Dead State

An RPG by indie developer DoubleBear Productions, Dead State casts the player as the leader of a safehouse during a Zombie Apocalypse. Although zombies will, of course, be a constant menace, the focus of the game is human interaction: other survivors will be both your greatest asset and your greatest threat.

Some of Age of Decadence's development team is assisting with the game. Its release date is as yet uncertain, but "most probably not" before 2012. The website can be found here.

Tropes featured in Dead State include:
""The current design lets you pretty much piss off, kick out, kill everyone you meet, with the kind of response you would imagine you would get from being King Bastard of the Apocalypse.""
 * 0% Approval Rating: According to Brian Mitsoda:


 * Batter Up: Bats are good weapons for fighting the undead, not least because they're Unbreakable Weapons.
 * Breakable Weapons: Many of them, particularly improvised ones. The kitchen knife even has a special attack that breaks the blade off in the wound, causing a guaranteed critical hit and bleeding.
 * Burger Fool: The "Mmm, Bison!" restaurant chain.
 * The Chains of Commanding: Being the leader means being the one who has to make the unpopular decisions.
 * Elite Zombie: Almost entirely averted. The only variations on the zombie theme are the crippled, crawling ones, the ones who're on fire, and the ones with body armor.
 * Hacking Minigame: You discover the game's "lore" by beating a letter substitution minigame.
 * Moral Dilemma: "Sorry, guy, but your sister was bitten and we're running low on antibiotics. Out she goes."
 * No Communities Were Harmed: Welcome to scenic Splendid, Texas.
 * Spiritual Successor: It's being developed and written by some of the people who worked on Fallout, Arcanum and Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, and has been all but explicitly declared to be a successor to the first two in terms of dialogue and gameplay style, albeit with zombies.
 * We Need a Distraction: Zombies are drawn to sound. This can be used to your advantage.
 * Zombie Apocalypse
 * Zombie Gait: The game's zombies are strictly traditional, slow-moving lurchers.
 * Zombie Infectee: Naturally. Due to the Rule of Fun, however, the player cannot be infected.