Awesome HTML5 game: "Dead Valley"

[Jackolantern]

I came across this game today while looking at an Impact game on a web game portal (clay.io). It is called "Dead Valley" and it is one of the best single-player zombie survival games I have ever played. It reminds me a lot of the board game "Last Night on Earth" where a lot of the game centers on scavenging for supplies, managing inventory, and making a get-away. It also seems largely inspired by "The Walking Dead", in that it calls zombies "walkers" and the zombies are highly attracted to sound, which balances and adds strategic elements to guns. I have had quite a few nerve-wracking moments where I have found a gas can in a house (which are highly prized and fairly rare) but a few zombies are circling, so I shoot them, and end up having to run back to my car from a massive horde for my life!

While zombie games are getting a tad over-done, this is one I can say is definitely worth the time. The graphics are fairly low-tech, but it more than gets the job done, and there are even meaningful day and night cycles. It can also be a lengthy game, and it uses local storage nicely to automatically save your progress. I highly recommend checking it out.

Dead Valley

[Callan S.]

So is it multiplayer somehow?

[Jackolantern]

No, it is completely single-player. A multiplayer version would be so awesome. Maybe I can talk the designer, Doug McInnes to expand it into a fully persistent virtual world lol! The foundation is already there, with a huge world map, tons of items, zombies moving about independently, etc. Of course, the single-player vs. client-server architecture would be a pain, since the game logic all plays out client-side right now. Meaning it would have to be gutted-out of the client and reassembled server-side with all of the typical anti-cheating protections, which would be no trivial task.

But, ohhhh would it be awesome lol.

Oh and I forgot to mention an obvious influence in the initial, and that is Grand Theft Auto I and II. It plays out from the same overhead perspective, and the gameplay is similar. In fact, on his website he describes it as a GTA-inspired zombie survival game!

[Callan S.]

It was just that there seemed to be some graphical tearing, missing some road sprites, and slowdown so I wondered. But I've had trouble with a html5 game on my comp before (it ate up all my comps processing power as well). I'll try and check it out again when I have time!

[Jackolantern]

Weird, because it runs butter-smooth on my moderately-equipped laptop. Have you tried it in different browsers? Since most browsers do not have hardware-accelerated canvases, the underlying hardware shouldn't matter much. Maybe it is just a browser issue.

[Callan S.]

Haven't tried in other browsers - using firefox at the mo'. I was pretty surprised html5 ran slower than flash - maybe something isn't quite up to date (my comp can run lord of the rings online kinda okay, so it aught to handle stuff like this)

[Jackolantern]

I am not making any Firefox vs. Chrome statements or anything, but maybe just considering FF is giving you grief with HTML5 apps, you should try downloading Chrome. That would at least rule out whether or not it is the browser. More and more HTML5 apps are going to be popping up soon

[espe]

So bad... after driving e few miles, i found a few houses. slowed my car down and presses e to get out.
After watching how it rolls away slowly, i just noticed i will never see it again

[Callan S.]

So what's with the distance count? Is it kinda Zomregon trail?

[Jackolantern]

LOL exactly! You have to get out of a (if I remember right) 180 mile quarantine zone to complete the game.

Oh, but a quick warning: Last night after I wrote this, the game lost my save I guess the local storage feature failed lol. Lost a couple of hours of progress. It is still an awesome game, though! Maybe just keep the browser tab open lol.