State of Decay: YOSE

I have owned this on xbox and re=bought on this platform because the 3rd one has been announced and I think it is worth another play through. It still holds up well. I like the dead is dead and the time pressure mechanics there are so many nuances but I'll let you discover them. Note this is a time sink of a game you can play for days on this one.

A real classic and one of my favourite RPG zombie games I have played.
Also a very cool soundtrack created by the beloved Jesper Kyd (Assassin's Creed).

Would definitely recommend to any old or new fans of the zombie genre.

Great game

Can Lily respectfully stfu

good

Forget the sequel which was terrible. Play this one, you want regret it. A awesome adventure.

State of Decay-ing ass. It looks like ass. It runs like ass. Also there are like 69,000 other zombie games out there to play (which are not quite so ass) so... Don't even bother with this crusty piece of ass.

Recomendo o jogo, muito divertido vale muito a pena.

Great zombie survival horror game. What I really love in System of a Dow... I mean State of Decay 1 the most is the melee combat. Melee is smoother in this game than SOD2 to be honest. Eat some snacks, and kill those zeds with a blunt weapon and you're an unstoppable zombie Terminator until you ran out of stamina regen items.

Pros:
- Great melee combat
- Memorable story and characters
- Controller supported
- Zombie AI is scary and smart
- Good NPC AI, make sure to save them in front of a special freak
- Breakdown DLC has a huge replay value for die hard fans

Cons:
- No Legacy Pool (I understand why)
- No replay value in Lifeline DLC, game automatically deletes your save file after finishing, be careful

I give this game a solid 9/10. I miss Officer Angela Jensen, I can't believe the Lifeline DLC deleted my save and my characters after finishing the main missions :(

My recommendation? Play this game first before you play State of Decay 2's Heartland DLC. You'll understand the story way better with this approach.

For a game that's from 2013, it's really showing its age in 2025 but if you ignore the poor graphics optimization in PC and the games fighting mechanics it will give you a unique experience to the survival zombie game genre.

Some bugs, but extremely entertaining in breakdown mode.

Endless zombie spawning where camera doesn't look which kills all desire to play the game.

For 2015, this was probably a solid sandbox that kept players entertained. But now? It’s a few hours of boredom. Instead of delivering engaging gameplay, the experience quickly devolves into repetition and monotony. At this point, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

5/5 played a ton of this game back on the xbox, got it on pc and it still holds up im glad its not as buggy as some of the reviews were making it to be.

This game is just perfection. The size of the game is very low, and still it manages to have all kinds of fun for zombie fans. It has a beautiful atmosphere, nice driving system, a good base-planning system. and lots of missions and side quests. I have been a fan of zombies and apocalyptic games for a long time, but I can't believe I just found out about this game recently.

I LOVE THE GAME

It's still a good game, but if you're coming from State of Decay 2 then it's going to be a little rough. If you've been playing the sequel recently, I recommend staying off it for a couple of weeks before you begin this one so that your muscle memory doesn't misguide you when playing the original. These two games may be very similar but they're still different in ways that may not seem obvious at first.

Story Mode is still pretty good, though it's something you'll probably do once and that's it unless you lose any of Marcus, Ed or Maya, then you might be compelled to start over again. Breakdown is still the definitive State of Decay experience and is where the game really shines, and for me it's still as addicting as it was when I first played it about 10 years ago. Lifeline on the other hand is rather stressful and at times, very tedious, and if you don't know for sure what you're doing, the game WILL punish you and the experience will become even more agonizing.

Overall the first State of Decay is nevertheless a fun game and a great time, and I write that as someone who's been playing it from the moment it was available on the Xbox Live Arcade up until now when I re-bought the game for PC. That being said I will admit that its been bested by the sequel in many ways, but not completely, no chance. This game does many things better than the second, and Breakdown in my opinion is the very best part of the series; I think if you love State of Decay 2 then it's worth trying out just Breakdown alone if you aren't interested in the full game.

