State of Decay now slightly fresher

If you’re like me and you’ve been waiting for the patches for State of Decay to finally come through Microsoft’s certification process, you’re now cleared for some zombie apocalypse this weekend. The latest update adds a whole mess of fixes and revisions, including the ones from the first patch fumbled in a previous update that also went through Microsoft’s certification process.

Of course, if you haven’t been playing while you waited, you might have trouble in store. The simulation in State of Decay runs in real time, whether you’re playing or not. Your characters will go on missions, eat your food, expend your ammo, and sometimes come to dire straits. When I started the game today after applying the update, nearly half of my survivors had gone missing. So far, I’ve found one of them. Marcus, my most powerful character, is still AWOL and I don’t see a mission yet to recover him.

I adore this game, but I am absolutely mystified about a design decision that punishes players for not playing. That should be the exclusive domain of subscription-based MMOs.