KickStarter Dead State: Reanimated

[Old One]

As I said in the post only by turning humans into retards can zombies be a threat. There is no logic in zombies defeating a modern army.

I'd go even further than that. There are enough gun-toting folks in Texas that the zombie infestation would be cleared out in a matter of days. Ted Nugent would probably eliminate half of them by himself.

 

[Telengard]

The book World War Z deals with such issues nicely. Worth a read. Not the typical zombie story, more like a sociological approach to such an event. Nothing like the really bad movie

Heavent read the book but did read the summary of it on wikipedia so forgive me if I missed something. Now the book might be interesting or fun but in terms of what we are talking about its just as silly as any Hollywood movie if not more.

Basically according the book (atleast the plot outline on wikipedia) the catastrophe is result of world governments complete incompetence to do anything and modern military to defeat zombies in a pitch battle because "you need to shot them in the head".

Now both things are pretty mandatory in fiction because you need total collapse of the government and the army to have the apocalypse no matter how silly its done. Especially the idea that the modern army will have trouble dealing with a massive zombie army because only head shots will kill them is simply laughable. Any modern army with its tanks, artillery and air force would welcome with open arms mass group of bodies since even high caliber machine guns would tear bodies in pieces.

Its fine to use suspension of disbelief to enjoy zombie movies or books, but thinking that real zombie outbreak would be a catastrophe which entire world would be unable to contain and would spell the end of civilization is just silly.

This is all true, but it's actually worse than that. The book makes a huge number of conceits, so I'll just highlight a few.

• The army "forgets" all about Containment
• The army "forgets" all about control of the environment
• The army "forgets" how to choose a battlefield
• The army "forgets" about establishing supply lines, so it's all over if they're overrun
• The army doesn't just waste the zombies when they could, because they wanted to make a pageant of force to display to the populace, somehow forgetting that "nuking the bastards" is the ultimate show of force for the populace
• The army is made so arrogant they only take the minimum amount of ammunition as they think they'll need (like they were some sort of underfunded National Guard)
• The soldiers are all hooked up to a mass communication, real-time, satellite, multi-view device, which causes the "feelings" of the other soldiers to resonate throughout the troop. So when one soldier panics, the entire troop panics, and they stop firing correctly

I could go on, but remembering just makes me sad.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

So guise, what do for upping morale, I hit the negative 200s, and I guess I got three days to bring it back up?

 

[markec]

No you don't. You need a kind of manpower that doesn't exist.

Noone is saying you need to clear the city simultaneously every house and building, you do need time. As said using sound to attract them would do most of the job and if there are few stragglers left they can be easily dealt with.

But its not a traditional disease. If you have symptoms for traditional, familiar disease, something curable or at least something were doctors can provide some form of relief, most people would allow themselves to be quarantined without protest. What other options would they have, move to the countryside and become fruitarian?

With media there were instances of mutated virus like in "The Return of the Living Dead" where toxic gas turns every corpse into zombie. When Im saying if its a "traditional zombie disease" I mean the most standard "get it with a bite" type. In which case you can easily check people for bite marks and people showing symptoms of sickness would be first to taken away for examination.

But allowing to be quarantined with your family, in a place where the other inhabitants can eat out brains of your kids at any given moment? No chance Jose. You'd need a fucking army that is willing to shoot to kill, just to the safeguard the quarantined areas and keep everybody from scramming outta there. An army that's not available, because you know, they are supposed to be combing the whole continent for zombies.

You dont need to do everything at once, you take army, police and armed volunteers and secure urban areas. After that you go on to clear rest of the world, not all at once of course.

And that doesn't even account for such small nuances as logistics for feeding and keeping healthy 250 million population that suddenly lost access to all the basic resources, because the moment first zombie appears, everybody starts hoarding food and meds. The army could probably mow down a billion zombies if it needed to. That's not an issue. The issue is dealing with society that goes into "every man for himself" mode practically overnight.

As I said at first there would be problems but the moment army secures the areas life would go back to "normal" with addition of having armed units patrolling.

 

[Jimmious]

I have to ask, are there any (good) post-post apoc zombie games? Where human casualties, however severe, have 'settled' and large-ish sized survivor communities try to thrive rather than just survive.

