Urban Strife - turn-based zombie survival RPG

[rusty_shackleford]

If only it was possible for rpgs to have combat and writing.

 

[Alienman]

the writing is pretty good in JA2. It's actually one of the things that made the game so memorable, more than the combat that is.

All Renaissance titles had good writing because they were developed before educational and cultural decline became full throttle. But you don't play JA2 or Urban Strife because of the writing. The tactical combat in this game is excellent, but it is going to need a few patches.

I don't know about that. I mean, the combat is great, but I really wanted something similar as the Dead State setting. So I hope that the story will be intriguing/a fun read. Narrative + Gameplay would make for some something really stand-out (for once).

 

[ropetight]

I think we need to manage expectations for a Urban Strife story.
Zombie apocalypse is just fairly narrow subgenre of postapocalypse so saturated and overdone by now that just doing it is already the capitulation of creativity.
Those expecting originality and freshness from the writing of the zombie game in the current year can join superhero fans in their waiting for second coming of groundbreaking comic book (gender and race swapping ain't it).
All we can hope for writing in final release is that writing will not hurt our braaaiiinsss.

But, in the meantime, there is sneaking behind hordes of mindless biters, tactical combat and gun porn, so fuck the story in this case!

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

Chris Avellone was too cheap for our indie budget. We've emailed Hemingway and Erich Maria Remarque already. As soon as they respond we'll be rocking.
On a serious note, we do plan to have native speakers go over dialogues and texts and yes, there will be proof-reading that will get rid of most of the typos and errors.

PS: If you had already figured the story behind Urban Strife from the prologue, wouldn't that be true bad story telling?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Chris Avellone was too cheap for our indie budget.

Might want to get a new quote on this.

....I'm being serious.

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

Chris Avellone was too cheap for our indie budget. We've emailed Hemingway and Erich Maria Remarque already. As soon as they respond we'll be rocking.
On a serious note, we do plan to have native speakers go over dialogues and texts and yes, there will be proof-reading that will get rid of most of the typos and errors.

PS: If you had already figured the story behind Urban Strife from the prologue, wouldn't that be true bad story telling?

How doth thee answer the charge of woke-ing out?

 

[Edgetard]

If only it was possible for rpgs to have combat and writing.

You're asking for too much in this day and age just cope like I do and pretend owlcat is the best we can get

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

We paint the world as we see it. Pompous pretentious heiress will speak like a pompous pretentious heiress, an uneducated redneck will speak like an uneducated redneck and a chinese agent that wants to pass for a poor immigrant will speak like a poor immigrant.

If that's woke, we might have different definition of wokeism.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Is there going to be an updated demo available or is the one on steam updated?

 

[Edgetard]

We paint the world as we see it. Pompous pretentious heiress will speak like a pompous pretentious heiress, an uneducated redneck will speak like an uneducated redneck and a chinese agent that wants to pass for a poor immigrant will speak like a poor immigrant.

If that's woke, we might have different definition of wokeism.

I hate to say it but you actually gave me a tinge of hope for this game now...
Don't disappoint me please I consume the garbage of other devs constantly getting disappointed i cant stand the feeling it's like stepping in poo endlessly

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

Is there going to be an updated demo available or is the one on steam updated?

What's online now is the demo we've had back in December, for #TBS festival. With some fixes, but still the same thing.

For NextFest we'll have a build that includes all the feedback we've received, plus our planned economy upgrades. We're talking a lot of QoL upgrades and a lot of interfaces redesigned.

On the RPG part, we begun adding more actors, spreading the lore between them and trying to avoid the wall-of-text that you were confronted with when you just started. Do note that even the NextFest iteration only barely touches on your characters' reactions to each other. Everything is told pretty much through main avatar's interaction and your team will seem mute. That will change. Probably once we get hashing out the perks/specializations and we'll sort out the writing for each individual too. We are more concerned now with having missions script work properly than with style.

 

[PanteraNera]

Gave the demo a spin.
As others have mentioned, the writing has a lot to be desired, right now it feels "cheap".
I hope it does not scare people away because the combat is excellent. I am not sure when I had as much fun the last time and to be honest, it probably was with Jagged Alliance 2. Also I really like the visuals.
I actually would say, everything looks very promising, but the writing.

