When Dead State first shambled its way out of Early Access last December, the game was riddled with glitches. While some of them were certainly amusing (like zombies walking endlessly into walls, blissfully unaware of your party members attacking them), most of the bugs were severely aggravating. Groups of zombies spawning way too close to your party, characters refusing to acknowledge you’ve done certain things, random crashes; they heavily brought down the experience.
The worst bug I experienced during my time with Dead State involved the character Joel: a well-meaning but bumbling cop. I went on a scavenging trip with Joel, and upon returning to the base the game randomly decided Joel was dead. Except there was one little problem: he clearly wasn’t. He was in the same place as always, no doubt annoyed by everyone pretending he wasn’t there. I took a massive morale drop, got chewed out for his non-occurring death by other characters, and I ultimately had to reload a much earlier save file to continue playing.
Anyway! On Wednesday, DoubleBear Productions released the largest update to Dead State yet. Calling it an update may be a bit of an understatement, as it seems to heavily improve the entire game. Sort of like the jump from the first Witcher game’s original rough launch version to the later, much better Enhanced Edition. Alongside fixing the random crashes and pathfinding issues, the update adds in a bunch of features. New locations, overhauled combat systems, hardcore mode, yada yada yada.
You can check out the full patch notes here. When I reviewed Dead State back in February, I found it a well-written experience marred by troublesome bugs and repetitive gameplay. From what I’ve played of the game since the update, it definitely seems like the bugs have been squashed.
