Dead But Alive! Southern England Reviews

This is a fun game, but it's both too long and too short. There's alot of VIPs, many of whom are sort of useless. If they aren't as good as a common party member, what's the point? There's stuff you can do in the game that you never need. On the other hand, you can only expand to a certain point because it's impossible to get more food. There's content in the game that I never came across. When the story gets to a major turning point, suddenly the game ends. There's supposed to be a sequel, which doesn't exist so far as I know. It's cool that you can build some stuff up, but I want to be able to use it. And I want to be able to build more than I can. Still, this game is really fun to play once on a free afternoon. Buy this game when it's on sale, but not at full price.

I wanted to like this game, alot. It broke my heart when the classic ver would not launch. I banished the game to the back of my steam library until I saw that a new edition had come out. The original ver still doesnt work. The new ver, frankly, with the combat system removed, seems arbitrary and capricious. I honestly don’t think that any of the game mechanics work. Worse the lives of the people in your group quickly become unimportant. They are simply a matter of stats, and you frankly are better off having them die off than spend a few days injured, consuming food and unable to work. This game honestly feels like a poorly thought out knockoff of Zafehouse: Diaries. Which frankly is a much better choice if you want a procedurally generated zombie survival VN.

I was looking to install a game I have not played in a while, and I know for certain it will not be this game. I can not recommend this game, in fact I would go as far as saying to avoid it even if it is on sale at a greatly reduced price. There are little to no redeeming features of this awkward mix of zombie survival and visual novel, supposedly this is episodic but part 1 was released over three years ago at the time of typing this review and there have been no significant updates or news, and to be honest it is hardly surprising given just how poor this game is. Avoid it,

This review is about the second edition. A very small game, with very short story, and boring repetitive tasks to do each game day. I finished the game in 3 hours. And you should consider that I spend at least half an hour learning and understanding the game, and then restarting. The story is very small. If it was a visual novel, it would be over in less than an hour. And the amount of images would be very low (less than 100 for sure, perhaps as few as 50.) The story doesn’t end, but leaves you in the start of the search for your daughter. I don’t remember for sure, but I think I finished the game in 60 to 90 game days. The game forces you each day to do the same menial task over and over: Click on several locations on the maps (I would say about 15-20) to find out the estimated risk and reward for each location, and then chose were to spend your actions. And the risk and reward is not out on plain site, you have to read a text to understand it! There is a home base with tasks, that are a complete waste of time and do not add anything to the story, but waste resources and delay you from finishing the game. I got it at 80% discount, and still find this a wasted purchase…

The game itself is interest but the problem is, it's not finish. Story is not complete, some scene don't have background yet and they said it gonna be major update since March. I don't recommend the game unless they have really complete the game.

I love visual novels, and love zombie games wih resources and group managing. And so I really wished I could recommend this game but I really can't. The first biggest issue, is that the game is short or incomplete. While is not uncommon games that have are launches as only chapter 1, this one is sold as full price complete game and not advertised as a chapter 1 of a story or work in progress. You can finish the game in one sit in a few hours (5-9 hours gameplay I would say, even less if you rush things) and there's a bug where you literaly skip a part of the story straigh to the end, may you want to do it or not. The game was described as "As an ex-military officer looking to rebuild your relationship with your teenage daughter" but said daughter is barely seen apearing in a single scene the entire game. [spoiler] Before the end when you -can't- rescue her and she apear on "scenes of next chapter" like moment.[/spoiler] The story is interesting, only major issue is that a lot of the interactions with your group members are pretty random, sometimes members of the group apear wanting to talk to you in a new day, and the small story they tell it's cool, but being random if you need to load a previous save (or the game crash and need to rollback to the previous night) you lose those relation progress. That make hard too to actually choose when you want to get closer or have a relationship with someone. The resources management portion of the game is interesting and even fun, but can be pretty frustrating some moments, as the resources that apear on the map are random, sometimes causing a shortage of food that can not be avoided but by luck (as you may find food while collecting other resources) what can be annoying when you're "working hard" to keep everyone fed and in a single day everything go down, sometimes for the next day be all fixed for a lot of food apearing (or not). On mechanics, I've played just the 2nd edition, that don't have the fight roulette or lockpick system, so can't really say about it. Maybe I'll try to play a the story a 3rd time to try the 1st edition and see it. On the 2nd edition it's story only, you can never lose a VIP member of the group in combat, but the no-VIP survivors will at random still get hurt or die. As I said in the start, I really want to recommend this game, and it is actually kinda fun to play, if you get cheap in a sale or something is actually worty spending a few hours on it, maybe, but have in mind this is just a "chapter 1" the story ending with a ton loose ends (almost all if not all). If the developers eventually finish the story, be on update, DLC or continuation of the game would be 100% worthy playing, but the unfinished story while interesting leave you hanging in the end right now.

