Undead Labs

AUTHOR: Sanya DATE RECORDED: May 24, 2013 AT 15:30PM

Are you a fan of Undead Labs and State of Decay?

If you’re reading this within a few minutes of it being posted, you probably are. You’ve read our design articles, you’ve followed us on Twitter and Facebook, you’ve lurked in our forums. Your comments and enthusiasm have gotten us almost to release, and soon, the game will be in your hands. We couldn’t have made it this far without you.

Some of you are a little bit…more. Around the Lab, we call you “superfans.” You don’t just read the articles, you share them. You don’t just lurk in the forums, you welcome newcomers. You ask thoughtful questions, and you spread the answers far and wide. You’ve jumped into our contests, written posts, emailed reporters, made videos, and turned this into the best game community in the world. You’ve inspired us to do our best every single day. So we want to celebrate you, by inviting you to celebrate with us on State of Decay’s release day.

We can’t fly all of you out to Seattle in order to say thank you, but we’ve wrangled the budget to fly three of you out to the Lab on release day.

We’ll choose one superfan based on their total participation and contribution to the community over the course of development. (It’s more than just post count, you know?) And we’re going to ask you to choose two of your own in the State of Decay Superfan Contest.

Here’s how to enter:

Before 11:59 PM (23:59) PDT on Monday, May 27, 2013, you must make a post in the forum with two parts.

Part One: In one paragraph, tell us why you are a superfan.

Part Two: In one paragraph, nominate another member of the community, either by forum handle or Facebook name, and tell us why he or she is a superfan.

The contest winners will be the two people most nominated by the community.

Here are the prizes:

Grand Prize (3 total): One round-trip plane ticket to Seattle from the nearest major airport to your home, one night in a Seattle hotel room, and one admittance to our private launch celebration. The date is not yet determined. Winners will be contacted with the possible options.

Honorable Mentions (20): Preview codes.

This breaks our hearts, but for legal reasons, we cannot award a grand prize to anyone who doesn’t live in the USA. Believe me, we tried. Winners who cannot collect a grand prize will definitely get hooked up with a code.

The fine print is here, if you’re curious.

That’s it, you guys. The comment thread attached to this post is the official contest thread. Go to it!

AUTHOR: Sanya DATE RECORDED: May 16, 2013 AT 19:04PM

Today, we announced to our community that State of Decay has gone into the final certification process. That means that we’re…done. It’s out of our hands, and that much closer to being in yours. There are still things to do, of course, and if our publisher finds a problem we’ll fix it, but basically, this is the last big step between development and launch. Once we finish this, we’ll be ready to talk about release dates. We are proud. We are excited.

We are maybe a little tired. Thank you all so much for your encouragement and support! It got us this far, and there’s not much farther to go.

If you’d like to help us celebrate this major milestone, we’re running a fun contest. If you’d like to join the fun, write “ALMOST” on your hand, take a picture, and post it in the comment thread by midnight your local time tonight. (That’s really all you have to do, though as usual for this community, we have people going wildly beyond the requirements just for the hell of it.) We’ll pick five winners at random to win preview codes for State of Decay.

Thanks again, everybody.

AUTHOR: Sanya DATE RECORDED: May 07, 2013 AT 10:08AM

Well, we are, too. The day draws ever nearer when we can get our baby into your hands. (New here? Not sure what I’m on about? You can catch up to date with our handy FAQ – and if that only whets your appetite, you can always scroll to the bottom of this page and learn all about our design and systems. Welcome!)

Did I say something about whetting your appetite? That’s a good segue into our first contest celebrating pre-launch month: What’s Cooking?

A month after the zombie apocalypse, there will be no more microwaves. No electric stoves. No propane. No convenient little charcoal briquettes for your grill. But you’ve still got to eat. Do you have what it takes to feed yourself? Are you hardcore enough to survive a real State of Decay?

Here’s a contest to prove it. The rules:

- No unsustainable cooking technology. Yes, I know many of us have generators, but a month into the zombie apocalypse, you’re not going to be flipping on that noisy zed attracting thing just to whip up some soup, even if you managed to hoard enough gas. And yes, I am aware that propane grills are quiet, but again, how long is that tank of yours going to hold out? No! Think wood fire. Think homemade solar oven. Some of our players have even suggested pickling and smoking. Be creative!

- Nothing frozen or refrigerated. Unless you have a real old fashioned ice house, in which case, pics or it didn’t happen.

- Minimal store-bought supplies. The stores have been looted and the delivery trucks are never coming back. You need to make do with what you have.

- Foraging/scavenging preferred. Bonus points if you caught the fish/snared the rabbit/harvested the eggs/correctly identified edible greens!

Take a picture of you with your prepared dish and email it to me at sanya at undeadlabs dot com. Tell me what it is you’re eating and how you cooked it in the email. I’ll post pictures to our Facebook page. Every entry that follows all four of the above rules will be entered into a drawing to win a preview code of State of Decay. We’ll grab a handful of our favorites for community voting as well, and the People’s Choice will also receive a code.

