While We Wait For State Of Decay 3, This Punishing New Zombie Game Is Hitting All The Right Notes

I've long appreciated State of Decay as the exciting middle ground between an approachable zombie game like Days Gone or Dead Rising, and unforgiving survival sims like DayZ and Project Zomboid. No series or game that I know of has found that same middle ground--harsh, but digestible. But maybe that's no longer true. While I impatiently await more news for State of Decay 3 from Undead Labs and Xbox, Into The Dead: Our Darkest Days is giving me a similar experience with some welcome twists on the formula.

Into The Dead might be a name-brand undead devotees already know. Previous to now, it's been the name of a first-person auto-runner series on mobile. They're neat games, but they really aren't trying to do too much other than being a gritty, scary, first-person take on something like a Jetpack Joyride--a fun, albeit one-note, time-filler for bus rides or lunch breaks. Our Darkest Days is far from that and more in line with what a console or PC player might expect of a zombie game.

Presented in a 2.5D art style, Into The Dead: Our Darkest Days is essentially a side-scrolling State of Decay, and if that series isn't already unforgiving enough, it seems like Our Darkest Days also looked to This War of Mine for inspiration. I recently checked out a demo for the upcoming game on PC--a demo you can now play yourself, by the way--and the best thing I can say about it is that I was so impressed that I actually stopped playing at a point when I could've gone further, because I want to preserve as much of the experience as I can for when the game is out and my save data will carry over. But I saw enough to know this game is worth that deeper look.

Each game starts with you picking a pair of characters chosen as a duo. There's a white-haired high school coach and one of his student-athletes looking for his family, an unexpected couple--an animal rights activist and the rodeo man she once meant to protest--with an even more unexpected baby on the way, a therapist and her anger-managing patient, and more. This surely sounds a lot like State of Decay if you know that series. It, too, gives you a few groups of characters to choose as your starters, albeit a trio in that case.

The comparison goes beyond that. Like in Undead Labs' excellent series, each character has stats--in Our Darkest Days, they get two passive buffs and a debuff--for you to consider before starting a new game. Also like State of Decay, permadeath is an everpresent threat, and more than just a single zombie or two can spell certain doom for a novice player or a character who may be overtired, injured, or starving.

In order to keep your earliest characters alive, you'll need to manage your time and their wellbeing. For example, the day-night cycle dictates that you'll assign characters to tasks, then advance time to have them unfold. If you have a very tired character, you should send them to bed while the other may be called upon to head out into levels that seem to be procedurally generated to a degree, as loot drops and zombie density tend to vary. It only took me a few nights before both my characters weren't at their best. Darrel, the coach, was a lousy cook, but Leo was too tired to do the cooking himself, so I chose to send Leo to bed while Darrel went on a scavenging run at less than 100%. That was my first mistake.

In a level, the goal is to explore as much as you want within its horizontal limitations and then get home safely. You could spend a while filling your pockets to their maximum capacity, or you could ditch the deathtrap in a hurry after you've found that one particular healing, cooking, or crafting item you hoped to find. But whatever you choose to do with your time in the danger zone, it's much easier said than done, especially when your character isn't at their best. Weapons degrade quickly, and if you don't pull off a stealth kill, combat is loud enough to probably stir any other undead lingering nearby.

You can find other survivors in your travels too, though you don't necessarily have to help them. Like the games that clearly inspired this one, another unlucky survivor is another mouth to feed. Each stranded person becomes a cold cost-benefit analysis. Can you spare the resources needed to maintain another member of your community? Then again, having an extra pair of hands to cook, build, or stab a few squishy zombie skulls might be exactly what you need when folks back home are hanging by a thread as it is.

In the pre-alpha demo I played anyway, it seems that discovered (and explicitly invited) survivors make it back home even if you don't. I know this because, after Darrel found a new lost soul, Rahul, he later died before getting back to base himself. Though I didn't know Darrel long, I felt the effects of his death back at the base, as those who mourned him, Leo and Rahul, suffered a grief debuff for having experienced the loss. Things were only going to get harder in the days to come for my wounded stragglers in a land the dead had taken like a horrific coup of throat bites and flesh tears.

My initial reaction when I first saw Our Darkest Days was one of wishing it were more expansive, but after trying the demo, I've found there's a ton of hidden depth for me to explore in what is shaping up to be a familiar--and yet still fresh--zombie saga. Though I generally favor a 3D open-world setting to the more restrictive 2.5D perspective seen here, I also find that, in a world that is already expected to get State of Decay 3 eventually, this different take on many similar ideas is a welcome alternative in the meantime.

Into The Dead: Our Darkest Days feels like it may have all the pieces in place to be a strong emergent story generator, and in my zombie-obsessed opinion, that's the connective thread that brings all of the best zombie games together. Whether it's State of Decay, DayZ, or even Left 4 Dead, the all-time greats tend to offer systems that give me the latitude to tell stories of despair or heroism, community or chaos.

The full game is due out later this year. As of now, only a PC launch has been confirmed, but I suspect that may change in the future.