Dead State Interview

Nightmare Mode offers an interview with DoubleBear’s Brian Mitsoda on the upcoming indie RPG Dead State, with both general questions and pretty interesting specific questions.

Many games that involve the horror genre use sound and visuals to channel the emotions they wish to instill in the player. What considerations did you make on the audio and the visuals to create that special zombie survival atmosphere?

Well, our sound and music aren’t quite finished yet, but the goals have been there for a long time. We have a noise mechanic, so actions in the world need to make appropriate levels of noise and zombies and other NPCs will have basic sounds such as screams, groans, etc. We will have atmospheric music used to elevate the tension in important dialogues or beats for combat or zombie appearances. Sound is a big part of horror, so when a zombie appears, we’re going to make sure you get startled with well-timed audio. Unfortunately, due to the amount of dialogue in the game and the game’s budget, there’s no way we could afford full VO but we will have original music and lots of vicious sounds to make combat that much more brutal. Just watching a zombie eat someone in the game is pretty graphic right now, but we’ll keep tweaking the tearing noises until you’re truly repulsed.

You’ve previously stated that Dead State was inspired by your own experiences during Hurricane Andrew, but had you been considering a similar concept for a game before that experience? Or did it not occur to you until after that experience? And just how did zombies become involved in that?

Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992, so for me at that time, the idea of making videogames for a living was a foreign concept. Still, it’s one of those events you carry with you for the rest of your life and that experience bleeds into the design of a game based on crisis and societal breakdown. The zombies in Dead State are a force of nature they happened, modern convenience and social support is gone, and the world has coped with the disaster poorly. After the hurricane, Miami was unrecognizable and was in bad shape for weeks and even months after it hit. Roads were blocked, power was out everywhere, food was not being restocked immediately, whole neighborhoods were displaced, and there was widespread looting.

The difference between the world of Dead State and a natural disaster is that the National Guard isn’t coming to help secure the city, no one’s clearing roads and fixing downed power lines, and the zombies aren’t going away. They’re everywhere it’s a hurricane that sweeps over the entire planet and everyone is too busy trying to deal with it in their backyard to worry about it anywhere else. When you have no idea when or if help is coming what do you do to survive?