That’s right. If you could survive a state of decay, you’ll be one of the first to survive in State of Decay.

Entries must be received by 11:59 PM (2359) your local time zone, Monday, May 13, 2013.

* Cooking not your thing? There’s a Survivor Cell Challenge next week…

AUTHOR: Sanya DATE RECORDED: April 23, 2013 AT 06:21AM

No one is going to want to miss this. Brant and Gronk (the voices in nearly all of the player-made videos from PAX East this past March) will be hanging out at Microsoft HQ today playing State of Decay, live. Yeah. This is going to be a hoot. Here are the details:

The link: http://www.twitch.tv/xboxlivearcade

The time: 11 AM EDT/2 PM PDT/20:00 CEST.

Before you ask, I’ve got a note in to find out if there will be a recording up later for your enjoyment (and if so, where). But if you can possibly catch the stream, it’ll be loads of fun. Join us on the comment thread (on the green tape below and to your right)!

AUTHOR: Sanya DATE RECORDED: April 17, 2013 AT 11:32AM

Last Friday wasn’t just about release months and trailers. The real purpose of the media event was to give a few reporters four straight hours of hands-on gameplay, with plenty of developers ready to answer questions.

Here is what our guests have written so far (alphabetically by site):

State of Decay is a magnificent take on the zombie apocalypse theme, bringing something to the genre it’s been sorely missing. Depth. For those into complex simulations, resource management, and the smell of decaying flesh, it looks like this is one you’re not going to want to miss.

—4Player Network

It’s important for people to realize that State of Decay is not really a zombie apocalypse game, it’s an apocalypse management game that happens to take place during a zombie apocalypse…The management systems are so great and so deep. They go a lot deeper than even I thought they would.

—4Player Cocktail Time Podcast (State of Decay coverage begins at 40:15)

My initial impression after the first fifteen or twenty minutes was that State of Decay is huge. Bigger than huge, really… It seemed absolutely massive. It’s been stated that this game is the largest ever released on XBLA, and the developers confirmed this. As a quick example of how big and open it is, the reviewer sitting next to me completed the church mission within five or ten minutes, whereas I discovered an abandoned campsite and started scavenging for usable goods. From there, I started checking out other interesting locations, and before I knew it, at least half an hour had passed before I had accomplished my actual goal.

—Drinking Coffee Cola/Game Critics

Below the surface, so many systems are working in concert that it managed keep me – someone who is bored to death with the undead – completely enthralled for the entire four hours I spent playing it. If my four hours are any indication, State of Decay is amazingly deep, especially for an Xbox Live Arcade game.

—IGN

Undead Labs is billing their upcoming XBLA release “State of Decay” as a simulation, a perilous trek through the ever-familiar zombie apocalypse with multiple interconnected systems requiring the player to do more than just shoot their way to safety. Survivors will have to gather supplies, form alliances, manage their stamina and health, make sure disease doesn’t wipe out their camp, and take on side missions to level up multiple playable characters. Even after five hours with “State of Decay,” I’m not sure I fully scratched the simulation’s surface.

—MTV

It was apparent from the start that this team has obsessed over every detail for the past two and a half years. Guns and melee weapons have true-to-life weights, cars show body damage, melee weapons break, guns jam, food spoils, while every piece of environment art tells a story. It’s a world lived in and fleshed out tirelessly by 23 devoted developers.

—Raid Warning

The depth of State of Decay is much more than you would find almost anywhere else in the XBLA, and until you can get your hands on it personally, I don’t think you will truly understand.

Welcome to the real world. Nothing is guaranteed and some mismanagement can be very costly…State of Decay is completely open world and you will survive, explore, and manage inside of it.

—VGRevolution

We had one other guest whose coverage will be in Official Xbox Magazine when it goes to print. We’ll be sure to shout it out when it’s available.

Enjoy! If you’d like to discuss what you read, join the forum discussion already in progress by clicking the green “Comment” tape down there to your right.

AUTHOR: Sanya DATE RECORDED: April 12, 2013 AT 13:20PM

June.

Officially.

AUTHOR: Sanya DATE RECORDED: March 29, 2013 AT 16:14PM

While most of the team toiled away on the last details and bugs (and if you want to know how those efforts might be related to the release date process, the answer is in our regularly updated FAQ), the intrepid team of Brant, Gronk, and me went to Boston for PAX East. If you were following us on Twitter or Facebook, or hanging out on the forum analyzing every single blurry cell phone picture, then… thank you! If not, read on.

Microsoft’s booth was our home away from home for three days.

As far as we could tell, this was all there was to PAX.

We had a good neighbor – a team from a studio in Copenhagen, Denmark. They’re making a nifty platformer called Max: Curse of the Brotherhood. After three days of seeing the other team’s demo, we became mutual admirers.

State of Decay gear makes everyone happy.

