State of Decay Breakdown DLC available November 29

Of all the recent games that have tried to capitalize on the recent zombie craze, none have been as entertaining to me as Undead Labs’ “State of Decay.” Rather than placing emphasis on merely killing zombies or in the act of trying to survive a single attack, State of Decay tasks players with long-term survival during the zombie apocalypse.

State of Decay is a single player only game and its original play mode told a story through a series of missions where your goal in between those missions was basically just to survive. But, being that the mode was centered around a story means that it would eventually end. To give players who completed said story, Undead Labs will soon release the first DLC add-on for State of Decay, titled “Breakdown.”

The purpose of Breakdown is to test players to see how long they can survive in State of Decay’s zombie apocalypse. Players start Breakdown as a Hero character, someone with higher/more desirable stats than any regular survivor that can be recruited. From there, Breakdown plays similarly to the story mode except the only goals are expanding your group and scavenging/surviving. Eventually, supplies will run out your group will need to escape to the next valley. To accomplish this, there will be an RV somewhere on the map that your group will be able to repair and use to reach the next valley. (It should also be noted that “the next valley” is just the same map and not an entirely new area.)

Escaping to the next valley comes with its own challenges, though. First, you’ll need to find and repair the RV before it can be used. It’s location changes for each map and the longer you take to find it/escape, the more difficult it can be to repair. Also, once the RV is ready to go, you’re only allowed to take six survivors with you (including your character). Your acquired loot chest comes along too but you’ll only be able to take enough supplies to establish a new base of operations in the next valley.

Advancing to new valleys increases the difficulty as well, meaning more zombies, more unique monsters and fewer resources to find. Knowledge acquired through libraries transfers too. According to Undead Labs, there is no limit to how many valleys/levels you can advance through in Breakdown. Basically, you can keep playing until it’s just too overwhelmingly difficult to advance to the next level.

I’ve been looking forward to Breakdown for a while now. I really enjoyed State of Decay but found little reason to replay it after completing the story. The promise of increasing difficulty and endless play is exactly what will breathe new life into the title. Plus, new characters, weapons, and challenges help extend replayability too.

If you read my “State of Decay Stories” series, you know how much it affected me when I lost just one survivor, so you can imagine how difficult it will be to have to leave people behind at the end of a level in Breakdown. I’m gonna have to learn to not be so attached, though, because it seems like death will be a regular part of Breakdown’s later levels.

Breakdown will be available for Xbox 360 on Nov. 29 and is priced at $6.99. Title Update 4 also goes live for State of Decay on Nov. 29 as well and will fix some bugs but will also revamp the loot distribution system. Undead Labs’ website doesn’t really elaborate on what will be new or different about the loot system so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.