The original State of Decay was a hit in its own right, delivering a special kind of zombie-killing experience. Yet, it wasn’t without flaws or setbacks. But, with State of Decay 2, the developers are taking things to the next level. A different kind of story, a different kind of gameplay focus, and a deeper system to help make the world feel more alive. This includes making zombies rarer than you might think, and randomly putting loot all over the world.
Finding resources is vital to survive in State of Decay 2. And not just food supplies, but weapons and other materials. The team behind the game talked with Gamasutra and noted that they wanted to make it so it wouldn’t be “easy” to find things based on where they were before:
“Say for example that across the whole map, we want to drop, say 25 normal melee weapons. These aren’t guaranteed to show up in certain sites, but are instead distributed procedurally across all sites, into containers whitelisted to make sense dropping items of certain implied physical sizes which make sense for them.”
This same logic applies to the zombie population. After all, just because the world has a zombie apocalypse doesn’t mean that the game needs to have zombies everywhere, and the team knew that:
“Full-fledged zombies don’t exist everywhere in the world at all times, since that would be a waste of resources,” Hail said. “Instead, we only spawn zombies as you move into a new unpopulated area, or kill existing zombies in your current location. As you leave the area, we reduce most zombies to a ‘probability cloud.’”
All this contributes to a unique system that helps make the world feel more lifelike in its randomness, and it’s sure to please many when it releases for console and this June.
