Way back in 2013, indie dev Ragtag Studio had shown off a little game at E3 that year called Ray’s The Dead. Ragtag Studio is the same group of folks behind the cult favourite Stubbs The Zombie, by the way. Well, flash forward to 2020, and the devs have announced that the game is finally seeing the light of day. In fact, the game is hitting Steam and PlayStation 4 later this month!
The The “zombie raising, narrative-driven, puzzle-solving, action-packed, stealth-sneaking, 1980s-inspired, multiple timeline-having, meticulously illustrated, surprisingly-touching, dark comedy adventure” will launch on October 22nd. Currently, the game also has a free demo via Steam for you to check out.
It’s been a long journey for the title, which has seen a Kickstarter campaign raise $51,700 to cover development costs, as well as the unfortunate cancellation of a previously-planned PlayStation Vita version. In its place, however, is a Nintendo Switch version, which is to be released at a later 2021 date.
It’s been a long while, so here’s the synopsis: in the year 1989, Ray LaMorte is dead. Well actually, he’s a zombie. Ray isn’t sure how he died, so he sets out to find out how this came to pass. Ray hopes to accomplish this by using his new ability of raising an zombie army, which he’s able to control. Think Pikmin, but with a nice horror twist.
Players will have to lumber their way through a 8-10 hour story campaign across 40 levels rich with 1980s Americana and “dense with pop culture cameos”. So yes, we more than likely will be seeing “Thriller” references.