(DO NOTE: one last thing. In Story Mode, you'll eventually receive a mission from Lily asking you to go up back to Mt. Tanner to collect her father's stupid watch; DO THAT MISSION IMMEDIATELY. Otherwise, the infestation at the Ranger Station will begin spreading to the nearby cabins and camp sites even though you won't be able to see this, and then your survivors will start to run away and go missing which can be a huge pain in the ass since there's a good chance they'll die if you don't receive the mission to save them.)

Harder than I remember, but once you get the hang of it it's challenging and fun!

This game has really shown me the other side of gaming: the one with minimal checkpoints.
If all your playable characters die, you are forced to restart the game from the very beginning, and even though that may seem annoying at first, it makes you see the game differently.

I really love how starting to play this game gave me a nostalgia feeling.
For it being a game that came out in 2013 i must say it is very well put together , eventho the graphics are old it adds to that nostalgia feeling.

OKELAH SERU

Good game. Showing it's age though. SOD2 is better in almost every way except for story and characters.

It’s far from perfect and plagued by technical issues that hold it back.

The graphics, even in this "upgraded" version, feel dated and underwhelming. Textures are muddy, character models are stiff, and the world lacks the polish expected in a re-release. The combat, while functional, is clunky and repetitive, with melee attacks feeling weightless and gunplay lacking precision.

Worst of all, the game is still buggy. Verdict: 2/10, go straight to State of Decay 2 if you want to play the series.

Despite my low playtime on Steam, I have over 100 hours playing on console and this game and Bad Company 2 Vietnam are the sole reasons that got me through a tough time in my life in and out of hospital.

It was such a fresh take on a zombie game back when it realased on Xbox Arcade and it was by chance that I found it just scrolling through looking for games. It was so addicting and immersive, building up your base and scavenging and saying to my friend in party chat “One more search of a building then I’m off to bed” and 4 hours later at 5am Id still be scavenging. Was it a little janky? Of course it was, it was like £8 full price but what it offered help me get past that.

Here on Steam, it is not optimized at alllllll. I get stutters and frame drops, shadows glitching out, glitching animations and running around seems to feel weird, the AI is very glitchy and it just doesn’t feel like the same kind of game with these problems. I’m gonna recommend this as it’s such a good game if you can get it to work and in my opinion better than the sequel as I wasn’t too happy about the direction they were taking, focusing more on the blood plague than actual survival and living off the land so to speak. Basically what would happen in Walking Dead at the very beginning. As I said though if you do go ahead and purchase this, be warned it might not be to your liking with the performance.

Game still holds up. I bought it new on console back in ye olden days. Updated graphics are nice. Be cool if they updated again when/if they drop SoD3

Unique blend of 3rd person shooter and base build/survival. Good storyline, and it is a different experience on replays bc you can use different people. Probably the first game I played with an openly LGBTQ+ person so that's cool. For those concerned there is no sexual stuff in this game just blood and gore.

Dislikes would be building limitations. It's part of the tactics I know but i want to save everyone and rebuild the city or set up a legit second base :D

I had plenty of fun with this title.

The idea of this game is interesting: a post-apocalyptic zombie survial game. But the implementation went very wrong because of a whole series of bad development choices. They tried too much to create the feeling of a hard survival sandbox game, with all the consequences that go with it.
While playing this game a thought was popping in my mind very frequently: "was the developer's wish to create the most frustrating title on earth?". Because that was the feeling while playing this.