You mean something with a few people building a settlement that gradually grows, and you build a granary to store your food, and a courthouse to oversee local justice, and a wall to keep other civilizations zombies out, and later maybe an aqueduct? Can't think of anything like that, no.

State of Decay had a cool approach to the genre in my opinion. But can easily get repetitive and boring after a while. Still not a bad game for what it is

Survivalist is also surprisingly good (better than SOD imo), but these are apoc/post-apoc games, not post-post-apoc as a_p is looking for.

Wow I've never seen this one! Zombra you deliver once again

 

[Mozg]

I thought the very good writing in the computer files in Dead State made the fall of civilization not feel like nonsense (partly by wisely avoiding talking about anyone fighting zombies in open combat - and god forbid the military - since a guy sitting on roof with a bolt-action .22 rimfire "rifle" could personally kill a thousand zombies a day).

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I have to ask, are there any (good) post-post apoc zombie games? Where human casualties, however severe, have 'settled' and large-ish sized survivor communities try to thrive rather than just survive.

You mean something with a few people building a settlement that gradually grows, and you build a granary to store your food, and a courthouse to oversee local justice, and a wall to keep other civilizations zombies out, and later maybe an aqueduct? Can't think of anything like that, no.

State of Decay had a cool approach to the genre in my opinion. But can easily get repetitive and boring after a while. Still not a bad game for what it is

Survivalist is also surprisingly good (better than SOD imo), but these are apoc/post-apoc games, not post-post-apoc as a_p is looking for.

Wow I've never seen this one! Zombra you deliver once again

It's not too bad, but the lack of melee weapons kinda puts me off.

 

[Old One]

I thought the very good writing in the computer files in Dead State made the fall of civilization not feel like nonsense

I think it helped. On the other hand, it made me very positive about the zombie apocalypse in general because I couldn't help but think how much better life was going to be once it was over with fewer whiny self-absorbed knuckleheads.

Case in point: the "End of Civilization, Part 6!" guy, fluffing his own childish ego right to the end. Good riddance.

 

[Doktor Best]

And that's why I said - right at the start - there's already like a billion real-time overhead zombie fests. Because it really does matter when there are that many, and not a one is any good. But even more than that, when they are not any good for the exact same reasons people are complaining about Dead State for. Just load up any of those rt zombie games and see how dull they all are. But look at why. Why are they all so boring when you are shooting zombies?

Because even in numbers and real-time, zombies are nothing. They're things which get murder/rape/hoboed in large numbers. Like rats (which they resemble in everything but size, including being gross and smelly).

This is all because, in the big picture, zombies are an existential threat, not a physical one. They are a psychological fear made manifest. And thus it is only insofar as they remain a fear and not a physical entity that they hold any kind of a threat. It is the fear of all of your friends and loved ones suddenly turning into zombies (and eventually you too!) that is the threat of zombies, and not the zombies themselves. And because that is the case, the only proper venue for the new-shiz zombie stories is storybook "games".

So there are partybased rtwp crpgs with zombie setting out there? Would you please guide me towards them?

Your claim about zombies posing exactly zero threat makes no real sense. If they were as harmless as you say there would be no zombie apocalypse. People would see zombies, shrug, kill them with garden tools, go back to bed.

They are ofcourse an existencial threat and more importantly they induce a major shift of the living conditions of survivors, but they are definitely also a physical threat given the right circumstances.

They generally pose no danger to an armed group of people knowing what they do, but they show strength in numbers, and they can swarm you. If you encounter a large herd of zombies and you cannot backtrack or flee the situation, youre fucked, even as an armed group. Theyre not like rats, theyre more like a natural disaster like a flood. You can outmaneuver them, keep them at bay ofcourse, but if you get under their wheels, well, tough luck.

Most zombie flicks mostly have moral decay and the threat of humans as big theme, youre right with that. Other humans are the "real" threat in any of those settings because our moral system is based on the luxury of safety and regulated supply of our needs, but that doesnt mean zombies are, or should be harmless.

