I remember when Brian Mitsoda first announced that he was making Dead State, and it seemed like a master stroke. We could finally play through the long-term, slow-burn survival horror of a collapsing world as an RPG. But I’ve put about 100 hours into Dead State, 20 of them post-revamp, and while that original idea still thrills when I think about it, this isn’t a realization of it. There are a few things holding it back: 1) The engine. Torque 3D was free and familiar to the programmers, but it is ugly and, worse, incredibly unoptimized, unplayable on hardware that makes contemporary Unity games sing. Camera navigation and animations are janky. The UI is painful to navigate. 2) The design. Scout and scavenge during the day, while the stronghold is built and maintained. But there’s a catastrophic flaw – your character must ALWAYS be at the head of the scouting party. Utility skills outside of combat are wasted, with narrow exceptions (like leadership). If you have a base addition that needs 9 mechanics, and your character is the only person with the know-how to get it made, you must necessarily forgo scavenging for at least a day, which is a really punishing sacrifice. Some tasks are impossible without player investment you can't give. Don’t bother deviating from combat-focused characters. 3) There are so many characters (presumably to account for permadeath) that writing is spread out among them and they lack depth and voice. These are normal people, but the weight of the apocalypse rarely registers beyond stats, and it saps the premise of its horror. 4) Combat. Simple, poorly balanced, but above all unavoidable and constant. There are bright spots that keep you going – some of the environmental storytelling is compelling, the mythology as it unfolds is interesting, the world is believably savage. I often want to play this because there is SO MUCH potential in it and its ideas, but it's just poorly made and falls far short of what it could be. It makes me sad.
