From Our Backyard: ‘Effing Dead’

Zombies are everywhere these days. They are common enough that they are simply fun enemies the player will deal with, but never have a second thought about after they’re gone. Resident Evil 4 was one of the few games to put a new twist on the living dead, but not many games have been able to replicate many of the things that made Resident Evil 4 so memorable. Effing Dead, from The Short and The Tall Games, is trying their hardest to make an experience similar to that classic – with a few twists of their own of course.

Effing Dead is a science fiction zombie survival game. You play as the only surviving crew member on a spaceship overrun with zombified clones. While I wouldn’t call it terrifying, there were a few moments in my time with the beta that were quite tense. The most intense moment was a couple minutes before I actually first saw the zombies as the anticipation/fear of something jumping out at me built up. Meanwhile an ambient static was building up in noise, which I didn’t even notice was making me anxious until it stopped.

Effing Dead has a somewhat unique way in which the player dies. Instead of showing all my gruesome deaths, the screen would flash into static as I lost health. The longer it flashed, the more health I had lost. This is a really neat alternative to the “blood red corners of the screen” syndrome many shooters have implemented these days. The whole game is really looking great, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of it from Short and Tall Games.

Effing Dead was originally posted on the Indie Game Magazine Community forums by MrKaizen in early April of this year. He has been a great member of the community, and we’re happy to see his game doing so well.  You can download the beta for Effing Dead at the developer's website. If you enjoy that, The Short and The Tall is currently raising funds for the game’s development on IndieGoGo.

Every article in the From Our Backyard series features games indie developers who post in our forums. If you’re an indie developer and would like to be featured in From Our Backyard, post in the Tell Us About Your Indie Game forum? Just sign up for developer status before you post and you’ll be set! If you aren’t an indie developer, the Indie Game Magazine Community still wants to hear from you!