State Of Decay Analysis

State of Decay Analysis

David Hunter

April 22, 2017

1 Overview

State of Decay is an open world zombie survival game with strong elements of RPGs, strategy, TPS, stealth, and even action-adventure. It was developed by Undead Labs and published by Microsoft Studios on June 5, 2013.

2 Formal Elements

2.1 Players

State of Decay places the player in the shoes of a survivor of the zombie apocalypse. It is a strictly single-player experience. There is no customization of the the facial or body attributes: each person has a set appearance and clothing. Even a character’s backstory and personality cannot be changed.

The player initially can control only one survivor, but as they make contact with other survivors, and earn their trust, the player will earn the ability to switch to those new survivors and control them. This is handled in typical TPS fashion, with a camera placed behind one shoulder of the controlled character. The player may run, jump, search buildings, use items, fire guns, talk with other characters, throw objects, use melee weapons, and drive vehicles using the main interface.

Using a notebook, the player may switch to another character, or perform tasks related to the RPG and strategy game elements, such as managing character inventory, checking skill levels, or managing the base and outposts.

Gameplay continues even after the player’s ”main” survivor dies. A new randomly generated survivor will be spawned in, and the player can choose to quit or to continue to play with the new survivor.

2.2 Objectives

The primary objective is of course to survive. Accomplishing this is a monumental task, and involves managing your health, stamina, ammo, weapon condition, other survivors, base layout, and many other variables.

2.3 Rules

Compared to similarly themed games, State of Decay features a complex set of rules. Left 4 Dead or Dying Light, as exemplars of the ”zombie apocalypse” genre, are relatively simple in the considerations a player must bring to the game.

2.3.1 Health and Stamina

Stamina determines how much the player can run, jump, climb and use melee weapons. Like in the Souls series, if stamina reaches zero the player will enter a tired state and become unable to perform those actions until stamina has recharged. To speed this recharge, the player may eat some food. The player must also manage health. If this reaches zero, the player will have a brief ”second wind” period in which the player must mash a button repeatedly to get half health back. If the player continues to lose health and it goes back to zero, that character is permanently killed in that playthrough. The player may recharge health by using painkillers, but it only recharges if the character rests at one’s base.

Both these stats are affected by extremes. If the character repeatedly takes lots of damage, it will become injured, a status which lowers the maximum health until the player can rest or get it healed at a medical station in one’s base. On the other hand, spending too much time with one character exploring will cause the character to become fatigued, which lowers their maximum stamina. This can only be reset by resting at one’s base.

It is quite easy to lose health and stamina during play, as zombies tend to attack in groups and each one requires several melee hits to kill.

2.3.2 Trust, Influence, Fame, Attitude and Morale

One of the unique rule sets has to do with morale, influence, Fame, attitude and trust. If you want to recruit new survivors into your base, you need to earn their trust. This could be accomplished by giving them needed supplies, rescuing them, leading them to a safe location, or several other methods. The game’s reactivity to player actions in this regard is amazing. If you drive a car too fast or too close to a survivor, for example, they lose trust in you. Causing them damage (accidentally or not) during combat will have the same affect. Survivor skills and traits also come into play, as having a high leadership skill will make it easier to earn their trust.

Each survivor has a certain amount of influence to spend each day. This is set to half the player’s fame, but the player can increase it or decrease it by taking actions. For example, if you have a tough mission coming up and you want backup, you can ask one of your fellow survivors to follow you. Of course if their trust for you is too low, they will refuse, but if they accept you use up 100 influence. Building facilities, making requests on the radio, or removing items from the supply locker all consume the survivor’s influence by varying amounts, while completing missions, clearing infestations, and bringing home supplies all increase influence.

As the survivors complete missions, level up, and build recommended facilities at their base the player can gain fame. This has the effect of increasing starting influence as the game progresses.

Morale and attitude represent how positive the community and the individual survivors are. Too many infestations, recent death of a survivor, arguments at the base, or the negative attitude of a survivor might reduce morale, while completing missions, bringing supplies home, people recovering from an illness or injury might increase it. Improving morale reduce the chances of accidents and illness, increases trust between members, and reduces chances of members leaving the group. Attitude is affected by some of the same events as morale is, but only directly affects the individual. Certain attitudes may cause the survivor to commit suicide, or trigger missions to talk to them and kill zombies together. The purpose is not so much to kill lots of zombies, but to manage the survivor’s anger or fear, as the case may be. This adds an interesting psychological dimension to the more mundane considerations of ammo and food and medicine.

