Mattress Surfers of the Zombie Apocalypse: Let's Play The Dead Linger Alpha

Back in the spring of 2012, a tiny indie developer named Sandswept Studios, previously known for the small and fairly unambitious strategy game Detour, launched a Kickstarter for the game they really wanted to make: a multiplayer zombie apocalypse simulator set in a procedurally-generated world with graphics about on par with the STALKER games. This is, you will recognize, a ridiculously ambitious goal for a fourteen-person development team. But they had obvious passion and clear goals, and people believed in them. Sandswept asked for $60,000; The Dead Linger's Kickstarter ended with $154,968.

The first alpha came out in late October 2012. It was interesting.

Almost exactly one year later, The Dead Linger -- still in alpha, but with eleven major releases and one big engine change under its belt -- made it to Steam Early Access. It's unfinished, unpolished, janky, buggy, and ugly. But it is brilliantly surreal and it's very, very gradually becoming the game Sandswept promised. Let me give you the five cent tour of the game, or at least of the game as it exists right now.



We'll just play solo this time. Multiplayer works pretty well, all things considered, and there are always a few servers open, but the game is buggy enough I don't want to have to worry about both the server and the client crashing while I'm trying to show it off.



They aren't kidding about the "this game is in alpha" warning on the loading screen. Oh, and occasionally the progress bar does tell you it's reticulating splines, if you're curious.



Welcome to the zombie apocalypse! You'll note that the world doesn't look bad. It's certainly a step up from the first alpha:





Glancing around, we spot a few zombies on the horizon. They're instantly recognizable at this stage because they're all bald guys in black shirts. Let me show you one of these guys up close.



Zombies suck. Only a direct hit to the head will kill them; anything else just pushes them back a bit and interrupts them if they're attacking. (This has changed a few times during development; on occasion the zombies could be killed with body shots, and sometimes they've been completely invincible. Right now they're possible to kill with headshots, but those headshots often don't register properly, especially if you're using a shotgun or melee weapon.)

Zombies are capable of spotting you (or hearing you) from quite a ways away and will hunt you relentlessly, bashing down doors, breaking windows, and climbing over small obstacles to get at you. Killing them often isn't worth it, because the sounds of combat draw more zombies to you. The Dead Linger is, more often than not, a game about running.



So let's run. Following the telephone poles leads us to a road; following the roads leads us to civilization.



I hop off the road for a second to show you something Sandswept added with the latest update: deer. You can hunt them for food. I don't have anything to hunt them with at the moment, though, and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to hit this guy -- he's startled, so he's running, and running deer are fast. Like, Sonic fast.



Yeah, definitely don't have anything to hunt with at the moment. (You start each game naked and unarmed, but get to keep your stuff if you die.) Better find some food and weapons.



I spot a farm and cut across the cornfield to get to the farmhouse. Most farms are located in areas with pretty low undead density, but this one is located near some office buildings -- little quirk of world generation, there -- so quite a few zombies are lurking nearby. I'll have to be quick.



The Christmas update added zombie Santas. These guys were previously invincible; now they're just distressingly durable. I dodge around him.



The farmhouse is another addition of the recent update; previous farms had normal suburban homes, which I'll show you later. No longer does the game feature randomly-generated houses, so there aren't any more bathrooms with adjoining bathrooms. Now there's just a couple of layouts, with plans to add more later. The farmhouse has by far the nicest layout of any of the houses.



I pop inside and switch on my flashlight with a press of the "V" key. Indoor locations are pretty dark in The Dead Linger.



Nice atmosphere, though.



I've been followed. Better hop to it.



I check the pantry, and turn up -- success! -- a pickaxe. And two salt shakers. (?)



Seconds after picking up the pickaxe, I hear glass break. The zombies have found a way in. Time to blow this taco stand.

I tap "F" to kick out a window and leap outside, not a moment too soon.





I'm gonna check out the barn. They often have caches of weapons on the upper levels.



It has to be said: for an indie game made by a small team, there's some nice architecture on display here.



My hunch paid off: a scoped rifle and some .22 ammo sit between a couple bales of hay.



