to emulate the sneaking part. It should be based around sound recognition. You character when doing everything attracts zombies mostly through sound. Zombies are pretty silent if they are not moaning like retards all the time(they should only moan when they see a prey. Thus attracting more zombies), but make sounds when go through doors etc. Make a fog of war with a sound based system and also add sounds to confuse the player. Like wild animals doing stuff, wind making thing bang against each other etc. The players field of view should be also limited to a cone, much like in real life. Then you have a TB zombie game that simulates the paranoia of zombie movies. You can even fuck with it for plot reasons. Like playing a mission with a deaf character for maximum fear, etc.

 

Pacing was certainly as big, if not even bigger, a problem as combat for DS. But the fact that zombies almost always moved independently (I know the devs stated they move as a group, but this happened maybe 1 out of every 20 turns during my playthrough of Reanimated) made the agonizingly easy combat take forever. It wasn't uncommon on densely populated maps for me to be waiting 45 seconds to a minute+ for zombies to resolve their turn. That shit fucking sucks, and the fact that someone could put it into a game and not think "Oh shit. This is the most unfun thing ever" speaks volumes about the Mitsodas' design chops. The chance for infection was also waaaaaaay too low, even on the higher difficulties. The game should have prioritized stealth (which doesn't even exist in the game) as the optimum strategy for dealing with zombies. By about day 30 (around the time that I cleared the Austin mall, the most difficult content in the game -which certainly speaks to the game's pacing problems) my main party was so kitted out that they could just run up to a horde of zombies and bop them in the face over and over until (35 minutes of real time later) all zombies were dead, and they would generally only lose around 10-15% of their health.

I love the idea of what the Mitsoda's were going for. A C&C-heavy survival RPG written by Brian Mitsoda sounds great on paper, but the reality is I am never going to see any of that C&C, because the thought of slogging through Dead State's combat maps is about as appealing as having a zombie bite off my nutsack.

 

Frankly the combat wasnt that much of a deal to me; sure it is very basic but kept things interesting with the whole noise aspect since if you got in a shooting gallery with humans you could get into a whole lot of problems with attracting zombies and those finishing off the humans and creating more zombies and so forth. I say the pacing is a bit off to and would suggest adding some more content to the last 20 days to keep things spiced up or even go for a Falloutesque harder dificulty of having less days.
I would also habe added the FF7 idea of forcing you to deal with stuff without your main char and making alternate parties for certain parts of the game plus random npc turning into zombies in the shelter to add some spice
All in all I dont think it was worth $30 especialy in the state it repirtedly was released in but Reanimated has been great fun, I have not had a single crash or obvious bug and honeestly was more happy with it than most of the "Incline" games
If anybody wants to sell their physical copy I am buying PM if interested

 

Noise meter was a great idea, but the mechanics let it down. The optimal strategy for dealing with human enemies is: focus fire them with your big guns until they die, then turtle and switch to melee for any zombies that come to investigate. Rinse and repeat for 40 fucking maps.

Edit: Itemization could have made big (if not complete) strides to fix this, but the fact that there are 20+ first aid items on every single map is part of what made the combat system into such a trivial joke of design.

 

Yeah it could have been better seems it was a pretty good job with such a limited budget but I would say the game charmed me even with its quirks; sometimes you remember more the little not so perfect details but overall it is a shame it will probably be one of the last times we see a similar game

 

Can't really disagree there.

 

I just cleared every map with shotguns, crossbows and sniper rifles after I hit the halfway mark. I had like 500 spare parts and about 25 unemployed people who were grateful to get something to do in post-apocalyptica.

 

Couldn't finish the game. After a while, it just gets so... Boring. Mostly because what people have already said: pacing, late game combat, etc. I believe I will try again, someday.

Even so, I don't regret having bought the game. I guess if they could make a "Dead State 2" it could have been a great game, but we will never know.

 

I also support the notion for a Dead State 2. The first one was close to awesomeness, there only a few things here and there missing.

