Dead State

Character Creation consists of two stages. Initially, the player chooses their character's gender, 3D appearance, portrait (either from a pre-generated list, uploading an image, or using the custom portrait generator), and name. After this, the player has a choice of either selecting an archetype that fits a certain play style, or distributing character points manually.[3]

Players are able to advance their skills and stats not by killing creatures, but by completing various goals, such as investigating areas, collecting a certain amount of food, resolving a conflict, and so on. Ally characters gain 1 skill point for each day they're at the Shelter, which are automatically distributed based on their preset character personalities. While the player is unable to distribute their points, for some allies, they are able to influence the development of some ally characters based upon their actions.

The maximum level for character development is capped at 20 - by this point, the character will also have reached 170 attribute points. Players may also choose to do certain quests to gain another 30 attribute points, making the maximum points available 200. Experience can still be gained and is used to learn more skills or buy consumable items throughout the game.

Combat in Dead State is fully turn-based, utilizing an Action Point system that draws from a character's Agility stat, and relies on character initiative to determine turn order. It also employs a "Line of Sight" scenario - if no allies or enemies can see each other, they do not appear on the map. Once one is sighted, they appear - but combat does not initiate until the enemy either detects the player or an ally, or the player manually initiates combat.

The player character can select up to three other characters to accompany in the field: early builds of the game experimented with AI-controlled allies,[4] but the end product had fully controllable ally characters.[5] The game also features perma-death, meaning that if one of your allies is killed, they stay dead, and there is no way to revive them. However, if the player character is killed, the game is over.

Dead State features combat against both the undead and other factions of human enemies. While undead only come in two forms - walkers and crawlers - they move at a uniform rate, and are not very dangerous in small numbers. Both allies and enemies can be infected if they are pulled down by the undead and attacked while their health is low, and when killed, infected characters will reanimated as zombies themselves. (Players cannot be infected unless they choose the "Player Infection" mode in the Reanimated update.) Human enemies are far more dangerous, falling into a variety of factions from frightened looters to biker gangs to rogue military - each with their own varying stat and skill levels, weapons, and items.

There are both melee and ranged weapons: any character can use any weapon, but their skill with it will depend on the applicable stats and skills for each (Melee - Strength stat and Melee skill; Ranged - Perception stat and Ranged skill). Melee weapons often have multiple different attacks, which can do variant damage based on a character's angle of attack, and whether or not the target is human or undead. Ranged weapons often lack the multiple different attacks of melee, but some can get modifications that improve their utility in combat.[6]

A key factor within the combat in Dead State is the Noise Meter, which sits on the upper left of the screen and measures how much of a racket is being made. Undead and humans alike are attracted to noise, and raising the Noise Meter too high will result in undead spawning on the edges of the map, and moving towards the source of the sound. Players eventually discover items to allow them to manipulate noise, such as firecrackers and noisemakers, and can utilize them to lure enemies towards one another or away from a lootable area.

Released on May 13, 2015, the free Reanimated update included a significant amount of updates and improvements, including a full combat rebalance, improved animations, better AI, new areas, new gameplay modes, and stability and pathfinding improvements.[7] The free demo of the game was later updated with the Reanimated content as well.[8][9]