I consider climbing the silo, but the zombies are hot on my heels. While they can't climb, they can wait around the ladder until I have to climb back down, so bugger that.

On the ground lies a plywood sheet. These are important, although I can't do anything with this yet.

Freshly armed, I decide to set out toward the nearby town. And...



...that's a lot of zombies.

[Next time: I explain what mattress surfing is all about. Probably. If I can find a mattress.]

I dart across the field, jump a fence, and throw open the door of the first house I see. It's worth pointing out that there's no "open door" button; rather, you have to press the "hold object" button (the middle mouse button by default) and drag the mouse to open doors. It's fairly natural, but it takes a bit of getting used to if you're accustomed to a certain level of abstraction in your videogame door-opening.



I hit the kitchen and find a pear. Food like this is perishable, which means it turns into a rotten, less nutritious version of itself if you don't consume it within a certain amount of time.



On the opposite countertop I find a hunting knife. There are a few melee weapons in The Dead Linger with a dual purpose; this knife can stab zombies, but it can also be used to turn deer carcasses into meat. I grab it and move on.



Score.



I smash a window and throw the mattress outside.



Mattress surfing is less a science and more an art. It's a matter of grabbing a mattress, then jumping on top of it, which sounds simple enough, but the angle of approach is important.

(Those fences are new as of the latest update. Zombies can climb over them, but rarely do, so houses surrounded by fences are fairly safe places to be.)



There we go. Sometimes you need to keep jumping to ascend. Here I've managed to land on the thing at such an angle that I keep heading upward without so much as touching the keyboard.



Those zombies look like ants! I can see my house a lot of z-fighting from here!



Uh oh. Looks like one of the recent patches has reduced the mattress surfing issue by relieving you of your held objects once you reach the world ceiling. Doesn't matter! Still fun!



Crunch. "That was a long way down," the respawn screen helpfully explains.



I respawn in the woods, not too far from the house I was just exploring. Let's try that again.

[Next time: Less exploitation of physics bugs to jump into low Earth orbit. And I'll remember to turn off my flashlight.]

This is neat and interesting.

Are all the houses so sparsely furnished? Seems like some furniture and props would be a priority.

(Besides salt that is)

Upon returning to the house, I check the garage and find a pair of cargo shorts. I have to drop my gun and ammo to pick up the shorts; when I drop the ammo, it skitters across the ground and disappears into a wall, never to return.



But, hey! Sweet new shorts. Also, I ate the pear.



Someone moved in while I was mattress surfing. A couple hits with the pickaxe makes short work of him.



I head upstairs and find another zombie. These are the game's tensest moments: fighting the undead in tight, dark hallways. Especially because my pickaxe keeps bumping into the door and slamming it shut.



The room the zombie was in contains a hiker's backpack, which nearly septuples my inventory space.



I fight another zombie. Earlier builds of the game contained three different types of zombies, distinguished primarily by their speed. The current build omits earlier versions' crouching, running zombies, but there are two different types apart from the zombie Santas: a slow zombie that attacks with its left hand, and a slower zombie that attacks with its right. (No, there aren't going to be any crazy mutant zombies at any point.)



The room he was in contains a nice jacket. I'm almost presentable now.



I leave the house and check out one of the newer location types: a construction site. Lots of raw material for barricading here, but I still haven't found a hammer, so I can't take advantage of it.



Odd place for a speed limit sign.



Cards on the table: I've never seen a supermarket in the game before. Let's check it out!



creeeeeepy



Canned goods. Handy, and nonperishable.



I take the zombie out, but he has friends.



Things are getting dicey in here. Best cut my exploration short.



Office buildings are huge, spacious structures that would make great fortresses if not for the fact that they've got huge windows everywhere and are full of zombies and contain nothing worthwhile. Fuck you, office buildings.



This is more like it. Prisons have guards, and guards have guns, right?



I'm stuck in Folzomb Prison, and time keeps dragging on...

Nice of them to leave the gates open for me, I guess.



I head into a guard tower and climb the stairs.



Nice sniper rifle here. Alas, no ammo. I can use its scope to check out what sort of situation I'm in, though.



Oh, right. Here's my situation: I'm stuck at the top of a tower with no ammo and zombies closing in on all sides.

