State of Decay 2

• A vast open-world where you could establish settlements at a variety of locations.
• Grow crops, construct buildings and secure a livelihood amidst a perilous world.
• Play as a variety of different survivors each with their own skills and abilities. No two communities are ever the same.
• Four different town maps and five difficulty settings allow you to customize your experience into the zombie survival fantasy you crave.
• Customize even further with sliders to dial in your preferred level of zombies, resources, and community spirit
• With co-op multiplayer support, you can visit your friends’ communities and help them through a tough spot, bringing back rewards for your own communities later. Alternate game modes include a full 10-hour narrative campaign and a four-player zombie-slaughtering “siege defense” mode.

We call this a society survival title based on the Hashtag survival generated subgenre described as follows; These titles typically involve managing a group – varied in size- rebuilding their society in the wake of a catastrophe or building up a new life while exploring new territories. Survival here consists of not losing your community members and scavenging for supplies. 

State of Decay 2 has been out since 2020, following the success of State of Decay and State of Decay- Year One Survival Edition. Microsoft revealed State Of Decay 3 at the Xbox Games Showcase in 2020, but we’ve not heard much since. Kotaku dropped a burnout & chaos-filled news article in March of 2022, so perhaps the future- or at least the progress- of SoD 3 is up in the air? What’s really cool about Undead Labs (the studio behind SoD) is that Jeff Strain, one of the founders, worked on World of Warcraft and helped found ArenaNet, which created Guild Wars. 

(I was a big fan of WoW back then, and I love GW2.)

Background aside- while I was aware of SoD 2 over the years, it was never a title I needed to try out. However, the survival genre seems to be slowly pushing me into horror games- because of zombies everywhere- and into these little like… dunno. Community management style games?? You know- the whole gather up your little NPC weebles and guide them around, feed & care for them, all that bullshit. I can’t even keep a cactus alive, so saving a tiny pixel community of lost souls has always been beyond my reach. But between End Zone and Frost Punk... I figured- what’s the worst that can happen? And yanno what- I fucking really enjoy it a ton. I find it a lot more rewarding & immersive than 7 Days to Die - which I was also playing at the time- in terms of exploration and the feel of the world.

Pick it up if you enjoy the freedom to explore, enough zombies to eat you 100x times over, and some hilarious NPC AI.

Website Changelog

• 3/14/23- Changelog added.