A State of Decay that never ends

Unlike many open-world games, State of Decay ends decisively. You can always go back to your saved game just before the last mission. But once you do that mission, you leave Trumbull Valley for good. The credits roll. There’s no going back and doing fun activities. State of Decay is over.

Fortunately, developer Undead Labs is working on an open-ended sandbox mode. How will it work, given that Trumbull Valley is seeded with a limited amount of resources when you start playing? Community manager Sanya Weathers passes along some details from an online chat with Undead Labs founder Jeff Strain.

Jeff said, “The goal of sandbox is to provide an unbounded experience, one with no victory condition that ends the game. The way we do that is to continue to have a world with finite resources, but find out ‘how long can I stay alive.'”

Without going into too much detail (although details are coming within a week), you start in the world, build your community, clean the valley out – and when it runs dry, you can leave with some portion of your community and go to “the next valley.” The next valley is the same map, repopulated with resources…but harder. More zombies. More difficulty. Just…more.

How many Trumbull Valleys can you survive? Find out later this year, since Undead Labs has promised the sandbox mode will be out this year.