[Next time: Probably gonna die.]

There are some furnishings: couches of a couple different types, chairs, some appliances, paintings, books, and so on. Heavy stuff like refrigerators can be shoved around and used to block paths (until the zombies inevitably glitch their way through), but most of these things are just window dressing and aren't incredibly interactive.

Mattresses more than make up for it, of course.

I lied! There was ammo up there! Not ammo for my cool new .308, unfortunately, but ammo for the .22 bolt-action rifle. I take it, run down the stairs, and leave the guard tower just as the undead make it to the door.



Floating zombie. Weird, that.



Sadly, my .22 rifle doesn't goddamned work. I plink away at the zombies, hitting nothing, until they are way too close. Time to skedaddle. (Apparently the .22 is kind of broken in the current build.)



I hit the road and head into the woods, hoping to come across a hunting cabin.



Success!



I go all Minecraft on a couple of zombies, then take a peek through the cabin's window.



Rustic.



The hunting cabin contains some bows, a crossbow, and some arrows. Arrows aren't yet recoverable, nor do they yet stick in zombies' bodies, but we can look forward to that in an upcoming update.



Here's the real haul: a hammer and a hatchet. These will come in handy.



There's a box of matches on the floor in one of the bedrooms. This will also come in handy.



A hole in the ceiling. What could be up there?



I grab a sofa cushion and mattress-surf my way into the attic. It's a bit trickier than it is with a full-size mattress, but nothing a champion mattress surfer can't handle.



There's a cache of guns and ammo up here. Nice.



Using my new hatchet, I chop down a tree, turning it into logs. The bigger the tree, the more chops it takes to cut down, and the more logs it produces. (Be careful -- zombies are attracted to the sound, and will cheerfully sneak up behind you while you're playing lumberjack.)



I collect my newfound logs. It takes three to craft a campfire.



There we go. Now for the finishing touch: I take my matches and...



Ahh.



With another log, I craft a 2x4 and, using my hammer, nail it across the door. The Dead Linger features a freeform barricading system, allowing you to nail 2x4s and various-sized sheets of plywood to pretty much any environmental feature. Some people have created elaborate houses using this system.



This is a fortress someone built atop a convenience store. Me, I'm happy if I can slap a couple of boards together.



Sun's going down.



The last rays of daylight fade...



...and with that, the rainstorm arrives.



It's lonely out here.

[Next time: I leave the cabin and find some more food, I imagine.]

Is that a bug, a function of that type of gun, or are some weapons you pick-up just duds?

There is, or was, a rudimentary quality level system in place, so that "tainted" items would increase your chance of infection, "well-kept" weapons would do more damage, and so on. This has either disappeared or become invisible in the current build, so I can't deny the possibility that I just picked up a crappy rifle. The number of people reporting similar problems leads me to believe it's a bug, though.

I wait out the night in the cabin -- fortunately night doesn't last long -- and finish off my cans of beans and chicken. When morning dawns, it's time to set out again.



I spot something on the cabin's roof, so I mattress surf my way up there. It's some shotgun shells. (You'll note the screen's a bit blurry and desaturated. I had a hard landing on the roof and took some damage. Fortunately, you regenerate health pretty rapidly in the alpha.)



Lots of weapons, but no more food. I'll keep heading the direction I was traveling before. Gotta take care of just one thing first.



Let me axe you a question. I hope you don't mind a bit. Why don't you back that adze up.



It's tough to see in this screenshot, but just to the right of the crosshair is a deer. I crouch down and try to approach it stealthily, then pepper it with a couple blasts from my 12 gauge. If I can kill the deer, I'll be able to convert its carcass into meat and cook it over my campfire.



Naturally I miss the deer completely, and the sound of gunfire attracts these assholes. Time to run.

Running causes your hunger meter to decrease three times as rapidly. I hope I can find something edible soon.



Civilization! And hey, my .22 rifle works now. I don't get it either.



I barge into a house in search of food.



I polish off this guy with a single headshot. Thanks for working now, bolt-action rifle!



Interesting interior decoration decisions on display here.



The dining room contains a delicious-looking fullbright cabbage. I eat it and continue poking around, finding a can of Spam (well, "Cram") in the kitchen.