The line to try out State of Decay was never less than an hour long, and all of our players were incredibly understanding and enthusiastic. Your passion for what we’re trying to do has always been the thing that kept us going, but during the PAX marathon, the energy of our players was the ONLY thing keeping us going.

We had to remember that we were representing the whole Undead Labs family back at the office. Fortunately, there was a reminder of the office in the game:

Hey, what’s this?

Mostly we came back to the hotel and collapsed, but one night, we were fortunate enough to meet some future players in the hotel bar. A bar, mind you, that was a mile from the show and not near any public transportation. At 8:30 on a Friday. The attendees were hardcore! Sadly, I didn’t think to take the pic until the very end of the evening after some people had left. I won’t identify the people in the picture (they can out themselves if they want), but I will say it was a real joy to meet some of the people behind very recognizable names.

That is a fun group. I would expect no less.

Overall, it was a fantastic show. When you’re working on a game, you get so you only see the flaws – and you get really nervous wondering if the ideas that seemed so great are going to turn out to be fun. Watching person after person get excited and walk away pumped about State of Decay, well, all I can say is that we are psyched. We can’t wait until all of you can play, give feedback, and post your own images.

Thank you for sticking with us this long. Not much longer, now!

At the end of the show, we were still standing. Barely.

Want to read the coverage that’s come out of the show so far? Here you go, in somewhat random order:
IGN: First impression
IGN: “The Most Awesome Games From PAX”
Kotaku
RelyOnHorror
RelyOnHorror (interview and video)
VGRevolution
Front Towards Gamer
Frontburnr
TrueAchievements
FPSGuru
Den Of Geek
Post It Gamer
Omnicomic
Game Informer
Polygon
4Player
Blast Magazine
OXM

If I missed any (and I know of a half dozen more still in progress!) please drop me a line at sanya at undeadlabs dot com.

Thanks again, and keep your eyes on the FAQ!

AUTHOR: Sanya DATE RECORDED: March 15, 2013 AT 15:18PM

Do you think you’re a pretty fair hand when it comes to image editing? Do you know what looks good? Want to be celebrated throughout the entire State of Decay community…and be one of the first to see the game? Keep reading!

I won’t lie. I need your help. Here’s the deal. I’ve had a bunch of people suggest we should give out a Facebook “cover photo” for our fans to use. It’s a great idea. Heck, it’s been on our “would like to do” list for weeks now. With PAX around the corner and the process of getting the game approved for sale underway, we are busier than one armed paperhangers. Our art director is busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. He may be winning that contest, but that doesn’t give him more hours in the day to make me a Facebook image when he has game related fish to fry.

That’s where you can help. I’ve seen the images you all have come up with just for fun. They’re awesome. I also haven’t done a contest in awhile. Two and two together equals… The Facebook Cover Image Contest.

The prize is a review code. The same one I’ll be sending to gaming reporters all over the world, as soon as our publisher gives us authorization. (I still don’t know when that will be, and I do not have sufficient data to make an intelligent guess… but it seems to me that anyone excited enough to do an art contest won’t mind hanging on until the codes are released, right?)

You may use whatever images you find on this website, or you can check out this concept art from Doug. Everything you see here has been realized in the world of State of Decay.

Facebook’s rules say the cover image can’t have a URL, or a call to action of any kind (“like this page, go here, do this” etc). The game logo and the company logo are fair game, though.

The dimensions of a cover image are 851 pixels wide, by 315 pixels tall.

You may add effects, crop, use multiple images – whatever you think would look cool! Just remember that if someone uses your picture, some of the lower left corner will be covered by the user’s own profile picture.

The winner, as I said, will be the first non-media person to play the game, as a token of our appreciation for the help in getting the word out about the game.

Submissions must be sent to me at sanya at undeadlabs.com by 11:59 PM (or 2359, if you prefer) your own local time on Monday, March 18, 2013.

Ladies and gentlemen… start… your… photo editors!

Any questions? The comment button is there to your right.

AUTHOR: Sanya DATE RECORDED: February 22, 2013 AT 15:35PM

As usual, you all asked wonderful questions, and we spent the week tackling them. The resulting document was more than ten pages long! The questions included:

* How do you switch between characters? What are the limits on switching between characters?
* How many skills are in the game total right now?
* Can skills like construction or vehicle repair be taught?
* How hard is it to raise the skills of a character?
* Does increased firearm ability prevent (or reduce, or slow) wear and tear?
* Can negative traits be improved?
* How do you tell a survivor he/she is no longer welcome in the group? What happens if yes?
* How will conflict affect people?

These and more than thirty other questions are on the forum now.

Y’all, I just have to tell you, I love doing the Q&As with you. It gives us a chance to find out what really matters to you, to clarify things we left unclear, and to see where we might need to focus in the future. It’s a lot more than just answering questions – it turns game development into a collaborative effort between developers and players. Thanks for being part of the process, as always!

Click the green tape reading “comment” to go to the Q&A and to discuss it with your fellow SoD fans.