Dead State

Dead State is a 2014 role-playing game from DoubleBear Productions and Iron Tower Studio, designed by Brian and Annie Mitsoda and funded on Kickstarter. The dead have risen, and you lead a group of survivors in a shelter in Splendid, Texas.

The game splits between scavenging and the shelter. You take a small group out to search the town for food, fuel, medicine and luxuries, fighting the dead and other survivors in turn-based battles. At the shelter, you manage supplies, build improvements and deal with the survivors, who argue, form factions and question your leadership.

It is about people, not zombies. The survivors are the game: their needs, quarrels and morale drive it, and the dead are a background pressure. Its writing is extensive, with thousands of lines of branching dialogue.

It is rough in places, its combat is plain, and its look is modest. Its depth is in its people and its systems.

Dead State shares Fallout Tactics' post-apocalyptic world, its turn-based squad and its base between missions. It adds what Fallout Tactics' bunker lacked: a community that has to be kept together. It is the closest game in this library to a zombie apocalypse with a squad at its centre.