But the sound of breaking glass informs me that it's time to leave.



There's a Swert's on the horizon. This is a small convenience store, and often a good place to find food.



All Swert's locations are identical and feature a ladder leading to the roof. There's usually a gun up there. I decide to skip it for now -- I'm pretty well-armed, and I spotted a couple of zombies up there. Actually, this place is crawling with zombies. Note the one peeking around the corner there.



I head in through the back door. The store's metal doors are more durable than houses' wooden doors and can take more of a beating.



I kill a zombie in the cooler, then check out the rest of the store.



It's bad in here.



I kick out a window and make my escape.



Heading toward the steep hill seems like a good idea, if only because it'll let me show off some weird environmental stuff, like office buildings whose parking lots hover several feet above the ground. They really aren't kidding about the "still in alpha" thing.



Also, the office building itself is half-buried.



That's some weird fencing.



That's a weird road. I've honestly been hoping to show off some regrettable world generation in this Let's Play, but up until now the game has been behaving nicely.



I follow the weird road along to a water tower. These are pretty cool, and offer a nice vantage of the surrounding countryside.



Let's take in a view from the top. Note the sunshafts, which arrived with the switch to the Unity engine back in Build 10.



Water towers don't contain water -- too bad, really, because in future builds water is going to become vital to preventing infection -- but they can be decent places to set up camp.



Homey!

[Next time: Maybe we ought to see what this "infection" thing is all about.]

This is really interesting. I like the idea of an LP of stuff that might only be around until the next version of the game comes out.

I wish I had been doing this LP back when Build 7 first came out, and melee weapons were accidentally given infinite range.

Okay, my previous world got corrupted, but no matter. Let me tell you a little something about infection, and also about sledgehammers.



Most of the time, when a zombie attacks you, it looks like this. He takes a swing, and you take some damage, with a little red wedge indicating the direction of the attack.



When a zombie bites you, it looks like this. He'll do a little forward lunge and you're left with bloody toothmarks on your screen.

This is how you get infected, although not all bites are infectious. To see what risk you're running of infection, there's a meter on the inventory screen you can check:



Look at the bottom bar, with the little biohazard symbol next to it. It's pretty full, which means that any bite will probably be a death sentence. This bar fills a bit whenever you're bitten and whenever you kill a zombie in melee combat. Wearing a gas mask will cause your risk of infection to decrease steadily. In future builds, you'll be able to use water to clean yourself up, too.

While this meter is a good gauge of the risk you're running, any bite can be infectious, and once you're infected there's no cure. ProTip: Don't get bitten by zombies.



When you're infected, you'll occasionally get double vision, as seen here, and your controls will briefly reverse. If you're playing a multiplayer game, your fellow players may not notice the symptoms, and you're under no obligation to tell them you're infected, so it'll come as a surprise when...



...you eventually die, and are immediately replaced with a zombie.



oh, so that's where the title comes from

You know what's cool, though? Sledgehammers.



These are powerful melee weapons, although you lose a bit of speed while carrying one. They'll also let you pound 2x4s vertically into the ground, which is useful when you want to use the freeform barricading system to build a house.

You know what else is cool? Somersaults.



By pressing the crouch button (LCtrl by default) as you land from a jump, you can reduce fall damage and do a sweet forward roll.

[Next time: I dunno! Maybe I'll wait for the next build before I show off anything else, or maybe I'll do some multiplayer. At any rate, you ought to check out the development roadmap to get an idea of what the game will eventually be like. Me, I'm looking forward to the ragdolls.]

How did that work?

What happened?

Incredibly well! Being able to beat zombies to death with a baseball bat from across the length of a football field was very satisfying, but maybe a little overpowered, so I suppose I can understand why Sandswept released a hotfix to correct that.

Here, I even wrote a poem about it:

I'm not sure, but when I'm trying to load up the previous world the progress bar sticks at around 75 or 80% and goes no further. It doesn't pay to get too attached to your worlds in these alpha builds.

I concur. This is a fascinating thing to show off.

Hey, I'm glad people are enjoying these.

