Dead But Alive! Southern England

This review is about the second edition.

A very small game, with very short story, and boring repetitive tasks to do each game day.

I finished the game in 3 hours. And you should consider that I spend at least half an hour learning and understanding the game, and then restarting.

The story is very small. If it was a visual novel, it would be over in less than an hour. And the amount of images would be very low (less than 100 for sure, perhaps as few as 50.)

The story doesn’t end, but leaves you in the start of the search for your daughter.

I don’t remember for sure, but I think I finished the game in 60 to 90 game days. The game forces you each day to do the same menial task over and over: Click on several locations on the maps (I would say about 15-20) to find out the estimated risk and reward for each location, and then chose were to spend your actions. And the risk and reward is not out on plain site, you have to read a text to understand it!

There is a home base with tasks, that are a complete waste of time and do not add anything to the story, but waste resources and delay you from finishing the game.

I got it at 80% discount, and still find this a wasted purchase…

I was looking to install a game I have not played in a while, and I know for certain it will not be this game.

I can not recommend this game, in fact I would go as far as saying to avoid it even if it is on sale at a greatly reduced price. There are little to no redeeming features of this awkward mix of zombie survival and visual novel, supposedly this is episodic but part 1 was released over three years ago at the time of typing this review and there have been no significant updates or news, and to be honest it is hardly surprising given just how poor this game is.

Avoid it,

Honestly a very fun experience, and a zombie apocolypse story with a unique playing style. I don't think I've seen a zombie game quite like this one. Well done and diverse characters and fun romance scenes. Some lacklusters components, very short, and a questionable ending though. All together a 7.5/10

Game has not been finished, and no responses to questions about the planned ending that were asked in January. Short, kinda enjoyable, but the abrupt unfinished end ruins it for me.

Tags: Boards & Cards
Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library

TLDR: Confused title. Tossed into the amiguous Board Game category for that reason.
Strategy Ressource Management Visual Novel, Skyrim Lockpicking hybrid with rpg zombie survival elements.
Narrative does not salvage or wrap the elements together.

Manage 5 ressources by expending actions across exploration, survival tasks, managing camp and assessing risk for encounters. Spend action points to do stuff, resting consumes food, camp upgrades require materials etc. The minigames for combat, or salvaging ressources are slot machines and a ghetto version of skyrim's lockpicking. You get choice and consequence visual novel style sections that can alter how close you are to other NPC survivors. Its a barebones implementation at best. There are a few pre-scripted events and some hints of a personal bio for each character but after seeing what the fully fledged simulation mode had to offer I did not care to bother checking out the version with all of that content stripped out just for the so called story as I do not believe the setting, quality of the writing and level of animation deserves it. The game is filled with static images with no animation whatsoever. The sound design was simple but appropriate. For a better simulation play Zafehouse Diaries. For a better narrative experience play Telltale The Walking Dead.

I love visual novels, and love zombie games wih resources and group managing. And so I really wished I could recommend this game but I really can't.

The first biggest issue, is that the game is short or incomplete. While is not uncommon games that have are launches as only chapter 1, this one is sold as full price complete game and not advertised as a chapter 1 of a story or work in progress. You can finish the game in one sit in a few hours (5-9 hours gameplay I would say, even less if you rush things) and there's a bug where you literaly skip a part of the story straigh to the end, may you want to do it or not.
The game was described as "As an ex-military officer looking to rebuild your relationship with your teenage daughter" but said daughter is barely seen apearing in a single scene the entire game. Before the end when you -can't- rescue her and she apear on "scenes of next chapter" like moment.

The story is interesting, only major issue is that a lot of the interactions with your group members are pretty random, sometimes members of the group apear wanting to talk to you in a new day, and the small story they tell it's cool, but being random if you need to load a previous save (or the game crash and need to rollback to the previous night) you lose those relation progress. That make hard too to actually choose when you want to get closer or have a relationship with someone.

The resources management portion of the game is interesting and even fun, but can be pretty frustrating some moments, as the resources that apear on the map are random, sometimes causing a shortage of food that can not be avoided but by luck (as you may find food while collecting other resources) what can be annoying when you're "working hard" to keep everyone fed and in a single day everything go down, sometimes for the next day be all fixed for a lot of food apearing (or not).

On mechanics, I've played just the 2nd edition, that don't have the fight roulette or lockpick system, so can't really say about it. Maybe I'll try to play a the story a 3rd time to try the 1st edition and see it. On the 2nd edition it's story only, you can never lose a VIP member of the group in combat, but the no-VIP survivors will at random still get hurt or die.