I will list here some of the examples why I found the mechanics of this game so frustrating:
- the zombies respawn! what? how on earth is that realistic. in my first playthrough I was naively trying to "thin the herd" by killing hundreds of zombies all around the map, then I realized they respawn and you can't win the game by attricion. there is no end to them
- there is a limited amount of weapons, cars and tools. and they decay and break down. with each precious car you can squash only a limited amount of zombies before the car gets destroyed, so you have to be careful with weapons and cars because like I said, zombies respawn.
- the thing that most I didn't like is that you are bombarded with a large number of main quests and secondary quests at the same time, and they are all time limited. you literally don't know what to do first, and they keep adding more and more. those secondary quests are mostly some crisis that pop up all around like "infection detected in a building", "group of survivors under attack", "dangerous high level zombie detected" etc.......
Those are random events that raise the threat/danger level of the map, so you have to solve them as quickly as possible to lower the danger level to your base.
In my first playthrough I thought it's better to do this secondary quests first, but I was wrong. Those are just random "daily quests" that pop up all the time, you can't resolve them because they will pop up again in another part of the map. In the meantime the timer of the main quests would run out so all the quest line would be messed up. Then I realized that the only way to solve the game is to push through the main quest line, and do just as many "daily quests" as is needed to keep the threat level under control.
- you have to search for all kinds of tools, weapons and resources in the hundreds of buildings of the map, but you actually have very limited time, because as I said you are covered with timed missions to do, so you never have the peace to go from house to house to clear them of resources. in my first playthrough I wanted to be methodical and slowly go from house to house, but this game isn't about that, it isn't about being rational and methodical, it's just frantic time management with the little time you have.
- in a real world scenario a group of survivors would pick a good place for a base, and it would stay there for as long as they can, they would fortify themselves there, develop the base and clear all the buildings nearby and conquer as much space. but in this game you get to stay in a base only for a short time before the story forces you to move somewhere else (to another base), so you can never fortify yourself and slowly develop the surroundings. so all those common sense strategy elements are completely absent.
- there are so many limitations in combat and doing anything: you can run only a small amount before the stamina bar gets to 0 and then the stamina bar gets smaller and smaller so you ultimately can't do anything anymore. so the main character has to rest to restore the stamina bar. also you have to get medical treatment for the infection eveytime your character gets a bite from zombies. all those things need time. and when your main character rests or gets medical treatment you have to play with another character. but you can only chose another character from those people who have "friends status", but they could be currently absent (they could be somewhere scavenging - you can't control other survivors they do what they want, often behaving irrationally, they do dangerous stuff and die and get infected easily), and also they have a much smaller skill set then your main character so it's harder to do anything with them.
- combat is not done well. there are hordes of zombies spawning all the time so I quickly understood that the only effective way is to put them down with cars, while the melee weapons and firearms are ineffective against unending hordes of zombies.
- there is permadeath. in my first playthrough the main character died and the rest of the group didn't have the adequate skills to continue.
It's very hard to describe the feeling while playing this game, but in essence it often was like this: " I can't solve problem A before I solve problem B, but I can't do that because currently I have problems C,D and E....".
In my second playthrough I realized the only way to finish this frustrating game is to rush through the main quests, and so I did. But when you do that you realize that this game is actually quite short when you focus on progressing the story. All the rest is just sand box content: "random daily quests", scavenging etc....
There are dozens of mods online made by the fan base that correct all the frustrating elements of this game. That fact alone tells you how badly the developers screwed up many parameters, making this game a horrible mess.

i bought after playing state of decay 2 and i loved state of decay 2 but didnt like this

I would like the game as a classic zombie game these day, but it gives me eye strain and makes me nauseous.

The camera is really bad. It zooms in and out too easy, and is too tight to the mouse. If there were a mod/patch to make the camera and controls like State of Decay 2, it'd be much better game as it'd actually be pla able for more than 30 minutes at a time.

For someone who has 914 hours in State of Decay 2 on the Windows PC Store since September of 2022, I must say I really enjoy the franchise. So this was on sale on here, and I had never played the this one before. So the base game is harder than standard zone of State of Decay 2, this one has no difficulty settings, but regular settings between both games, this one is harder. The mission structures with only being able to do one at a time is different, but understandable because this is the first game.

This game runs on Crytek Engine, with the second one being in Unreal Engine. Can't drive through fences in this one, trying to kill a Juggernaught with a vehicle will burst the tires, and will destroy vehicle if done from the front, but can still be done even with the car running on the rims. So try to use the back of the vehicle to get most zombies, if a vehicle flips over and you can't flip it back with another vehicle, it will explode later, so keep that in mind for anyone new coming in to play.