 

[Harthwain]

What's online now is the demo we've had back in December, for #TBS festival. With some fixes, but still the same thing.

I do hope you fixed up the whole aiming thing - I couldn't find information about how to aim at specific body parts, despite the game telling me that aiming for the head is best way of dealing with zombies. It wasn't shown even in the controls menu (where you can map the keys to your liking).

 

[PanteraNera]

What's online now is the demo we've had back in December, for #TBS festival. With some fixes, but still the same thing.

I do hope you fixed up the whole aiming thing - I couldn't find information about how to aim at specific body parts, despite the game telling me that aiming for the head is best way of dealing with zombies. It wasn't shown even in the controls menu (where you can map the keys to your liking).

It is shift + LMB.
I think it says that in the tutorial (right after the car incident)?

 

[Harthwain]

It is shift + LMB.
I think it says that in the tutorial (right after the car incident)?

I must have missed it. I literally tried all the keys, except for Shift, and couldn't find the info about it anywhere else, even on the internet. God damn it.

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

We actually addressed that in the NextFest build and now the aiming cursor is more explicit.

 

[PanteraNera]

USG_Mucifikatorul
What are your plans on weapon attachments?
Will you go for attachment slots, or will it be a "crafting recipe" like gun + silencer = silenced gun.

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

Most likely we'll go with attachment slots, classic JA2 style.

 

[PanteraNera]

Most likely we'll go with attachment slots, classic JA2 style.

Oh please do! Or even better 1.13 style.

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

We can't go with the v1.13 style straight from the box, modders need room to work too, you know...

 

[PanteraNera]

We can't go with the v1.13 style straight from the box, modders need room to work too, you know...

I totally understand, JA2 style is good enough for me.

Honestly I am surprised, you and the team really did a good job on the game, when I play it (5 hours so far on hardcore), it is such a throwback to JA2 and that comes not easily from me. There hasn't been a true JA2 successor for me. The last game I was looking forward to, was Phoenix Point and that ... didn't go well to say it nicely.

But for real, I like the visuals, I like the HUD (which needs some more work), I like the animations, I like the sound and the music but most of all, the combat feels so satisfying and old-school in a very good way.
Urban State just made it on top of my top3 anticipated games (1. Urban State, 2. Homicidal All-Stars, 3. Jagged Alliance 3).

And I am just thinking if Jagged Alliance 3 is a let down (which is very possible to me), maybe bears pit picks up on Urban State and mod it to become the true JA (1.1)3!

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

Well maybe we can at least scare the JA3 devs into making their game modding-friendly too with our SDK. They don't seem very keen on it.

 

[agentorange]

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck ja 1.13

 

[Eyestabber]

Played the demo for a bit, my impressions: I like that aiming for the head or legs costs the same as a regular (torso) shot. It never made sense to me why would a headshot be more expensive, like in fallout. Overall the base of the game's mechanics seem solid, but I have a few gripes. For starters, the tutorial says zombies are slow except...they aren't? Zombies move about the same as one of my guys? That's not being slow, a horde can close the gap in a single turn, which might be "challenging" but doesn't feel right at all. There's also WAY too many empty containers that just feel like tedious clicking. Looting could be less painful than it currently is. Also, WHY must dialogue keep dodging your click? Why can't it always show up in the same place? And there are Roman larpers in the game whose leader calls himself "Caesar"...? Ok, it's not my ass for suing so it's...fine, I guess?

As for the writing, it's not great, but not woke bs either (so far). Only thing they cucked out was on adding "body types" instead of simply "sex".

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

Well, let's say zombies can't sprint so that would make them a bit slower than your guys. A basic advice would be: don't trigger hordes. They're bad for the health. Or for your ammo reserves.
The empty containers were addressed I think (I know our programmer had a solution in mind, not sure it's implemented for NextFest).
And you can click anywhere on the screen to get to the next dialogue line so it doesn't matter where the pop-up boxes appear. It's not obvious, we know (maybe the CLICK TO CONTINUE should read CLICK ANYWHERE TO CONTINUE but it's a bit long)
Lino Cesare thinks he's heir to Caesar, he was/is a mobster, there's nobody to tell him cosplaying Roman legions is ridiculous. Actually there was this one guy who made fun of him, and now he's living in that empty pool, feeding on corpses.