I want to be certain I'm not giving the wrong impression here, though. At this point I've shown off just about all the game's content. It'll have more eventually -- and what's there will be improved! -- but it's far from a finished game.

And also you sometimes run into stuff like this:



I feel like I gave the supermarket short shrift last time I played The Dead Linger, so I hunt around for a while and find one.



LeLand's supermarket is named after Jonathan Leland, one of the Kickstarter backers.



It is, as ever, very dark inside, but a post from one of the artists reveals that they're in the process of overhauling the lighting system. Looks like there's going to be a little more ambient lighting soon.





grosssss



What could be up there?



I mattress-surf atop a can of chicken -- this is incredibly challenging! -- and hop into the air duct.



A little crawling around reveals a sizable area up here. This might make a good living space, if only it weren't so damnably difficult to get into.



More crawling through the vents reveals a raised area I can't get to. There isn't even enough room for me to set down a can of chicken to surf on. But if I squeeze into the vent and stand up, I can glitch through the level geometry jussst enough to see what's up there...



DOPEFISH LIVES

I may as well revisit the prison, too. There's some interesting stuff in there, although, admittedly, not a lot of interesting stuff.



As all Walking Dead fans know, prisons are great places to hole up during zombie apocalypses. There's only one entrance, and the guard towers offer a nice view of the surrounding area. But you've already seen the guard towers. Let's check out the cell blocks.





The reception area is a little overgrown.



The mess hall is nicely stocked with canned goods, though.



Some undead prisoners pace back and forth in their cells. The bars are very durable -- even though the cell's unlocked, he won't be getting out of there.



The library. Not much to do in here, but when the game is closer to release I suspect there will be lots of reasons why you'd want an unoccupied chunk of floor space.



I'm a big fan of the .308 rifle. One shot, one kill, plus it zooms and holds four rounds.



Here's the solitary confinement.



Every zombie story features at least one zombie who's been locked up, as no one has the heart to kill it. Maybe that's what happened to this guy.



At the end of the hall is a big cache of weapons and ammo. Sweet.

Hey, folks! It's been a while since I rapped atcha, but there's been an update, and I have a computer again, so let's see where the game is these days.

Apart from a few new weapons and some minor tweaks, there have been four major changes. First: zombies pathfinding is no longer so processor-intensive. Previously, putting a lot of zombies onscreen at once was a major drain on the framerate, but now it runs a bit more smoothly. I can't really show this in a screenshot, however, so you'll have to trust me on this. Second: melee combat has been reworked. It's now possible to hit multiple zombies with a single attack, and getting headshots is a tad easier with melee weapons. Again, this doesn't display particularly well in a screenshot. However! I can show you this:



Zombie dogs! Yeah, you all knew this was coming. They're in Resident Evil, they're in Silent Hill, they're in Dead Rising, so they're here. The Strays, as they're called, are fragile but very quick. The situation you see in the screenshot above did not go well for me.

The other thing that's been revamped is the interior lighting system.





You no longer need to have your flashlight on to navigate houses during daytime, although they're still quite moody. This is only the first phase of the new lighting system; apparently things will continue to improve at least up until Build 14, which is meant to be the big graphics update.

I'm looking forward to doing a more substantial playthrough in the near future, but I thought I'd better report in so Flawgic doesn't close this topic under the perfectly understandable assumption that I've abandoned it.

Big update, folks.



I begin my journey in a wooded area named Euphoria Park. This is especially notable because it has a name now, visible in the upper right. And the framerate's a bit better than it's ever been before. Things are looking up!



Speaking of "up." Thanks, Department of Transportation! Great use of our tax dollars right there!



I decide to follow the road in the opposite direction. I spot a few deer along the way, but as I'm completely unarmed there's nothing I can do about it. I'm not hungry anyway. Still, the sooner I can find civilization, the better.



In one of the big new changes, zombies now gather and move in giant herds. I give this ZombieCon a wide berth.



Santa Zombie is no longer seasonally appropriate, so he's been replaced with this chap.



The first sign of civilization is a hunting cabin. Unfortunately, there's a zombie here, so I'll need to be quick.



All cabins are rustic, but some cabins are rustic. I find a hatchet, some food, and a few guns, but no backpacks. Without a backpack, my carrying capacity is very limited. I leave the guns alone for now.