 

I am definitely in for whatever DoubleBear does next (assuming it's not an "only to survive" project like a mobile microtrans game or something), but I don't see Dead State 2 happening for a number of reasons which I won't bother to enumerate here; Brian has already made it pretty clear.

I do hope we see more real RPGs from them. I would be fine with something more linear to prevent the explosion of scripting labor that was necessary for DS, since it seems like that issue caused a lot of woe. Looking (as ever) at Bloodlines, it was stuck hard on rails by comparison and it's still worth replaying today. C&C is neat, and open worlds are neat, but neither has ever been necessary for a good RPG.

I just hope that they don't still feel that "fantasy" is the only way to sell an RPG these days. What about a more traditional horror setting? Again, Bloodlines is an obvious example, but what about something like Nocturne? I guess I could go on naming setting types but it's not really necessary, as I'm sure Brian has a broad range of genre interests and could come up with something fresh. It'd be disappointing for him to feel bound to either do schlock fantasy or abandon RPGs.

 

I may have come off as unnecessarily harsh. I don't want DB to abandon crpgs either, but I DO want Brian to acknowledge his weaknesses and hire a proper systems designer, because he is clearly not good at it.

 

I'd very much like Dead State 2, but only if Brian hired both systems and combat encounter designer, or at least a consultant. Oh, and ideally they should split teams - Annie on shorter indie games, IndieCade and FemFreq friendly, and Brian on longer, more complex indie RPGs.

 

The game was good. The biggest problem was the lack of out of shelter interaction. That degraded maps to simple looting areas were everything was your enemy. Imagine if they had integrated some interactions with npcs (multiple choices) or scripted events into the maps.

 

Jesus, listen to yourselves...you condemn us to decades of dwarves and dragons...

 

Breaking a 12 year silence to chide the decliners ... if that doesn't deserve a brofist, I don't know what does.

 

I rather play a less than stellar game like this which at least tried to break out of dwarves and elves than the millionth "kill Foozle the evil wizard" fantasy themed game again
Brofist to the true belivers in Incline who can name the reference of Foozle

 

Good content trumps setting as far as I'm concerned. A tradfant DoubleBear game would likely be just as boring.

 

Controls and UI are not well tailored to the repetitive map sweeps and scavenging. It could have been far easier and convenient. Plus the lack of interaction or events in maps. Still glad to play the game, though.

Any tips on how to get Grant White

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

NOT to kill anyone? I thought I was managing him well whenever he came up with his sociopath ideas but then one day, he just up and murdered Mia. Not that I care about her but I would have liked her own tiny arc to play out properly and maybe let her be murdered after that, and I'm too far in the game (and too tired of it) to return to a previous day unless I know it can be averted.

 

Grant

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

There's no way I know of to keep Grant from killin' besides maybe some really contrived timing. Luckily Mia is completely useless and impedes her useful sister from doing shit. There are a few characters that are useful after you fix their one issue he might otherwise kill IIRC. Grant just doesn't appreciate that the average player has this apocalypse shit completely under control and he should just enjoy his Canned Tuna Thermidore prepared by Anthony Bourdain

 

I like him anyway, he is a well written character.

 

The combat engine was definitely the kiss of death; the game was kind of crap, but the combat just pushed it right into total-dogshit territory. Here's just one example of why combat sucked: the zombies shuffle towards you and there's no auto-strike or push-back when they reach a character. I'm sorry, but nothing is more rage inducing than having a zombie saunter up in plain sight and take a bite out of some guy. It's unforgivable; in AoD, spears have a push back effect, that needs to be in this game for almost every weapon. Or an automatic retreat if the space behind you is open. It's inconceivable that my characters would just stand there and do nothing; they practically offer their necks up to the zombies.

I'm not even going to bother discussing the laughable dialogue, story, etc. Crap is crap, but the combat is salt in the wound. I wouldn't back dead state 2. I wish I didn't back dead state 1. What a disaster of a game.

 

Zones of control were a stretch goal they didn't get to.