As I said in the start, I really want to recommend this game, and it is actually kinda fun to play, if you get cheap in a sale or something is actually worty spending a few hours on it, maybe, but have in mind this is just a "chapter 1" the story ending with a ton loose ends (almost all if not all).

If the developers eventually finish the story, be on update, DLC or continuation of the game would be 100% worthy playing, but the unfinished story while interesting leave you hanging in the end right now.

Hat's off to you, Niels Bauer Games.

This game had lasting consequences, nonlinear gameplay, mysteries that were fun puzzles, moral choices, and even romance. To top it off, it had fun resource management and risk assessment. Artistically, the game is beautiful. The story took itself seriously and the characters were interesting. It's one of the few games I made it to the end of.

It's fun for what it is. But the dev is as gone as it gets.

Niels Bauer's biggest series was "Smugglers," the next "Empires and Dungeons." They also made "TV Manager" (TV Tycoon).

And then, times began changing. Dev tools to make games became more common. Unity, unreal engine, etc. They were no longer one of the few indie developers. They were one of many. To survive in this business, he had to diversify.

He chose to focus on beautiful 2d art and story, with their traditional nonlinear gameplay. Consider it a telltale game with more emphasis on resource management.

The game was released in late 2015. Then it was re-released in 2016, and rebuilt in Renpy as "version 2."

To my disappointment, version 2 didn't work for me. After hours of entertaining gameplay, the ending sequence couldn't be started due to a bug. I went back to version 1, which I found was both graphically and gameplaywise better. In a way this wasn't so bad. It was different enough that I didn't want to give up on it.

A year passes, and the dev aggressively pins his hopes on Smugglers. They were initially very attentive and supportive to the users who played this game, but now chose to ignore most of the forums on Dead but Alive.

You went to his website and clicked forum? It took you to the Smugglers 5 greenlight page. You went to the "Updates" section? It took you to the smuggler 5 bundle. Don't believe me? Well go to their website right now.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180412140559/http://www.nielsbauergames.com/deadbutalive.html

Yes, that's a web.archive of their now closed down webpage. The last screenshots were of them asking for an 80% discount sale on the game. But other than that, it looks identical to the first screenshot. They never gave us an update on this game and where it was going. In fact, they had another website, but it would redirect you to "Niels Bauer Bundle."

I tried emailing him a while back, but postmaster told me he couldn't be found.

It seems the last posts of the dev were in 2018 asking for help on a gamekit forum.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197971133204/posthistory/

He's been completely silent for four years, and avoided discussing his game for 6. But even when he wasn't, according to users, he would delete complaints about Smugglers 5, netting him negative reviews. Perhaps he just broke? Gave up? Lost interest?

The reason that although I liked the game, I can't recommend it is that the game ends on a note "TO BE CONTINUED" but it won't be. It's dead and dead.

I hope one day, the developer will stop by, and toss out some ideas for how the sequel would have gone and how the game would end..

I wanted to like this game, alot. It broke my heart when the classic ver would not launch. I banished the game to the back of my steam library until I saw that a new edition had come out.
The original ver still doesnt work. The new ver, frankly, with the combat system removed, seems arbitrary and capricious. I honestly don’t think that any of the game mechanics work. Worse the lives of the people in your group quickly become unimportant. They are simply a matter of stats, and you frankly are better off having them die off than spend a few days injured, consuming food and unable to work.
This game honestly feels like a poorly thought out knockoff of Zafehouse: Diaries. Which frankly is a much better choice if you want a procedurally generated zombie survival VN.

Review based on 2nd edition of the game

As a big fan of visual novels and zombies, I was excited to get this one. The classic, TWD inspired story about the group of survivors with tough moral choices meets the easily approachable format of visual novel should be an easy win in my book.

Unfortunately, the great (if not the most innovative) idea is hindered by less than stellar execution, and while "Dead But Alive" is far from bad, I cannot reccommend it for the full price.

Apart from game's length (about 2 hours), the storyline is not complete - the game ends with "to be continued" and it's not clear whether the next episodes are coming. That's the main problem of the game - lack of content and lack of variety. Both the the resource management (managing the camp of survivors) and visual novel (choices, romances) aspects have not enough depth. There isn't enough control of the survivors - you cannot assign them tasks or roles; it's not even possible to dismiss them after they join your ranks (unless it's driven by the story), so they end up eating your food until the end. With so limited control, you're not going to feel like a boss. The game also suffers from technical issues (for instance, clicking on any resorce image leads to script error), but it runs well enough on Win7.