I think what youre trying to say is that they cant provide any intereting fight, as they are just mindless melee enemies with no functional brain and therefor very rudimentar AI. I agree on that. But wouldnt it be better if fighst against those enemies would proceed faster? Wouldnt rtwp, where you can determine the degree of micromanagement dynamically from fight to fight?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Your claim about zombies posing exactly zero threat makes no real sense. If they were as harmless as you say there would be no zombie apocalypse. People would see zombies, shrug, kill them with garden tools, go back to bed.

Eh. Zombies make zero threat eventually, after humans do what they do best - adapt to new conditions. Its not exactly rocket science either. Just wear protective armor and wack em with something that doesn't make a lot of sound.

The whole concept of zombie apocalypse is basically Darwin Strikes Back. Freaked out mob overwhelms the army, everybody dies, the strong adapt and survive.

 

[Telengard]

And that's why I said - right at the start - there's already like a billion real-time overhead zombie fests. Because it really does matter when there are that many, and not a one is any good. But even more than that, when they are not any good for the exact same reasons people are complaining about Dead State for. Just load up any of those rt zombie games and see how dull they all are. But look at why. Why are they all so boring when you are shooting zombies?

Because even in numbers and real-time, zombies are nothing. They're things which get murder/rape/hoboed in large numbers. Like rats (which they resemble in everything but size, including being gross and smelly).

This is all because, in the big picture, zombies are an existential threat, not a physical one. They are a psychological fear made manifest. And thus it is only insofar as they remain a fear and not a physical entity that they hold any kind of a threat. It is the fear of all of your friends and loved ones suddenly turning into zombies (and eventually you too!) that is the threat of zombies, and not the zombies themselves. And because that is the case, the only proper venue for the new-shiz zombie stories is storybook "games".

So there are partybased rtwp crpgs with zombie setting out there? Would you please guide me towards them?

Your claim about zombies posing exactly zero threat makes no real sense. If they were as harmless as you say there would be no zombie apocalypse. People would see zombies, shrug, kill them with garden tools, go back to bed.

They are ofcourse an existencial threat and more importantly they induce a major shift of the living conditions of survivors, but they are definitely also a physical threat given the right circumstances.

They generally pose no danger to an armed group of people knowing what they do, but they show strength in numbers, and they can swarm you. If you encounter a large herd of zombies and you cannot backtrack or flee the situation, youre fucked, even as an armed group. Theyre not like rats, theyre more like a natural disaster like a flood. You can outmaneuver them, keep them at bay ofcourse, but if you get under their wheels, well, tough luck.

Most zombie flicks mostly have moral decay and the threat of humans as big theme, youre right with that. Other humans are the "real" threat in any of those settings because our moral system is based on the luxury of safety and regulated supply of our needs, but that doesnt mean zombies are, or should be harmless.

I think what youre trying to say is that they cant provide any intereting fight, as they are just mindless melee enemies with no functional brain and therefor very rudimentar AI. I agree on that. But wouldnt it be better if fighst against those enemies would proceed faster? Wouldnt rtwp, where you can determine the degree of micromanagement dynamically from fight to fight?

So, let's put this in concrete terms. Rats are dangerous too, in giant hordes. But so is any weak creature. Here on the Codex, we call them trash mobs.

As for games. Off the top of my head, rt group with rpg elements, with a few rt no pause co-ops in there:

• Trapped Dead
• Trapped Dead 2
• Survivor Squad
• Breach and Clear: Deadline
• How to Survive
• Dead Island: Epidemic
• Guns 'n Zombies
• Dead Horde
• Nation Red

But let's go beyond that, to the horde of hordiest horde games - Dead Rising. In there, you can be absolutely surrounded by zombies, alone. And is there any challenge even then? Fuck no. You can get a kill count of over a thousand in less than 2 minutes. Zombies are barely even a nuisance soon as you get a baseball bat, because a bat puts you leagues ahead of the fighting ability of even a zombie horde.

