I Shall Remain - Zombie RPG in Production

Dhruin

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Jake writes in to introduce his project I Shall Remain, an indie "zombie survival RPG" currently in production. No doubt the subject will instantly draw comparisons with Dead State but this is a more combat-oriented experience based in a freely explorable city. Looking at the screens (which look quite nice), there seems to be a fully developed stat and skill system, although Jake acknowledges combat is central.
The official site is here and they have a Kickstarter page here to encourage funding - although the development is well underway, so this isn't one of those pipe-dream projects.
Here's the feature list:

  • A huge city to freely navigate. Hundreds of objects to interact with.
  • Recruit, equip and maintain men and to fight with you.
  • Use vehicles to navigate through the zombie crowds.
  • A compelling story of a young Marine written by Jacob Way.
  • Astounding visual art, sound effects and music.
  • Designed by a team that is dedicated to the game's players and their ideas.
You'll find some videos and screens here and I'll embed one five minute video:

More information.
 
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ZOMBIEEESSS!!!!!! :p

I never used to be a zombie fanatic, but then Dead State was announced. Truthfully, I wasn't that excited at first. It was like when I first saw Arcanum and thought why in the world would I want to play a game in this weird setting. Then I played and became a steampunk fanatic right then and there.

Almost the same thing happened with Dead State, but instead of playing I read the forums to see what the big deal was. I came across some mention of Walking Dead and Dead State. Curiosity got the better of me and so I read the first issue online. That hooked me so I ordered the first book and then the rest is history. I'm a walking talking zombie fanatic.

Good thing too because it seems quite a few games are going zombie. I never heard about this one, but I'm going to be keeping my eye on it from now on.
 
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Grab your guns for the Zombie Hordes are coming. I have been reading Walking Dead for a few years now and it is just a great comic. The TV show is a hell of a ride also. I keep 3 weapons in my bedroom for when the pandemic begins. A 15th century war hammer for close combat, a viking bastard sword for medium range and to keep the zombies at arms length, and finally a shotgun that the Russian special forces use to blast them in the old noggin :biggrin:!! Ooooh I will be ready will you?
 
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Reminds me of "Zombie Shooter" by Sigma Team (still available btw)

I like it! :)

Though the woman/girl screaming cued in far too often imo...

Looks like it has a solid foundation though :)
 
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Prefer the "survival" aspect of Dead State to the combat focus of this one. Still definitely interested.

Did I read their blog part right? Just 8 months production? Man those guys work fast!
 
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The newsbit makes it sound as if we know this Jack? Has he done other projects?
 
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I dont like the numerous half-zombies. Those should be maybe a random encounter here and there, or the result of you blasting a zombie in half or something. What's w/ the entire fleet of them? Zombie circus in town or something?

The female screams were cool at first, but definitely overdone. I'm interested, as I love destroying the undead, but most indie zombie games Ive tried lately like Dead Horde and Trapped Dead were awful so I dunno. Sure not getting my hopes up.

I wish a major studio w/ some money behind the project would for once and for all make a quality, realistic, nice looking, classic zombie themed apocalypse survival game. Scavenging for supplies, banding together w/ other survivors, fighting zombies and other humans, and building barricades and all that. No fucking super zombies, no special zombies, none of this "infected" bullshit, just standard dumbass slow undead zombies and lots of them. Zombies that try to eat you, not pummel you. And if you do get bit by one, youre fucked. A head shot to kill them, a shovel to the head might kill them, you must "kill the brain" or the thing keeps coming. You know, like the game every zombie fan on planet earth has been itching to play for the last 30 years. Why cant anyone get that simple concept right?
 
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^ ^ Sounds like you've described Dead State almost exactly, except for the "major studio" part.
 
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The walking dead is one awesome serie !

iam in the mood to play games with zombies.
 
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The only kind of "zombie genre" I find interesting is when zombies work more as a metaphor/setting and the main conflict comes from the people themselves, more focus is on society breaking down and exploration of its connotations/causes, etc.
So basically, Romero´s original Dawn of the Dead is where it´s at for me and one of the reasons I´m looking forward to Dead State is that its developers seem to have taken similar approach to the genre.