Visual novel part of the game is quite short - there are some decisions and moral choices to be made, but despite their serious tone, the game doesn't let you feel their weight upon you. And while characters look interesting, there's too little interaction and dialogue for them to really come alive. Romance part, from my experience, is not an inch deeper than that - a few dialogue lines and one scene per character. You can be involved with as many NPC's as you wish without any consequences, which makes the whole thing even less believable and less exciting.

Despite all negative stuff, I enjoyed "Dead But Alive!" to a degree. It can be fun for a while, it has nice visuals, a variety of characters and a promise of grim, post-apocalypse world waiting to be explored, but unfortunately, it doesn't fully deliver. With the recent update, however, there is a glimmer of hope that developers will fix the bugs and add more content (or change the pricing) in the future, and create a bigger, better sequel that would finally let me party Rick Grimes style.

This is a fun game, but it's both too long and too short. There's alot of VIPs, many of whom are sort of useless. If they aren't as good as a common party member, what's the point? There's stuff you can do in the game that you never need. On the other hand, you can only expand to a certain point because it's impossible to get more food. There's content in the game that I never came across.

When the story gets to a major turning point, suddenly the game ends. There's supposed to be a sequel, which doesn't exist so far as I know. It's cool that you can build some stuff up, but I want to be able to use it. And I want to be able to build more than I can.

Still, this game is really fun to play once on a free afternoon. Buy this game when it's on sale, but not at full price.

The game itself is interest but the problem is, it's not finish. Story is not complete, some scene don't have background yet and they said it gonna be major update since March. I don't recommend the game unless they have really complete the game.

The first thing to say about this visual novel, is that it has warts. The default text is continuous even though there is no way to back up and read text that you have advanced to. The combat is a slot machine, which I personally find asinine. The advancement of text is unreliable.

With all of these faults, why do I recommend this visual novel? Because the storyline is so engrossing that I had to play until I finished. That's right, I played this novel for over five hours straight.

This visual novel has a lot of room for improvement, but I hope that Highcliffe Media Publishing works the bugs out of this novel (and makes the finished product free to those of us who bought it). I will say that Dead But Alive! Southern England should be cinsidered an unfinished product now, because of its flaws. I will say that buying it now is worth the products shortcomings, and I hope that the developers will finish it with an upgrade at no charge to the present customers.

Honestly? It is an interresting idea of a game.
Fighting for your daily lifes, killing zombies with a slot machine and a bit of a good eye when to press the button to slow it down.

BUT

It looks like an early access game, not only because its not finished, but there are still a few bugs in the system.
You can start the came now if you read the discussion part, where its explained easily,(after always crashing when trying to start) but that something like that is even necessary is a big no go. And there are some guys I should be able to talk to, but nothing happens when I press the button.
Some dialogues are a bit short, and there could be more moralty choices.
The game gets easily boring after 25 days of killing zombies with a slot machine, breaking locks with a short minigame and looking for resources. The storyline of the mainstory is incredibly short, and some of the sidestories are interesting, but there are to big gaps between them, so you will stop the game out of boredom before even getting to them.
Music is (more or less?) one soundtrack, and the drawing of the characters is nothing special.

I've been a fan of Winter Wolves games for quite some time now. I've played all of their titles that allow same sex (M+M) relationships and have never been displeased. In this game there are three men and three women (I believe?) who may be romanced; I chose two of the men and there were no consequences do to having more than one lover.
The game takes place, for the most part, in a small camp which you must build up defenses for. This requires you to go out into the world and gather food and materials so that you can survive. I found it extremely easy to have more than enough food; I never fell into starvation mode. Gathering materials did eventually become tedious, particularly for the defenses, which get torn down constantly.
Occasionally you will come up against zombies and have to play a ridiculous “slot machine” battle system. I hated the system, but fortunately there is an option to disable it and just focus on the story.
The game is very simple to play, the dialogue is absurd, childish, possessed of terrible grammar and horribly misspelled; the graphics are dreadful.
But please dear reader, these are not actually criticisms. These are factors which make Winter Wolves games sweet, charming, addicting and very fun to play.
I absolutely loved the plot, the romances and the character development. Just a warning however: this game has a “to be continued” to it. You will not meet certain objectives, which I am assuming will come about with a new title.

Not played a whole lot of it, mainly because the Combat system was annoying. The story seem to be worth playing but a combat system more based on playing on a one armed bandit makes it a bit lacking. Save often and the combat wouldnt be that much of a problem but I still found it more annoying, they should have made it into a card game of sorts instead.

6/10

Don't buy this game! It's incomplete! -_- What a rip off! Hope steam gives my money back.

Seriously, I was playing through the game and then it was like "to becontinued"... wtf Most of the time is spent grinding for resouces and then it's buggy too. The game acted like one of my survivors was kidnapped and that I knew one of the bandit guys, but that event never played out for me so I was left confused, and then it just went "to be continued."

