First State of Decay DLC announced

State of Decay’s first DLC pack has been delivered to Microsoft for pre-certification testing ahead of a planned launch “by the end of October”. The ‘Breakdown’ add-on pack was announced by Undead Labs executive producer Jeff Strain in a post on the studio’s website just days after it was confirmed that the Xbox Live Arcade hit had reached one million sales.

Strain expects Undead Labs to spend the next week or so squashing bugs and incorporating design feedback from quality assurance teams. “The plan is to have all that wrapped up and submit formally to certification testing at the end of next week.” he said. “But, assuming no catastrophes, we plan on getting Breakdown into your hands by the end of October.”

In a separate blog post, Breakdown designer Geoffrey Card said the DLC will raise the game’s difficulty level in a number of ways. For example, they’ll be an increasingly large number of fast zombies in the population and the amount of vehicles available will be significantly reduced.

“One thing we know our community has been looking for is a new challenge,” Card said. “You’ve spent all this time mastering the game, and you want somewhere to go to truly test your skills. Breakdown is designed to bring on that challenge. As you progress through each iteration of the game, the scenario gets tougher and tougher. The game is daring you to try and survive, and is ramping up the difficulty each time you do. I’ve made it my goal to create a version of the game that gets so hard by the end, I can barely play it, and then let you folks show me how it’s done. Are you ready?”

State of Decay launched on Steam Early Access on September 20, three and a half months after it debuted on Xbox 360.