Because what is a zombie? A brain-dead moron with no tool-use, no natural weapons, no organization, no survival instinct. That means that, tactically, they are lower than Stone Age opponents. Think about that a moment. Now realize that a couple of gatling guns have mowed down 10,000 equipped, reasoning opponents in a single combat. Now, just picture what happens when you take away the reasoning from the enemy and give their opponents aerial bombardment. Or hell, do what they did in the Old West, get a bunch of townsfolk on the rooftops, and gun the bastards down. You're shooting down enemies with less survival skills than your average fish, after all, and townsfolk would get rid of large bandit gangs that way.

Yet, let us go even beyond that, to the essence of what is a game and what is horror. The main ingredient of horror is the unstoppable force. The fact that one cannot fight that force is what makes it frightening. Soon as you make it concrete, soon as you make it killable, there is no more fear. Which is why horror movies save the monster for the end. Or, in the keeping of survival horror, make the horde itself unstoppable. Anyone who stands and fights gets a few kills, but soon dies. Only by running do you survive. And so, you run and you run and you run, until you can't run no more, and then you die too. That's the horror. Which is a very concept the runs entirely counter to what RPGs and action games are all about. Soon as you take the horde and make them killable, you lose the fear. And then all you're left with is a creature dumber than a fish with no fighting ability, and lots and lots and lots of them that the player has to wade through to get to the end. The trashiest of trash mobs.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

So, let's put this in concrete terms. Rats are dangerous too, in giant hordes. But so is any weak creature. Here on the Codex, we call them trash mobs.

As for games. Off the top of my head, rt group with rpg elements, with a few rt no pause co-ops in there:

• Trapped Dead
• Trapped Dead 2
• Survivor Squad
• Breach and Clear: Deadline
• How to Survive
• Dead Island: Epidemic
• Guns 'n Zombies
• Dead Horde
• Nation Red

But let's go beyond that, to the horde of hordiest horde games - Dead Rising. In there, you can be absolutely surrounded by zombies, alone. And is there any challenge even then? Fuck no. You can get a kill count of over a thousand in less than 2 minutes. Zombies are barely even a nuisance soon as you get a baseball bat, because a bat puts you leagues ahead of the fighting ability of even a zombie horde.

Because what is a zombie? A brain-dead moron with no tool-use, no natural weapons, no organization, no survival instinct. That means that, tactically, they are lower than Stone Age opponents. Think about that a moment. Now realize that a couple of gatling guns have mowed down 10,000 equipped, reasoning opponents in a single combat. Now, just picture what happens when you take away the reasoning from the enemy and give their opponents aerial bombardment. Or hell, do what they did in the Old West, get a bunch of townsfolk on the rooftops, and gun the bastards down. You're shooting down enemies with less survival skills than your average fish, after all, and townsfolk would get rid of large bandit gangs that way.

Yet, let us go even beyond that, to the essence of what is a game and what is horror. The main ingredient of horror is the unstoppable force. The fact that one cannot fight that force is what makes it frightening. Soon as you make it concrete, soon as you make it killable, there is no more fear. Which is why horror movies save the monster for the end. Or, in the keeping of survival horror, make the horde itself unstoppable. Anyone who stands and fights gets a few kills, but soon dies. Only by running do you survive. And so, you run and you run and you run, until you can't run no more, and then you die too. That's the horror. Which is a very concept the runs entirely counter to what RPGs and action games are all about. Soon as you take the horde and make them killable, you lose the fear. And then all you're left with is a creature dumber than a fish with no fighting ability, and lots and lots and lots of them that the player has to wade through to get to the end. The trashiest of trash mobs.

Well, it's all true, but you forget one thing — the contagion and its virulence. Zombies, if we would skip all this postmodern commentary about them being a consumerism metaphor, can be scary because they appeal to evolutionary fear of epidemics in general and diseased individuals in particular.

Most games underuse this threat (either by making the protag downright immune, or presenting it, but just nominally), and yeah, without it - it's just a random trash mob.

Agree with you about the army though. If police can be severely underpowered, due to when in the first couple of days of the zombie epidemic many patrolmen can be bitten, army will get into action after that, and will have at least some intel about this threat.

