Hands-On: Dead Years
It’s not just about the big AAA releases here at PAX; there’s lots of great indie fare here, too. One interesting indie game I played today is called Dead Years, a cel-shaded open-world action RPG. It tells the story of a world wracked by a virus outbreak and plunged into apocalypse. You play as one of the survivors, roaming the world, completing objectives, and fighting to stay alive along the way. You’re not alone, however; you’re accompanied by your faithful canine companion, and this dog introduces some dynamic new gameplay possibilities. Both you and your dog are playable, and each character can level up independently. That said, they also level up together, and the game tasks you with managing their individual upgrades while simultaneously improving how they work as a team.
In the brief time I spent with the game, it looks to be in pretty good shape. The upgrade trees and team development system promise to be deep and well-structured, though I can’t speak for how they actually work. Movement feels fairly natural, though it did take me some time to get the hang of combat as the game doesn’t do a great job of telling you when you’re hitting an enemy or when an enemy is hitting you. You can switch between the human and the dog at will, and this opens up some interesting gameplay opportunities; zombies and enemies will never attack the dog, for example, so you can use him to scout ahead and gain a tactical advantage. Of everything I saw, I was actually most impressed by its graphical style; heavily inspired by the likes of Borderlands, the cel-shaded look of the game makes it more colorful and expressive than most post-apocalyptic games of yore, and it will likely look better as time goes on.
Considering there’s only two people working on the game, Dead Years is pretty ambitious. Since it’s still in development, it’s not quite the polished final product its creators want it to be, but I was intrigued enough by its scale and premise to want more. Keep an eye out for it on Steam Early Access over the next few months. We’ll have an interview with Nataliya and Philip, the duo behind Dead Years, for you tomorrow.