I squeeze past a tree blocking the door and grab a mattress. You know what I'm planning to do with it.



Aw, crap! With all the foliage in here, I didn't spot this guy until he took a bite out of me. Zombies are now much more dangerous in melee combat -- it's less likely that you'll be able to dart in, hit them, and dart back out of their attack range, at least not with a short-ranged weapon like this hatchet.



Zombie threat dealt with, I take to the skies to do a bit of scouting.



Check out that herd in the upper left. Up this high, it's possible to see the shortcut the developers took to make zombie pathfinding less processor-intensive: instead of moving smoothly, each member of a distant zombie herd skips forward a few steps every second or so. Makes sense!



I spot a little village called Justice nestled in a valley. Time to set down and check it out.



I was hoping to set down a bit more slowly than this. Mattresses are slippery little things.



Upon respawning, I notice that a.) my hatchet is gone and b.) there's a little skull marker on the horizon, presumably marking the location of my corpse. Neat! That'll help me find the town again.



Things like this make a guy feel all existential. I grab my stuff and leave before I think about it too much.



Cozy little place!



I don't want to repeat myself too much, but that is one weird road. Also, I've managed to attract the attention of a herd of zombies. I start checking garages in hopes that I might find one of the more interesting new additions to the game, and get a bit torn up in the process.



My perseverance pays off! I hop on a bicycle and plow through the herd on my way to freedom.



Wow. This thing is really tough to control, requiring you to steer with WASD while looking around with the mouse. That said, it's also quite fast -- if you're using the sprint button to pedal faster, I estimate you move about twice as fast as when sprinting on foot.



Let's hit the road! Wait, this is a mountain bike! I'm gonna take this thing cross-country!



augh shit

This game is a comedy goldmine. I imagine it's still in alpha?

Man, is it ever. It's fun, and it's getting better all the time -- I'm really impressed by how close the developers are to delivering on their crazy-ambitious promises -- but there is no mistaking this for anything like a finished game.

Why...why does the mattress do that?

It's not just the mattress! Any object with a reasonably flat side can be used to levitate. It's actually much easier to do with sheets of plywood (and much harder, but possible, to do with things like cans of food, as I demonstrated above). I just call it "mattress-surfing" because it's been possible ever since the very first public alpha, where there wasn't much in the world except mattresses.

See, when you're moving an object around in the environment it doesn't become insubstantial. If you grab an object, position it underneath you, and jump, you'll pull it along after you, whereupon it pushes you upward a bit, whereupon you drag it upward more, and so on. By adjusting the angle of the object beneath you -- and your position on it -- you can change the direction in which you're flying. It's a great time, but landings are a real challenge.

Any landing you can walk away fro- Yikes... I guess you didn't walk away from that one.

I love this. Thanks for keeping us updated on this crazyness.

Road construction brought to you by the M.C. Escher Highway Department.

Shortly after I crashed my bike, I also crashed my game. Hope you guys don't want one long, continuous narrative!



I start inside a house. In the floor, actually, sort of beneath the stairs. A couple of jumps frees me, whereupon I start to explore my surroundings.



A second-floor room hides a crowbar. I grab it, then deal with this zombie who's started to follow me upstairs. Turns out that, while zombies attack much more quickly than they did in earlier builds, they're now easier to stagger. This means that, while hit-and-run tactics don't work as well, continually whacking the zombie until it dies is a viable strategy.



There's nothing much else in the house -- not so much as a backpack -- so I head out through the garage, which contains a 9mm pistol and a banana. (Do not confuse the two in the heat of battle.)



Aw, yeah. The bicycle is my second favorite mode of transportation in the game, right after the flying mattress. (Cars and other vehicles will be coming later.)



I pedal my way through a field of zombies, spotting something on the horizon.



Can you see what it is?



I haven't covered office buildings yet, except to point out that they tend to have lots of zombies and not much loot. However, zombie AI has been altered quite a bit recently -- they're no longer omniscient enough to spot you behind their backs from a hundred feet away, and if they're walking in one direction they'll tend to continue walking in that direction rather than performing sudden 180s. Plus we can now deal double damage by hitting a zombie from behind. I think the time might be right to explore this office building.