 

[Zombra]

Yeah, the contagion aspect is a huge deal. Part of the fear of zombies isn't that there are so many of them or that they'll overwhelm you, but that once the infection spreads past a certain point, it's going to be damn near impossible to get the toothpaste back in the tube. Of course some well-organized humans with guns can take out 10,000 zombies walking right towards them, but what if there were 10,050 out there? After the army packs up and goes home, there are still 50 zombies in basements and back alleys, ready to start the whole thing over again. Unlike in video games, zombies in other fiction don't all behave 100% identically; their migration patterns aren't completely predictable. There's always going to be one that gets locked in a closet somehow and released by surprise after everyone thinks the crisis is over.

 

[Old One]

There's always going to be one that gets locked in a closet somehow and released by surprise after everyone thinks the crisis is over.

That's called "the sequel hook."

 

[Telengard]

So, the thing with the zombie pestilence is it's virulence level is actually rather less than rabies (a disease it shares so very much in common with), since rabies actually hides itself better. And if rabies hasn't already killed everyone yet, new-shiz zombieism isn't gonna either. Now, if it passed on contact, rather than ingestion, that would be better. Airborne and month-long hidden carriers, far better still. But really, whatevs. The zombie-apocalypse is a fantasy that works by magic. And that's cool. Fantasy is good.

However, the above is all separate to the argument. Which is, if you switch Dead State as it currently is to real-time, would it improve things? And the answer: no. Nothing about the game's challenge will change without one first changing the underlying quality of the new-shiz zombie. Because if you model the new-shiz zombie as its legends portray it, it's a shit-tier rpg monster. You know, the kobold, rat tier of monster. You can see this fact in any popular zombie game. Left4Dead? The zombies are filler creatures you kill while concentrating on specials. Dead Rising? The zombies are filler creatures you kill on the way to bosses. How to Survive? The zombies are filler creatures you kill while concentrating on bosses. Notice a pattern?

And this should all be obvious. Because really, when it comes down to it, the new-shiz zombies are the ultimate choice of enemy for modern popamole gaming. They look freaky and cool, but they are a melee enemy in a ranged and explosive world. Even better, they're a mindless melee enemy, so nobody complains if they just stupidly run at the player who has a big-ass mother-fucking gun already pointed at them. Even better still, they are a creature of fingernail and tooth (instead of claw and fang), so nobody complains that their damage is so pitiful that it can barely hurt the character. Pitiful damage that - if realistically modeled - gets completely eliminated by the acquisition even basic armor.

And yet, despite the sheer inanity and repetitiveness of whacking the ultimate mole over and over and over and over, the public never seems to get bored of the process when it's zombies. Unlike, say, for rats.

 

[Old One]

So, the thing with the zombie pestilence is it's virulence level is actually rather less than rabies (a disease it shares so very much in common with), since rabies actually hides itself better. And if rabies hasn't already killed everyone yet, new-shiz zombieism isn't gonna either.

That's true. Transmission via bite is a pretty inefficient vector when you think about other diseases that do it that way, like rabies, or malaria if you count insect bites. I would say insect bites are far scarier and more effective than large mammal bites too, if we assume that's how the Black Death spread in Europe back in the day.

There are lots and lots of logical leaps you have to accept with modern zombies - so many that the total is more difficult to take on faith than a single, huge leap like "magic is real." For example, how do zombies see and hear anything? If you're dead you don't blink, and your eyes aren't going to be lubricated by your tear ducts either. Ever gotten into a staring contest with somebody? Not blinking becomes physically painful in under a minute. If you can't blink and lubricate your eyes, they're going to be utterly destroyed in a matter of minutes, which means all zombies should be completely blind. The ears may last longer, but you're still talking about delicate organs that won't last long after the normal physical processes stop functioning, so zombies are all going to be stone deaf as well. Finally, no virus or bacteria or whatever it is can hold together sinews that simply rot away, so the zombies are simply going to fall apart by themselves after a few days.

This is why old fashioned black magic necromantic zombies are less difficult to accept than rationalized modern zombies.

Coincidentally, the last game I remember playing that had zombies that struck me as being truly scary was...Thief.

