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Rather Be Dead is a perspective top-down open world game set in an urban environment where the primary element of danger is Zombies.

My vision is to create a game which is not another action-driven zombie shooter. I want players to explore, cooperate, build, and struggle to survive. I want players to fear zombies not just mow them down (even though the above video shows that, as it's an early build). To that end, mechanics like sound propagation and light/heat will play their parts in attracting or repelling potential enemies, living and dead. Managing supplies of food and equipment will be very important, as will managing any NPCs that you may encounter in your travels which may be Hostile, Friendly or neutral and could change from one to the other at a moments notice based on your actions.

A big part of that vision is letting players experience that with friends and strangers online. I've already built a significant portion of the networking layer and have basic multiplayer games working with a standalone server, but it's not ready for public consumption yet.

  • All multiplayer cities will be persistant, which means you can log in and continue exactly where you left off.
  • Very large playing area, at the moment a 'large' map is about 100km by 100km filled with large road networks, separate towns and plenty of large empty countryside. Example road network generated from game code, not by hand: Ratherbe.de
  • Form a clan with your friends and work together to build your base.
  • Survive encounters with other player & NPC clans.
  • Rescue NPC's and recruit them to get access to better facilities for your base (engineer, doctor, police officer, teacher etc)
  • Drive around with your friends! Large range of vehicles including bicycles, motorbikes, cars, busses and low-end aircraft like light helicopters and single-prop planes. Use them for scouting, supply runs or just getting between A and B.
  • Fully destroy and build in the world you live in. All buildings, props and items are able to be destroyed for materials and your own creations are able to be built up in their place. Players will be able to blow holes in houses if they so desire. Multi-floor buildings have been considered, but adding them would depend on how easy/hard it becomes to traverse staircases.
  • Set traps and alarms using proximity sensors, trip wires, light sensors. Trigger explosives, radio broadcast, spotlights, alarm bells, and more. Interaction with the environment is a very high priority.

Current State of Rather Be Dead

Rather Be Dead is in a pre-alpha state which is very early on in development; the majority of the content and mechanics are not yet in the game, so it looks a bit ugly and contains plenty of bugs and missing features. The artwork is especially placeholder right now as I focus more on mechanics and gameplay before I lock down the art style and assets, which will occur some time in the future.

Right now you can download and play version 0.1.14 (see links below) in which you can walk around a very small (1155m x 1300m) static area which is a testing ground for various features, shoot zombies and find and throw axes.

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Added:
* Players can now take damage and die, then can respawn.
* First-pass integration of buildings (non-editable)
* Desaturation effect when low health
* Zombies chase and attack the player ([B003])
* Sound events triggered through the AI system, so all zombies within 200m will react to a loud gunshot
* Almost all content is packed inside a single content file for performance and ease of updating.
* Launcher now shows download percentages per file and overall (from this version onward, old manifests don't contain enough information)

Changed:
* Day/night cycle lengthened, from 10 minutes per 24 hours to 20 minutes per 24 hours.
* Pistol and Axe now have cooldowns to prevent spamming
* Axe damage has a chance to single-shot zombies
* Zombies search distance reduced, but sight distance increased. It means you need to be closer to them for them to see you, but will chase you for longer.
* Updated the logo in-game and in the browser
* Updated the installer with better look and feel, fixed the icon not appearing on the shortcut

Fixed:
* Next/Previous/Direct inventory buttons causing an invalid inventory state, crashing the game ([B007])
* UI elements not properly positioning when the window is resized ([B001])

Discuss here: Forum.ratherbe.de

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Rather Be Dead installer

Rather Be Dead installer

Full Version 1 comment

This is the installer for Rather Be Dead, all versions. Upon completing the install, execute the launcher and it will automatically download the most...

Post comment Comments  (0 - 10 of 14)
vol4ok
vol4ok

Wheres updates ?

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slapStick
slapStick

Looking promising, i better check IndieDB more often, this made my day :) //Zombiefan

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SamSky
SamSky

Probably is not an issue with some people but I got near no fps while running this game :P Any suggestions?

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JaseDeacon Creator
JaseDeacon

What kind of graphics card do you have? If you're unsure, the log file that the game generates contains hardware information which is located at P;PDATA%\RatherBeDead\game.log (just place that text in Start -> Run and press enter)

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mechwarrior24
mechwarrior24

I think it's fantastic that so many zombie survival games are popping up now, specially ones based on proper survival and not just arcade. Screenshots are quite interesting, reminds me of Project Zomboid in 3D. Which is a good thing.

Hopefully it'll have a singleplayer mode though?

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JaseDeacon Creator
JaseDeacon

Thanks. Yep there is already a singleplayer mode.

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mechwarrior24
mechwarrior24

Awesome!

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Defuser222
Defuser222

:(it's dosn't work...nothing changes when i start RatherBeDeadLauncher.exe.

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JaseDeacon Creator
JaseDeacon

Hi, When you start the launcher, do you see the Rather Be Dead logo with some buttons? Or is it just an error? If it's an error then it's likely that you need the frameworks installed (.NET 4.0 and XNA 4.0, included with the installer)

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Defuser222
Defuser222

.NET 4.0 and XNA 4.0 are installed on my XP SP3, launcher gives me any logo or error...in processes it just appears for second.

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JaseDeacon Creator
JaseDeacon

I attempted to do some testing on XP today as I've never tried to run it on XP before, and it did fail. I'm not sure why at this point in time but I'll see if I can find some time to do more tests.

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Karion
Karion

Yep it looks like in xp doesn't work at all u.u

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