It's quiet. Too quiet.



I pedal my bicycle across the suspiciously empty parking lot.



Those light shafts really do class up the game.



Less than a minute after I enter the building, the sound of breaking glass alerts me to this guy.



I polish off another three or four zombies without too much trouble. Gotta say that I expected more resistance than this -- the place is hardly swarming.



This crowbar makes a great weapon! I guess it's because... oh. "The Freeman." Ha ha. I get it.

This is an example of a rare item variant. There are "normal" crowbars in the game, too, which are less effective as weapons. You'll note that the item's condition is described as "excellent" -- they've implemented item durability in this last patch.



See, now, if I were designing restrooms, the stalls would feature doors. Also, toilets.



I spot a hunting bow, so I drop a bunch of stuff to make inventory space for it. It ends up in a neat little implausible stack.



Huh. It's starting to look bad out there.



Yep. Crowd's getting a bit thick outside.



Time to head upstairs.



Okay, I have absolutely no idea how this bow's animation is supposed to look, but I imagine it's not supposed to look like this. I hold LMB, place the aiming reticule over the zombie's head, and release.



Can't argue with the results!



A couple more flights of stairs and I'm on the roof.



There's a forest of walking corpses down there, probably some forty feet below. Now, at this point I have a couple of options: I can either turn around, go back through the door, walk down several flights of stairs -- fighting zombies along the way, of course -- grab my bicycle, and pedal my way to safety, or I can leap off the top of the office building like a disgraced CEO, try to tuck and roll, grab my bicycle, and pedal my way to safety on two broken legs.



ha ha wheeee AUGH OW christ dammit fuck



I'm alive! Somehow! Barely!



I hop on the bike and head off toward a patch of houses. Within a few seconds I've healed up completely. Thanks, mutant healing factor!

Turns out this little town, Choceno, isn't a great place to be. Lots of undead around here.



Let's seek higher ground.



Unfortunately, my bicycle -- did I mention they're hard to steer, 'cos they are -- gets stuck in a fence, so I have to dismount right in the middle of a patch of zombies.



I'd said earlier that zombies have difficulty climbing over fences. That's no longer the case.



A heap of wood! Is this my salvation?



I grab a chunk of plywood and fly onto the roof of a two-storey house. From this vantage point, it's possible to see just how boned I am.



Super boned. I walk to the edge of the roof, preparing to take potshots at a couple of zombies, but I midjudge my distance from the edge and fall right into the middle of them like a total chump.



Yeah, we all saw that coming.



I respawn in a house some distance away and grab a hammer. It's not much, but it'll do. What I really regret losing is my bicycle.



Never mind!



I pedal my way toward a supermarket off in the distance. (No, I'm not going to go retrieve my items from my corpse. It's right in the middle of a pack of zombies.)



whoops crap



I head in through the back of the store. This place has changed! It's got an upper office level packed with goodies, including weapons and like four duffel bags.



A zombie shuffles around at the bottom of an elevator shaft.



Stall doors and toilets? Now this is a public restroom!



I head down into the store proper, grabbing some cans and boxes off the shelves as I go to fill up my new duffel bag.



"Can I help you check out, sir? Would you prefer paper or [to have your] ass-kick [-ed]?"



Not a bad haul! This'll keep me going for a while. Alas, my bicycle is gone. It probably fell into the world geometry after I wrecked it, but I prefer to think a zombie pedaled away on it.

Goddamned zombies.



A nearby garage contains a shovel and this ballistic shield. This thing looks useful!



It isn't. Zombies attacking me from the front can still damage me.



The shovel's pretty handy, though. I make my way through a swarm of zombies, occasionally pausing to bash one's head in, and climb onto the roof of a convenience store, where three zombies lurk.



I make quick work of them, but night is falling. I can't say I hoped to wait until dawn on top of a Swert's, but I've got plenty of food, and it's not as though I can get hypothermia. Not until Sandswept implements the "temperature" phase mentioned in their development roadmap, at least.

The big graphic update is about to drop. Are you excited? 'Cos I'm excited.