Ray's the Dead is a zombified Pikmin set in a rural '80s town

Get it? Ray's the Dead!

Ever look at Pikmin and think, "Hey, I bet this would be better if the Pikmin were zombies and it took place in a small town in the 1980s?" If so, then we have an oddly specific game for your request: Ray's the Dead, which yeah. It's just that. It was shown off briefly during Sony's E3 press conference as part of their see,-we-totally-care-about-indies-outside-of-Minecraft montage, but we recently had a chance to go hands-on with the PS4 game to find out just what Ray's story was about.

Ray's dead, but has come back as a zombie with a light bulb in his head, so now he can raise the dead. Obviously. He has the power to control the horde by directing his light towards targets, leading the shambling masses to take down townspeople who, in turn, become zombies themselves. In the demo we worked our way through the streets of the rural town, utilizing the ability to hide zombies in bushes in order to stealthily turn innocent people into ravenous monsters (it's Halloween, so people gave our band of zombies the benefit of the doubt as long as they didn't see us chowing on people). Later in the demo we started turning dogs into zombies, too, adding a new ability to our arsenal--dogs could dash at police without being shot, stunning them so our zombies could go in for the kill.

There were a few hiccups with the level design, and some elements that didn't really make sense in our short demo, but we enjoyed our time kicking off the zombie apocalypse. With a sleek art style and some jammin' '80s music, Ray's the Dead is an indie worth keeping an eye on.

Check out the following slides for additional images and more information.

Dogs are faster than regular zombies--also, they can talk.

The visual style is unique, with 2D characters flipping around 3D worlds.

As you convert more people, Ray's horde becomes larger and more powerful.

Ray doesn't know how he died or why there's a light bulb on his head, but he's going to find out, or die--erm... re-die, trying.