Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days

About Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days

Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days is made by PikPok and entered Early Access on Steam on 9 April 2025 for Windows and macOS. The developers say it will stay in Early Access while they add features and content, and the Xbox store lists it as coming to Xbox Series X|S.

The year is 1980. Walton City, a coastal city in Texas, is in a heatwave and an economic crisis when a zombie outbreak reaches US shores. Within days the city is overrun, and the few survivors are cut off from outside help. Your group is made up of everyday people who have to band together and find a way out.

The game is seen from the side, in a 2.5D view. You set up shelters, barricade and upgrade them, and move from one to the next to stay ahead of the hordes. By day you send survivors out to creep through ruined homes, trailers and other buildings for food, medicine and materials. You choose whether to run from a fight or take it with whatever weapons you have found or crafted. You also look after each survivor's hunger, exhaustion and despair, treat injuries such as broken ribs, and deal with traumas like nightmares.

The horror is in how fragile everyone is. The dead wait in dark rooms, other survivors can be as dangerous as the zombies, and every night the hordes test your barricades. A survivor who dies is lost for good, and the store page speaks of hard choices about who lives, who dies and who is left behind.

It suits players who like the planning and loss of Project Zomboid or This War of Mine, told in a grim 1980s setting. As an Early Access game, it is still changing, and the price may rise at full launch.

How to play Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days

1. Buy Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days on Steam for Windows or macOS; it is in Early Access.
2. Gather your group of survivors and set up a shelter, building barricades against the nightly attacks.
3. Send a survivor out to scavenge the city for food, medicine and materials, moving quietly and avoiding fights you do not need.
4. Back at the shelter, craft weapons, tools and upgrades, and look after each survivor's hunger, exhaustion, injuries and despair.
5. Keep moving from refuge to refuge toward escaping the city, before the hordes break through.

Tips

• Treat every survivor as irreplaceable; someone who dies does not come back.
• Avoid fights when you can; the makers call stealth the key to survival, and not every survivor is a good fighter.
• Spend materials on barricades before night falls, since the hordes attack every night.
• Watch despair and exhaustion as closely as hunger; a group's mental state matters too.

Questions