Before you think “what, he has started yet another game?”, this game is not being developed by me, I am only publishing it. Also, this is not an announcement that “work has started on a new game”… but that the game is almost done! 🙂
Most likely in the next few weeks I’ll be able to start the pre-orders and beta testing. But what is exactly Dead But Alive – Southern England?
As the name clearly suggests, it’s about the zombie apocalypse. If you follow me, you know in the past I mentioned in my forums I wanted to make a zombie game. Well, a few months ago Highcliffe Media Publishing pitched an idea I thought it was cool, so decided to publish it. I might still do another zombie game on my own, but as you know, I have so many games going on that it won’t happen anytime soon.
Luckily, there’s this game now 🙂
The game pitch
Dead But Alive is a zombie survival adventure/simulation set in Southern England. A simple camping holiday for a former ex-military officer, looking to rebuild his relationship with his/her teenage daughter, suddenly turns into a fight for survival in a world devastated by the undead. Separated from his/her daughter, he/she must lead a small, ragged team of survivors, build a camp, scavenge for supplies and try to stay alive, all while trying to track her down. The game features a non-linear storyline with moral choices on despair, commitment and sacrifice.
the game “status screen” from which you can decide what to do each day
besides the normal survivors, there will be some “VIPs”, like Caroline… yes you can romance her!
the map will feature different locations, each one with bonus/malus
As you can see from those screenshots, the gameplay will be very straightforward for those used to zombie/survival games. The main goal will be simple: scavenge for supplies, improve your camp and try to survive! It’s addictive and easy to learn, but it won’t be easy… And of course it includes more than 120,000 words of storyline.
Obviously, I made sure that there are romance options! 😉 So in the game your main character is “genderless”, meaning that the game plays from first person view, and your gender is never explicitly mentioned. This means that when you romance a male or female character, if it’s a homosexual or heterosexual relationship it’s all about how you imagine your character.
Another thing that you can clearly see from the art, is that this time it’s not anime. We thought a more serious style for the art was a better idea for this setting, so we’ve decided to not make it anime artwork. It’s lovely handmade and in FullHD.
This game does not use Ren’Py and porting it to Mac and Linux would have been very expensive. That’s why we’ve agreed to only make it available on Windows for now. Depending on how successful it is, we might make Mac and Linux versions later. Theoretically you could get it to work with Wine. We haven’t tested this though.
OK I think I’ve said enough about the game for now. Of course, I will do more posts about it later. As I said, game beta/preorders should begin shortly, so watch this space and/or my social networks for the announcement! 🙂