Die2Nite : A Zombie Game for People Who Don't Like Gardens or Guns

Dec 07 2010
Gaming
Reviews

Die2Nite : A Zombie Game for People Who Don't Like Gardens or Guns
by Cassandra Khaw

Three dead today. I remember hearing the screams last night. I had turned up the radio to block out the cries, the pleas of help and the inevitable crunch of bone and sinew. I was almost surprised when I found out I had been neighbours with one of the three dead - a pathetic little tent really did make a difference. Corpse removal hasn't begun yet; the town's busy arguing about our next construction project. I take it onto myself to drag the body out of the gates. It's the least I can do.

When I come back, I realize the guy had medicine on him. It was still in the alley, splattered with gore but still serviceable. Should I hand it to the bank or keep it for myself? I pocket the container. No one will notice.

We're all too busy worrying about who will die tonight.

Of all the browser-based games I've encountered over the last decade or so, Die2Nite is easily the most intense experience I've seen yet. At a glance, the concept borders on laughably stereotypical. You and thirty-nine other people have been randomly lumped together in a fictional town with a peculiar name. Each night, zombie hordes will launch an earnest attempt to invite you for dinner. It is up to you and your fellow citizens to build up fortification, scavenge raw materials and work together to keep yourselves alive for another day.

Alternatively, you could be a bastard and make full use of the resources in the bank to build yourself a makeshift hovel in the town itself. According to certain sources, building a slave regiment out of your community members is also a perfectly viable way to survive.

But what really makes Die2Nite so unique is the fact that rescue isn't coming. It really is the zombie apocalypse. You're going to die. All of you are going to die. The only question is when.

In spite of how utterly fatalistic the game appears to be, Die2nite is a tremendous amount of fun. Cumulatively speaking, after you've factored in the consumption of food and water, players will have roughly 18 action points to play with each day. Action points, as you might have guessed, make the world go round. You need them to help with construction, explore the territory around the town, build your own home and dispose of corpses.

Generally speaking, the most important aspect of the game revolves around the construction of new architecture for your town. Portal locks ensure that griefers won't kill the population, workshops allow you to salvage otherwise worthless items, watchtowers tell you how many zombies will arive tonight and pumps keep the water flowing. Assuming your town survives long enough, other things can come into play as well. Ranging from vegetable farms to the development of the Cremato-Cue (Kentucky Fried Corpses for everyone!), there's a lot to do and a lot more to work with.

Sadly, most towns seldom survive that far. Under normal circumstances, there are usually more newbies than there are experienced players. With such an open-ended environment, resources are often cannibalized by for personal usage, people find themselves lost in the desert and so on. In a nutshell, there's always way too many headless chicken running amok. With no real-time chat enabled, communication and co-ordination is often extremely difficult to boot. The forums are always available for usage but few and far between find themselves talking on them.

I find this somewhat unfortunate because a lot of the appeal of the game lies in the human aspect of things. With desperation reaching all time highs, it's fascinating to watch how a town can degenerate into petty squabbles or how leaders arise from the dirt. Plans are made, broken. People are reviled and shunned. Help is called for. In many ways, it's like Lord of the Flies with less blood and more snark.

However, even if you're a less than social entity, there's still plenty to do. Back in your home base, you can choose to do a multitude of things. The items you scavenge from your environment (or the bank) can be utilized to fortify your piece of land or to add to the home decor. You could also mix drugs, create new items and build electronics from scrap. Bear in mind, unless you have a curtain to hide your belongings and a lock to protect your chest, thieves are free to make away with your belongings.

Of course, you could always steal them back.

Much like in real life, though, thievery is something frowned apart. If you're caught by overzealous citizens, it's entirely possible that you will be hanged (should gallows be built) or cast out and left outside the gates to die. You could also be shunned by the town and forbidden access to the bare neccessities like water and food. In the grand tradition set by the Sims, this is, of course, a bad thing as excessive thirst will lead to a horrible death.

Water and food, as we've mentioned earlier, is also essential to restore your AP. Nonetheless, if you find yourself in need of additional AP, you could take less orthodox routes. It appears as though both alcohol and drugs can add to your pool. This isn't recommended, though, as both substances are known to cause addiction and unneccessary dependence.

At most, Die2Nite will take up roughly ten minutes of your time each day unless you've had the good fortune of being installed in a particular verbose town. In a world dominated by a need for more game time, this borders on ridiculous. Nonetheless, the grim setting and the social interactions make up for the minimal gameplay time. If you're a zombie fan or just particularly morbid, Die2Nite is a perfect way to spend your daily coffee break. And unless you're purchased Hero mode, it's also wonderfully free.

Image source: Rock, Paper Shotgun.

To register yourself an account and start playing, you can go to Die2Nite's website here: www.die2nite.com

New players worried about looking like an idiot or passing on too quickly can check out the beginner's guide here: http://die2nite.wikia.com/wiki/Beginner's_Welcome

TAGS:die2nite, browser, free, zombie, strategic

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About the Author
Cassandra Khaw is one of those people who takes pride in the fact she's a full-time, hardcore geek. She claims to be capable of reading binary still and spends too much time rewriting her code. By day, she's a PHP programmer who moonlights as designer. By night, she's either MUDding, in a cybercafe or practicing street dance. She can also be bribed with penguins and brownies. Right now, she's webmistress and columnist for TK-Nation as well as a contributing writer at JayIsGames.

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