I feel like I ordered a pizza but it only came as two slices. Like, where's the rest of it? WTF!

If you enjoyed Tell Tale games then you may enjoy this one... if you also enjoy mini games that serve no point except to give you a chance at killing yourself (cue fight mechanic) then you will definitely enjoy this!

Played for about 4 hours and maybe half an hour into the game the fighting mechanics really started to annoy me so I turned them off and went with the visual novel... enough storyline for 3 and a half hours of visual novel play through... although there were peculiarities with some of the text like repeating a line further into the conversation.

Also, a character may make an exiting the conversation statement but their picture remains as a kind of ... why are you still here... I thought you left a minute ago moment :s

Gathering food and supplies seems to be a bit random... going for a food supply can give 1-18 food (in my game) but the majority of the time I got more food from going after other supplies which was weird.

If I had to give this anything it would be a 3/5 decent storyline... strange text conversations where it hasn't been properly vetted and I'm just not sure whether the supply gathering is meant to be random or not... or if there was something faulty in the coding... but yeah. 3/5 - definitely worth a play through if only for visual novel (the combat system is wweeeeird)

This really is a damn shame. I almost feel bad giving DEAD BUT ALIVE a bad write-up but, despite an enjoyable albeit well-worn zombie drama kicking about beneath the surface, there is just too much wrong with this game.
You don't need to go far to find the first flaw. The game seems to load completely at its own will, often freezing up halfway through the boot process. You can get it to start up quite reliably by launching it in beta but, I mean, for £10.99, should I have to? Did I just pay over a tenner for a pre-release? No. No I didn't.
By far the most serious problem is a bug that regularly afflicts the onscreen dialogue, causing it to fly past like you're watching the subtitled version of the Busta Rhymes videography. That alone is truly unforgivable for a game that markets itself and plays as a visual novel. A VN where you can't read the story is about as enjoyable as playing an FPS as a double amputee.
The game itself has numerous balancing problems and a tedious combat system that I go into more detail with in the video below but even before all that, DEAD BUT ALIVE is an unplayable technical nightmare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42wjhsE7Hcc

Well, where should i start. The game has it's pros and cons but it's cons outweigh the pros for me to decide that it is a terrible game for now? Not everything has been released yet "Coming Soon" with only 3 hours of gameplay that gets a little boring after a while due to the repetition in farming/grinding materials.
Personally, i like these kind of simulation rpg games but Dead but alive just doesn't fit it, there is no feel of adventure, action, there is nothing that really stands out in the game besides the fact it is a visual novel type game. The combat system is plain right terrible, with the use of a scroll wheel to determine how much damage you can inflict to zombie. Oh and yes, a visual novel game it is, there is romance, you can develop relationships through the actions you make BUT with dead or alive, there isn't much interaction with the characters, all interactions and conversations with the characters are SET, they will only talk to you because it's set that way, you can rarely start conversations with the characters which disables you from constantly trying to improve your relationship with your fave characters.
It depends on how you view this game, if you want to try it out just for it's survival rpg element, go ahead and try the DEMO on their site, or maybe even because it's a visual novel game set in a world of zombies? Well, if you really like a survival rpg element, i'd rather recommend going to play This War of Mine, as i played through this game, it reminded me of This War Of Mine which had the similar basic functions and aspects, just that This War Of Mine was more interactive but without the visual novel aspects of developing relationships and choosing set choices that are given to you.
AND the game won't start occasionally and crashes!
My rating of the game in it's current state : 5/10

Update 06/26/2016, I had noticed that the game was recieving some much needed updates and decided to download the beta to see if it had improved the over all quality of the game. I should note here as well that Highcliffe Media Publishing, the developer of the game, has taken over continued support from Winter Wolves earlier this year.
The text is now black text on a white background, instead of the other way around which actually makes reading easier on the eyes and an issue I didn't really have a problem with previously, but much welcomed change.
When a character is speaking multiple lines will appear in the same text box instead of one at a time, preventing the awakardly cut off sentences of the past, there's also the ability to scroll back to reread anything you may have missed. All in all these improvements are great and make the game very playable. I do look forward to playing through this game once again.

7/10

For those interested I have left my original review below.
**********Original Review****************
Since I normally like games from Winter Wolves, which are pretty cheesy to begin with, and Visual Novels I had no issues purchasing this game. However once I started playing, the single lines of text would simply scroll to fast. Also being a single line of text made reading awkward as it would cut some sentences off. The story itself was pretty cringeworthy right off the bat. The combat system was pointless and should've either been rethought, or left out of the game entirely.


2/10