While driving the car around didn’t attract too much trouble, building the gardening facility certainly did. The co-op partner even found a rare weapon, a nice bonus from participating in online play. An abandoned police station still had some ordinance and the needed seed packet turned up in a store. The two ventured into town, picking off zombies (mostly by violently opening the car door), and looting various buildings. Our athletic hero set out in a car the group managed to find earlier and headed into town, but not before picking up a friend online in real-time. With a few extra supplies, including seed packets, the group could use that knowledge to build a garden, therefore generating regular food stock. The newest member, however, just so happened to have gardening knowledge. The demo group also had a dearth of food supplies, with more people than the community could keep up with. He snored, though, and without enough beds for everyone already, compounded a bit of stress and caused a bit of a resource drain. He had developed to the point of being a hero, an established member of the community who provided extra bonuses from all the trust he’d built over time. The demo started with a survivor who used to be a stuntman for movies, meaning he was a capable fighter good for making supply runs. Each survivor can have all kinds of traits, which then interact with their flaws to make a person who can be both a huge help or a huge hindrance if the player doesn’t work them into appropriate roles. The E3 demonstration of State of Decay 2 introduced us to a group set up especially for the demo, with enough variety to show off the different systemic situations that can develop over the course of a map instance. Sometimes, as generally works out in classic zombie films, the worst problems come from the survivors themselves.
Of course, problems can and will arise along the way, and not all of them will be because zombies are trying to eat everyone. State of Decay 2 is all about building a settlement based on generated maps, enriching it with survivors and facilities, and maintaining your ragtag group until it evolves into a functional community.
Watching the game as demonstrated made it feel a lot like work, but the kind of work a lot of gamers can sink hours and hours of time into.
State of Decay 2 is more of that, plus lots of interesting multiplayer features that add some frantic fun and bonus looting opportunities to the mix. It also means a whole bunch of potentially uncomfortable language like risk, labor and benefit, economic terms applied to the concept of wagering human lives for larger numbers. Of course, taking it that seriously in video game form means stats, menus, and other forms of spreadsheet fodder. State of Decay took the zombie gimmick and opted to explore it as a “survivalist fantasy,” essentially taking those eye-rolling-but-unending Serious Discussions about “What would you do?” during the zombie apocalypse. It’s a malleable genre, able to retain its core appeal while developers explore little nooks and crannies wherever they can pull something distinct out from the usual blood, guts, and muck. They’re always kind of around, even as the fad has its ebbs and flows.