Other than that, zombies don´t work on me as means to pique my interest in the slightest (similarly as, say, orcs don´t either), which doesn´t mean I would mind a game being zombie-centric if I find it interesting in other aspects.

Anyway, I Shall Remain so far doesn´t seem as my cup of tea but more info/further development might yet change that, I guess.
 
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I'm not much of a post-apoc lover in general. I prefer my zombies to be the targets of a good fireball :D
 
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Interesting, but one thing that usually turns me off about a game is constant respawning. I hope that's not what we were seeing. Either way good luck to the team. :)
 
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Hello everybody, im one of the developers of the I Shall Remain game.
First of all thanks for your interest shown to the game, if there are any questions you have i can answer them, just replay to this thread.

"Interesting, but one thing that usually turns me off about a game is constant respawning"
There is limited respawning (as we cannot have thousands of zombies on the map at the same time), however this is limited per spawner in time and in number, also the spawners will only do that if you're not around.

"Anyway, I Shall Remain so far doesn´t seem as my cup of tea but more info/further development might yet change that, I guess. "
We are open to any questions youd have :)

"I dont like the numerous half-zombies. Those should be maybe a random encounter here and there, or the result of you blasting a zombie in half or something. What's w/ the entire fleet of them? Zombie circus in town or something?"
You're right, however when you'll read the story youd understand why they are so many of all kinds.

"Did I read their blog part right? Just 8 months production? Man those guys work fast!"
Is true, we try to stay focused on what we do.

"Though the woman/girl screaming cued in far too often imo…"
Is true, thats an easily fixable issue, thanks for pointing that out

"Prefer the "survival" aspect of Dead State to the combat focus of this one. Still definitely interested."
Theres a survival aspect to this one, the videos dont do it justice (there are aspects of the game we cannot present yet as the game being in its early beta stage)
 
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Thanks for taking the time to write, Eugen. We are a CRPG community site, so it's natural we are interested in aspects beyond the "action".

Can you comment on the balance of questing, interacting with NPCs or the survival aspects versus shooting zombies?
 
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If you're taking questions here...

Can we get an idea of the skills, attributes,etc? Basically, what makes up the player character? Since you mentioned there are survival aspects (glad to hear btw) I'm curious about survival-related, as opposed to combat-related, skills and such
 
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Theres a real-time RPG skill/attribute system. You don't get to choose to increase your attributes or skills they will do that automatically regarding what you do in the game. Almost every action in the game is related to attributes and/or skills, for example when using one weapon type its corresponding attributes and skills will be used to decide the chance to hit. Also the skills and the attributes that get used that way will get experience points each attribute and skills having their own experience levels (as it happens in Morrowind for example).

So, in short, we have:
Primary attributes: for example Strength and Accuracy. These attributes define our character and they are very important as each of them govern one or more skills.

Secondary attributes: For example, Life, Stamina, Critical Hit. They are influenced by the primary attributes

Skills : For example Small arms, Medical, Melee (btw, we can fight with our bare hands, knife or other small melee weapons (Pipe, Baseball bat, Axe and so on). Almost every action in the game is based on a skill which as well receive bonuses from the primary attributes which controls them.

Doctrines: This is something that the character has to study/learn on his own (they can learn a doctrine if they fulfill the requirements, you cannot just learn a doctrine if you dont have the required level for example). They as well add bonuses to attributes, skills or other kind of in-game aspects (like damage or running speed for example). More ever, some doctrines have real-time conditions acting on its effects depending on whether or not its conditions are met, for example one doctrine can help us aim better but only when we're using small arms.

Theres also looting besides the weapons, medical supplies, batteries we have non useable items like cigars, drinks and other stuff you can use to trade to obtain serum. In our game, serum is the exchange currency and everything in our game economy translates to that at one point or another.

I hope this shades some light into the RPG aspect of the game (which sadly is missing from most videos).
However, here theres one video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=fgUKPtMZE1E (2:13 minutes into the video)
where you can see the UI for the character sheet and his skills/attrs. Theres extended information for each if clicked sadly however, i havent clicked on them when i recorded the video.

Everything related to RPG aspect that applies to the main character also applies to all the Teammates you hired (so everything they do or you put them to do will increase their chances to survive in the game)
 
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