Honestly? It is an interresting idea of a game. Fighting for your daily lifes, killing zombies with a slot machine and a bit of a good eye when to press the button to slow it down. BUT It looks like an early access game, not only because its not finished, but there are still a few bugs in the system. You can start the came now if you read the discussion part, where its explained easily,(after always crashing when trying to start) but that something like that is even necessary is a big no go. And there are some guys I should be able to talk to, but nothing happens when I press the button. Some dialogues are a bit short, and there could be more moralty choices. The game gets easily boring after 25 days of killing zombies with a slot machine, breaking locks with a short minigame and looking for resources. The storyline of the mainstory is incredibly short, and some of the sidestories are interesting, but there are to big gaps between them, so you will stop the game out of boredom before even getting to them. Music is (more or less?) one soundtrack, and the drawing of the characters is nothing special.

[i]Review based on 2nd edition of the game[/i] As a big fan of visual novels and zombies, I was excited to get this one. The classic, TWD inspired story about the group of survivors with tough moral choices meets the easily approachable format of visual novel should be an easy win in my book. Unfortunately, the great (if not the most innovative) idea is hindered by less than stellar execution, and while "Dead But Alive" is far from bad, I cannot reccommend it for the full price. Apart from game's length (about 2 hours), the storyline is not complete - the game ends with "to be continued" and it's not clear whether the next episodes are coming. That's the main problem of the game - lack of content and lack of variety. Both the the resource management (managing the camp of survivors) and visual novel (choices, romances) aspects have not enough depth. There isn't enough control of the survivors - you cannot assign them tasks or roles; it's not even possible to dismiss them after they join your ranks (unless it's driven by the story), so they end up eating your food until the end. With so limited control, you're not going to feel like a boss. The game also suffers from technical issues (for instance, clicking on any resorce image leads to script error), but it runs well enough on Win7. Visual novel part of the game is quite short - there are some decisions and moral choices to be made, but despite their serious tone, the game doesn't let you feel their weight upon you. And while characters look interesting, there's too little interaction and dialogue for them to really come alive. Romance part, from my experience, is not an inch deeper than that - a few dialogue lines and one scene per character. You can be involved with as many NPC's as you wish without any consequences, which makes the whole thing even less believable and less exciting. Despite all negative stuff, I enjoyed "Dead But Alive!" to a degree. It can be fun for a while, it has nice visuals, a variety of characters and a promise of grim, post-apocalypse world waiting to be explored, but unfortunately, it doesn't fully deliver. With the recent update, however, there is a glimmer of hope that developers will fix the bugs and add more content (or change the pricing) in the future, and create a bigger, better sequel that would finally let me party Rick Grimes style.

Well, where should i start. The game has it's pros and cons but it's cons outweigh the pros for me to decide that it is a terrible game for now? Not everything has been released yet "Coming Soon" with only 3 hours of gameplay that gets a little boring after a while due to the repetition in farming/grinding materials. Personally, i like these kind of simulation rpg games but Dead but alive just doesn't fit it, there is no feel of adventure, action, there is nothing that really stands out in the game besides the fact it is a visual novel type game. The combat system is plain right terrible, with the use of a scroll wheel to determine how much damage you can inflict to zombie. Oh and yes, a visual novel game it is, there is romance, you can develop relationships through the actions you make BUT with dead or alive, there isn't much interaction with the characters, all interactions and conversations with the characters are SET, they will only talk to you because it's set that way, you can rarely start conversations with the characters which disables you from constantly trying to improve your relationship with your fave characters. It depends on how you view this game, if you want to try it out just for it's survival rpg element, go ahead and try the DEMO on their site, or maybe even because it's a visual novel game set in a world of zombies? Well, if you really like a survival rpg element, i'd rather recommend going to play This War of Mine, as i played through this game, it reminded me of This War Of Mine which had the similar basic functions and aspects, just that This War Of Mine was more interactive but without the visual novel aspects of developing relationships and choosing set choices that are given to you. AND the game won't start occasionally and crashes! My rating of the game in it's current state : 5/10

Don't buy this game! It's incomplete! -_- What a rip off! Hope steam gives my money back. Seriously, I was playing through the game and then it was like "to becontinued"... wtf Most of the time is spent grinding for resouces and then it's buggy too. The game acted like one of my survivors was kidnapped and that I knew one of the bandit guys, but that event never played out for me so I was left confused, and then it just went "to be continued." I feel like I ordered a pizza but it only came as two slices. Like, where's the rest of it? WTF!