Ballardia and Scraggly Dog Games are proud to announce that after a four-month shutdown to facilitate changing the game engine from Google Maps to OpenStreetMap, World of the Living Dead: Resurrection has commenced beta testing. Currently being thoroughly playtested by a group of over two hundred players across the globe, the game has polished and streamlined its minimalist approach to the survival strategy genre. Challenging and cerebral, WotLD: Resurrection is definitely not a zombie shooty face game.

A hardcore game aimed at older, more discerning players who would have played strategy games in the early 1990s and 2000s, the game casts you as an operative of the National Emergency Control and Relief Agency (NECRA) who has initially been assigned a small squad of survivors on Santa Catalina island off Los Angeles, California, and instructed to bring them to LA County, where over 12,000 zombie-infested square kilometers await you.

You must cater to the basic dietary needs of your survivors, manage their fatigue and fear levels, choose from a range of suitably post-apocalyptic skills as they gain experience and equip them with the best weaponry that you can scavenge or steal. The game features survivor permadeath, so if they die, they’re dead. The realistic setting uses US Census data to work out zombie density in each area, and OSM data to place scavengeable supplies and locations throughout the map.

Players will be tasked with developing and growing their group through rescue and other vital missions, and can ultimately manage up to forty survivors. Infocards scattered throughout the game help boost skills, and players can repair and modify items in many different ways. It is an intensive management game for players who want a little more depth to their gameplay.

World of the Living Dead: Resurrection is scaling up beta testing from a few hundred, to a few thousand players over the coming weeks as it continues to optimize the game engine and infrastructure, and you can register your interest for a beta key at http://www.worldofthelivingdead.com .