2.3.3 Gear

The player characters may carry items with them when the go out exploring. The number of items is determined by the weight of the items, the skills of the survivor, and the size of the backpack. Larger backpacks can carry more items, and survivors with the Powerhouse skill can carry heavier items.

When the player returns to their home base and puts their extra items in the home base’s supply locker, they will receive influence commensurate with the item: common items give smaller amounts of influence, while rarer items give more.

2.3.4 Stats and Leveling

All your survivors gain XP in different categories: Cardio, Fighting, Shooting, and Wits. Cardio increases stamina, fighting increasing health, shooting increases your accuracy, and wits decreases your search time. All these skills are increased as in The Elder Scrolls series: actually fighting increases your Fighting skill, searching increases Wits, shooting a zombie increasing Shooting skill, and running increases Cardio. The maximum level for each is 7, which when reached allows the player to select a special ability and a specialization. Only one of each may be selected, even if the player has multiple skills at level 7.

2.3.5 Crafting and Settlements

The player will spend a large amount of time managing their home base. The home base is a safe haven in the zombie wasteland. It can, however, come under attack if zombie hordes come near it, and the player might lose it and the survivors and supplies stored their. Each home base has a limited number of construction slots, and each facility takes materials and influence to build. The facilities may be upgraded to allow more functions or improved bonuses. As an example, kitchens reduce the probability that your survivors will get food poisoning, but you can also task them with making snacks or throwing a banquet, which will let you recharge your stamina and improve morale, respectively.

When not running missions, the survivors will be at the home base. Due to personality conflicts, arguments might occur which require the player to kick the trouble-maker out or perform missions to soothe the other survivor’s emotions.

Each home base has a limited number of outpost slots. Outposts may be established in any building on the map, and will provide the player with safe zones and with a daily amount of resources, if the chosen building has one.

2.4 Procedures

1. Complete Quest: The main game mode has a story line revolving around several main characters. The player is issued with several quests which involve finding items, making contact with groups of survivors, protecting NPCs, and several other common quest goals. During the other game modes, there are a set number of repeatable scripted quests around a similar set of quests.
2. Scavenge Item or Resource: Food, ammo, weapons, construction material, medicine, and gas are all critical to survival in State of Decay. Fortunately, acquiring these essentials merely requires the player to wage through hordes of zombies and searching in dilapidated buildings until you can track down these scarce resources.
3. Clear Infestation: Infestations are buildings which have large numbers of zombies in them. Usually, they the result of several to a dozen zombies being attracted to a screamer zombie. Clearing these will increase the player’s influence, but doing so is quite dangerous.
4. Kill Horde: Hordes are variously sized groups of zombies that wander around the map. If the approach the player’s base, they will attack it, which could wipe out all the other survivors.
5. Survey Area: Like in many other games, there are high points that a player may climb up to in order to find out about relevant locations and enemies near by.
6. Manage Inventory: The player has an inventory limited by the type of backpack equipped.
7. Manage Health Status: Health and Stamina both require constant monitoring and care, as zombies lurk everywhere.
8. Manage Home Base and Outposts: Making sure that morale is high, supplies are sufficient, and that survivors are safe takes concentration and planning.

2.5 Resources

2.5.1 Tangible Resources

1. Ammo: Ammunition is necessary for all firearms to function, and it must match the caliber of the gun to work.
2. Food: Food is necessary for recharging stamina quickly, essential in a fight against numerous zombies.
3. Medicine: Medicine can help cure diseases and increase health, allowing players and survivors to stay alive longer.
4. Supplies: Supplies comes in several flavors: food, medicine, gas, ammo, and construction materials. These are used for different purposes, and are needed in different amounts depending on the facilities and survivors a home base has. Although named similarly to other items, these are differentiated by coming in large containers.
5. Survivors: Like in real life, other people come with pros and cons. Some have great personalities and useful skills, others have neither, and still others have useful skills but are assholes.
6. Vehicles: Vehicles allow for quicker travel around the map, in addition to having expanded storage for items and supplies and other survivors. However, they
7. Weapons: Weapons degrade over time, so it is important to scavenge them, or invest in facilities which allow them to be repaired.
8. Outposts: Outposts can provide a daily shot of a particular supply, and can be rigged with traps that will destroy any zombies that enter into their zone.
9. Facilities: Each facility bestows specific bonuses, and allows the player to take extra actions. They can also be upgraded to allow more bonuses and actions.

