Dead State - Update #27, Greenlight Success and Other News

Couchpotato

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Dead State has a new update on their kickstarter page.
Our video update is still coming at the end of the month, but I just wanted to announce that we have been Greenlit on Steam and can confirm our availability on the platform. We will still be offering DRM-free versions, but for those who want to activate on Steam, that option will now be available. Thanks again to everyone who voted for us!

Most of you have probably seen our combat video by now. This was an early build of our combat which has taught us a lot about what is working and what isn’t in the design. The biggest change that we have recently made is the following – you can now control your whole party in combat.

We did this for a few reasons, namely to eliminate the wait for the player’s turn and to cut down on the frustration the player might feel from an ally AI’s tactical decision. With party control, you can also switch to characters that have the skills you might immediately need, which comes in handy when you want your mechanically-inclined ally to lockpick a door or your medic to prioritize a certain character’s health.

We’ve got a very early build that we’re fine-tuning, but expect to see more of full-party control in the future. We think it’s very much an improvement, and for fans of Jagged Alliance or X-Com, it’s going to offer a lot of the tactical options of those games. Our build is getting new features all the time, so we will demonstrate some of the new material when we have a more polished version of the new combat features.

Also, for anyone following us that did not get a chance to back us on Kickstarter, we now have a pre-order site up for the regular version of the game and the digital deluxe version with the digital soundtrack and digital version of “The Making of Dead State”.
More information.
 
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Yes! My only dislike of the game was the fact that I couldn't control my entire party, to me that makes the game less tactical and frankly less fun. But they changed it!

Grat update.
 
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Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about this change, since I haven't played the game, of course. Normally,iI'd prefer full control, but I'm guessing the previous limited control may have been a better fit for this game, in terms of setting and tone .
 
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Apart from when made in Russia or an Eastern Europe country, every KS game is going to be great, it is already known. They are made by indies, based on old school mechanics, away from the nefarious big publisher influence that could have forced a studio like Double Bears to use business strategy like the "useful idiots"

Beyond that obvious point, giving up on limited squad control changes deeply the game design.
At start, there were two locations supposed to interact with each other: the shelter and the field.
Doing good/bad in the shelter would affect the performances of the field, and vice versa, doing good/bad on the field would affect the performances in the shelter.

Right now, the game is in a situation that, when in shelter, the other members of the group are NPCs and when on the field, they are PCs.

The relationship between shelter and terrain is broken and the interaction between the two is to be gamed.

Performances on the field are dictated by the player who can use that advantage to reduce any mismanagement of the shelter. The "ugoIgo" turn sequence means that the player can tremendously dope the performances of his squad on the field thus giving an easy opportunity to mend what is going on in the shelter. The player is also given a right of life and death on all the other members of the group.
It is very unlikely that the AI will be able to distinguish between a deliberate elimination of a member of the group and an unintentional sacrifice of a team member. The field will be the perfect place to get rid of the proverbial nail head showing up, providing an easy way to deal with dissent in the shelter.

Etc

At this point, one question is how this game is going to be about survival.

Several ways to deliver a game about survival.
One is to design a gameplay based on survival. The game is about survival, no matter the settings. The settings only enhance the gameplay.

Or you can rely on the settings to make the job. It is a post apocalypse settings. Society has collapsed big time. What do people do in these circumstances? They survive. So no matter what happens, no matter the gameplay, it will be about survival because surviving is what you do when in post apocalyptic settings.
The very same gameplay put in different settings will change what the game is about: suddenly, the game might become about living the most opulent life one can think of.

Apart from that, the game is going to be great, it is going to deliver because it is a KS, it is made by an indie listening to their customers.
 
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