Zombie games seem to be all the rage these day, with a new one stumbling into stores about once a month. We’ve seen plenty of shooters centered around killing the undead, and even an adventure game or two, but we have yet to see a game that is truly about survival. That was also Undead Labs’ thought, as they recently made an announcement about their upcoming game, State of Decay.
Rather than put players in the shoes of yet another gun-toting hero slaughtering hordes of the undead to make it to the end of the level, Undead Labs is giving you a huge sandbox world to play around in. The game will have plenty of tense action-filled moments, of course, but the focus is more on trying to survive with nothing but the resources that can be found throughout the world. Much in the vein of Minecraft, State of Decay throws you into the world with virtually nothing, and it is up to the player to find materials and items, as well as a suitable shelter. Players have many options as to how to fortify their chosen location, which could be anything from a mansion in the hills to an old cabin by the lake as shown in the trailer. The folks at Undead Labs stated:
You choose where to make your stand, designing and fortifying your home base, performing daring raids for food and ammunition, and rescuing other playable survivors with unique talents… The open, sandbox world develops in real-time, shaped by your actions, dynamically generating content based on your choices and the ever-increasing zombie threat.
State of Decay began its life as an Xbox 360 exclusive, but the team has decided to bring it to PC as well. No release date has been announced, but Undead Labs has already been working on the project for two years. You may remember last year’s announcement of a game called Class3, which was the original title of the game. A recent blog post from founder Jeff Strain states:
I wrote an article for our website titled, “And Now A Word From Our Team,” in which I said I’d be introducing the individual developers of Team Zed over the upcoming months. There were a small number of us who’d been working on some design and tech ideas up to that point, but that summer in 2010 is when we really started coming together as a team. It’s accurate to say that’s when work on the game we’d codenamed Class3 truly began.
Two years have passed. It sometimes feels like forever… For those of you who’ve stuck with us from the beginning — when those two years seemed like forever — today is for you. Today, Team Zed is proud to reveal the first look at State of Decay.
Thanks for hanging in there with us. It’s going to be a wild ride from here!
Check out the trailer below for your own first look at this promising game.