2.5.2 Intangible Resources

1. Health: Health determines how much damage the player can take before dying. Unlike in many games, dying is not the absolute end. As long as other survivors remain, the player can continue playing as them.
2. Stamina: Stamina determines how long the player can attack or run away. If it drops too low, the player will not be able to run or attack at a decent pace.
3. Skills: Skills increase through use and confer substantial bonuses to player stats.
4. Influence: Influence determines how many actions and favors involving your home base and other survivors the player will be able to undertake.
5. Fame: Fame’s main contribution to the game is in how it controls influence: each day the player’s influence is reset to half of the fame.
6. Attitude: The player can somewhat affect the attitude of other survivors by completing missions, and by maintaining a harmonious mix of personalities at the home base. NPCs with conflicting personalities will develop negative attitude.
7. Morale: Negative attitudes at the home base, the death of survivors, low supplies, nearby infestations and many other factors can contribute to low morale. Home bases with low morale might cause survivors to abandon the home base, or suffer from lowered work rates, stamina, health, and increased susceptibility to diseases and injury. Maintaining high morale is crucial for success.
8. Noise: As the player moves around, they make varying amounts of noise, which can be generated by fighting, shooting, searching, opening doors, or driving cars. Noises attract zombies, so it is beneficial to be as quiet as possible.

2.6 Conflicts

As in many other zombie apocalypse games, conflict plays a key role.

2.6.1 Humans versus Zombies

The main conflict will be between the human NPCs and zombie enemies. Zombies will attack humans whenever they encounter them, and they spawn infinitely. In contrast, once a human NPC is killed, they are gone for the rest of the game session. Each one is a unique combination of skills, personality traits, and backstory, so it makes a big impact when one dies.

2.6.2 Guns Versus Melee

Both firearms and melee weapons degrade through use, but firearms have the added requirement of ammunition. Additionally, firearms often deal more damage than melee weapons, and can by their very nature reach enemies farther away. Without using a silencer, however, they have the added risk of attracting more zombies to one’s position.

2.6.3 Speed versus Noise

Many actions in the game feature a ”sped-up” version of themselves, which carries the penalty of making more noise. Doing something quickly might allow the player to get needed items to an NPC in danger or help one’s home base. Cars versus walking have the same trade off. They allow the player to move more quickly, and thus avoid large groups of zombies, but they also attract more zombies to the player’s location.

2.7 Boundaries

2.7.1 Leveling and Specializations

Although all skills on a survivor can be leveled maxed out to 7, from among them only one special ability and one specialty may be chosen.

2.7.2 Map

With the exception of the Lifeline DLC, the game takes place in the same 12 km² town.

2.8 Outcomes

Either the player loses so many survivors that they quit the many story, or they keep playing until their small band of survivors escapes from Trumpbell Valley.

3 Dynamic Elements

The game world of State of Decay is highly reactive to player actions.

3.1 Home Base

One’s home base will change dramatically as time progresses. It may become overrun with zombies, or the player may voluntarily choose to relocate to another spot, perhaps one with better access to particular resources, or one that is easier to defend, or one that is simply larger with more outpost slots and more construction slots.

The player can choose the placement of many facilities in the home base, and can choose when, how, or if to upgrade them or make use of their actions.

3.2 Survivors

The survivors themselves change constantly. Their attitudes change in response to randomly generated arguments and events in the home base, as well as to the number of nearby infestations and hordes. These create missions and situations that the player must decide how to deal with, either ignoring them or taking some amelioratory action.

They also increase their skills as time progresses, but they can also die, leaving a gap in the survivors skill set and also lowering the home base morale.

3.3 Zombies

Zombies are attracted to noise, and can be manipulated using car explosions, firecrackers, ticking clocks, etc.

3.4 Day/Night Cycle

There is a day/night cycle in the the game.

4 Dramatic Elements

The main game mode of State of Decay features a strong story.

4.1 Characters

The player initially starts as a young man named Marcus, but the player quickly meets other NPCs who they may befriend. Many of the characters are randomly generated, but several feature unique dialogue options and backstory. The game treats them equally, however, and will continue even if all the unique ones die.

4.2 Story

The story follows Marcus as he meets several groups of people trying to survive the zombie apocalypse in Trumpbell Valley. As he (and other NPCs) learn about the situation and gain experience and competence in dealing with the zombies, they try to find a way to escape the Valley. The story finishes when they finally escape.

5 Conclusion

Although clearly made on a small budget, State of Decay achieves an amazing amount of depth, combining interesting mechanics from RPGs, shooters, survival games, and resource management games into an interlocking whole where each part meshes perfectly with the others.