I'm playing Breakdown currently after beating the base game, and then beating Lifeline, I have not gotten everyone away safely in LIfeline, but it's fun to keep on trying again until you get everyone. I like Lifeline better than Daybreak in State of Decay 2 due to more people on your side, and you can drive around the city and do missions, so that is different. If does have a time crunch element to it with the sieges coming to attack the base.

This game still holds up well now in 2025, just good fun that you can play over and over. So if you wanted to get into the State of Decay Franchise this is a good place to start. It will be challenging, but it's nothing you can't handle, keep on and have fun doing so!

I played it after state of decay 2 and of course the sequel is much better. Still, i like that there is a story here and that you care a little bit about the characters.

I have a lot more hours on this game on my Xbox from over the years. It's a very fun game where I spend a lot of time just playing and trying to survive. I typically just come back every so often to play Breakdown, which is the only reason why I play this game still compared to State of Decay 2. The feeling of going as high as you can while things get increasingly difficult is what I enjoy and wish they had a mode with for State of Decay 2.

Yes, there is some bugs as a lot of people complain about and it can make things frustrating, but I still enjoy the premise you are given. The AI aren't the brightest but it is funny to watch them try and sometimes act like a fool. Overall, I'd say if you wanna try out Breakdown, you definitely should. In terms of the story though, just skip it. It's not interesting or fun because the difficulty is set to easy the entire time.

Overall I'd rate State of Decay: YOSE a 7/10.

brilliant

Not for me.

It was a really fun game it wasn't extremely hard or hardcore survival but very arcady and enjoyable. Had a blast playing through the game. It did had some jank and some bugs but other than that it was a fun experience.

I just feel like no progress keep doing missions but don't see an end or story or anything guy has a lot of bugs just feels a go here do this do that simulator

Complete clumsy garbage game. All you know about FPS is wrong. consistently ineffective weapons and far to many zombies will consistently keep you frustrated. They appear from nowhere walk through doors and will consistently over power you. They will never stop spawning even when you have spent all your materials time and cars to clear them. Dumbest game ever will not give your fingers a break for a second outside a safe zone.

A must play game

Great Game.. :)

Sometimes I boot up this game instead of the sequel don't tell undead labs it's our secret. what's in that watch tower?

I giggled and wiggled my feet every time I played this, 10/10

feels pretty old novadays, but still good

terrible

Liked: Different zombies that you will fight.
Liked: Able to gather resources from places of interest.
Liked: Different choices & challenges that seem to come.

Disliked: This game is not co-op.
Disliked: challenges/quests seem to be hard to do when trying to scavage.

Perfect zombie survival game if the plan involves duct tape, terrible driving and accidentally recruiting a guy named Dale who immediately gets eaten on a farm countryside and you have to put him down saying "I'm sorry, brother". Love watching the communities fall apart.

Seems cool, but in the first 15 minutes of playing I had three completely different bugs that either had me stuck in aiming a gun and zoomed in unable to do anything.

That's also not accounting for the fact that mouse and keyboard had irremovable mouse acceleration so it's essentially unplayable without a keyboard.

I like the game. I hope my hundred plus hours speaks to how much I liked it. The only thing is, the game is super buggy and can be frustrating. There are times that while on missions, despite there being multiple people with you, somehow no one helps you while you're being attacked? The are also times when you go inside a room and whoever you are with follows you, but they just stand near the door making your character unable to leave and you're just running around the room hoping they would move. It's frustrating because you just wanna play the game and half the time you are just running around trying to find a work around to these awful design to the game. Considering that this game is about 10 years old, these things should have been fixed already but I guess the devs don't want to do that. So maybe just check out the 2nd game. Or better yet, play something else from different devs who cares about their players.

Best zombie game what i have played so far.

Fun Classic Game.

i wish i could play sod2 but my laptop cant run it, sod1 is good enough for my ocd