 

[Telengard]

As for the fear of zombie disease, the current reigning theory is zombies are not about disease at all - shocker. Under this theory, all undead are a manifestation of much more personal fears, for instance with the classic vampire being a representation of the Victorian fear of sex, or more specifically the sexual expression of daughters (the lord sneaks into her bedroom and if he successfully bites her three times, draining her purity, she will run off to his castle where she will lounge around wantonly in her underwear). With the theory of zombiness being - they are a group of people who suddenly go crazy for no apparent reason and try to kill everyone around them in a violent and unfathomable frenzy. Who could that be? Oh yeah, terrorists.

That's right, in yet another game, you are acting out your aggressions against terrorism by popping stupid terrorists, but this time stupid terrorists who can't fight back. Oh joy.

One's enjoyment of such entertainments generally lasts for as long as the feeling of "wow, cool, I'm in a zombie apocalypse!" lasts. Soon as that feeling fades, there better be something else besides fighting the same monster that can't fight back and has 0 tactics, over and over upteen billion times. - And there is the real problem of Dead State for ya; it stayed around way too long for zombies to remain in the happy popamole place.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Only setting I've seen where the zombie apoc made sense was the Romero films, in which it was handled wonderfully. Thing is, all the criticisms made here are correct (why isn't the army competent at containment, etc) - and the Romero films never pretend otherwise.

The whole focus of the early Romero flms in particular, is that a functional society would be able to adapt to the new environment with minimal loss. In Dawn, characters take turns running through crowds of zombies for fun, and by the end of Night, it's made clear that every single plan that had been proposed, even the absolutely shitty ones (hide in the basement and hope that help arrives) would have worked and kept all the characters alive, if they'd just fucking picked one and gone for it with cooperation/leadership.

What's more, it's made clear in Dawn that the problem is not the army's ability to exterminate the zombies...because they've already exterminated the zombies several times over by the time the film starts, but the dead keep rising (irrespective of whether you're bitten or die of old age) and even though the squad only loses 1 guy during the sweep and clear that opens the film, they've been doing this daily for several weeks now, and are looking really fucking tired...

But it's a key part of why the zombies are so slow moving in the Romero films. They didn't cause a healthy society to collapse - it's that society was already collapsing (again, see start of Dawn, where the biggest problem during the zombie sweep and clear is the fucking armed gang-members sniping at the cops while hiding behind ghetto dwellers who don't speak english and are terrified that the cops are going to round up and kill the sick and the elderly). This is a dynamic specific to the Romero films, and when films/tv shows copy the superficial element of the Romero zombies without the thematic/political story, the whole concept falls apart.

 

[Lhynn]

zombies are scary bruh, just go to BSN and youll find hordes, i want to see you fight those back.

 

[Invictus]

Interesting discussion guys

 

[Old One]

I would say modern zombies are "people" who can be shot, stabbed, chopped, run over, mulched, or bisected without the slightest moral twinge. They could even be actual people you know and hate, but since they're dead now you're free to eviscerate them. I fact, it's a good thing. I don't think it's anything more complicated than simple violence porn.

 

[Davaris]

But it's a key part of why the zombies are so slow moving in the Romero films. They didn't cause a healthy society to collapse - it's that society was already collapsing (again, see start of Dawn, where the biggest problem during the zombie sweep and clear is the fucking armed gang-members sniping at the cops while hiding behind ghetto dwellers who don't speak english and are terrified that the cops are going to round up and kill the sick and the elderly). This is a dynamic specific to the Romero films, and when films/tv shows copy the superficial element of the Romero zombies without the thematic/political story, the whole concept falls apart.

Zombies are a force of nature. Like the torrent that drowns a town when an unmaintained dam breaks.

 

[Old Thunder]

I just picked up Dead State: Reanimated from Steam's holiday sale for $8.99. From all of the mixed feedback I've been reading about the game for the past year, I didn't want to pay the full $30.

I figured if I end up being disappointed by the game, paying only nine bucks will soften the blow.

 

[Roguey]

I played for about 10 in-game days before getting bored so I guess that's a fair enough price.





Enjoy funding indie-game-scene-values non-RPGs.

 

[Zombra]

Announcing new game next year.

Can't find appropriate emoticon for "I did not expect to hear this today, but I'm cautiously excited".