The Walking Dead: Empires Preview 2024: A Casual Zombie RPG with NFT Perks

Gala Games has an impressive array of Web3 titles in development, and its role-playing game The Walking Dead: Empires (TWDE) is one of the first nearing release, much like a zombie in hot pursuit.

Licensed from the smash comic book-inspired AMC TV series, TWDE is set to arrive soon on Windows PC and Mac amid the latest resurgence in zombie-themed entertainment—led by HBO’s hit “The Last of Us” (itself an online game adaptation) and the release of the Web3 shooter Undead Blocks.

Diablo 3 meets Animal Crossing

TWDE is billed as a survival-centric massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). As I discovered during a recent playtest, solo players and grinders will find that it feels a lot like the dungeon-crawling hit Diablo 3, but with the building and harvesting mechanics of Animal Crossing or Fortnite.

Symbol: Gala Video games.

You’ll be able to chop trees, pick up rocks, and harvest mushrooms in relative peace while zombies (or “walkers”) lurk around the open-world map. As a level-one player in the beginner’s zone, it was actually a bit too easy to avoid enemies, and harvesting resources was a cakewalk and not challenging at all. I bumped my player level up to 12 by using only my mouse without even touching my keyboard once, which made the experience feel a bit odd compared to nearly any other PC game.

A zombie game that isn’t unsettling, you say? Indeed: the large third-person perspective, generally bright lighting, and lack of sufficient gory audio effects made the game feel surprisingly tame in my limited demo. Because of the overall ease of grinding levels, it felt much less like a survival game and more like a traditional RPG.

A screenshot from The Walking Dead: Empires game showing a third-person point of view. The scene depicts a grassy area with a small house structure. The character menu and character inventory are visible on the screen, showcasing various items and equipment available to the player.

Symbol: Decrypt

That’s not to say that RPGs can’t ever be unsettling, because they certainly can—just try fighting a few monsters or exploring a creepy area in Bloodborne in a pitch-black room, and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Web3 Zombies

What makes this a Web3 game? Gala offers a range of in-game assets for sale as NFTs. For example, there are tool packs that include character outfits and supplies, as well as unique, indestructible weapons and characters, all of which can be purchased as NFTs through Gala’s store.

A “Mythical” character pack, which unlocks three characters, is currently selling for around 1.2 ETH ($2,000), while a single top-tier “Legendary” handgun for use in the game is listed at 17.3 ETH, an astounding $29,800. A lower-tier “Epic” handgun NFT is currently priced at 1.9 ETH, about $3,275. Even some of the lower-tier items feel excessively priced, and the decal inventory is likely to deter some potential players.

However, not all items are wildly expensive. For example, a look at the OpenSea secondary market reveals NFT hero cards for the game priced under $25 worth of crypto, although prices do scale up significantly from there.

Alternatively, players don’t have to purchase any NFTs to play TWDE. A Gala Games representative confirmed to Decrypt that the game will be completely free-to-play at launch, and in-game items that players craft will not become NFTs. The main advantage of those expensive NFTs is their indestructibility—unlike in-game crafted items, which degrade and eventually disappear from your inventory after a certain number of uses (similar to Animal Crossing or Diablo 3).

For power players looking to level up quickly without having to remake the same weapon multiple times, TWDE NFTs might seem worth it depending on the cost and how much ETH or GALA you have sitting idle in your wallet. Some non-Web3 games offer similar types of optional premium boosts; it just happens to be in the form of NFTs here. If you don’t purchase any NFTs, the leveling-up process will likely feel more like a grind—typical for games of this nature.

A screenshot from The Walking Dead: Empires game shows wooden fort-like walls and wooden flooring under dark and foggy weather conditions.

Inside an elaborately constructed staff castle. Image courtesy of Decrypt.

TWDE gameplay

During the playtest, TWDE ran smoothly, and the graphics looked great even on a 2021 MacBook Pro. The gameplay primarily involves scavenging for resources, harvesting materials in the open world, crafting items, and killing zombies. The loading screens between “zones” are quick and don’t feel disruptive to the game.

You can build bases with purchased materials and assemble structures using the game’s aerial-view “Build Mode” tool, where you can still fend off zombies as well. Each level-up of your home base triggers a new wave of zombie attackers. While most of the gameplay is player-vs-environment, there are also some map zones designed for competitive player-vs-player combat.

Screenshot showing the skill tree grids in The Walking Dead: Empires game.

The ability timber in Strolling Lifeless Empires. Symbol:

Decrypt

As you harvest resources and take out zombies, you’ll level up a variety of skills. There are well-developed skill trees that can be unlocked over time to further refine your preferred combat style, along with “mastery” levels that track player experience based on the sheer number of items harvested or collected. The skill trees and knowledge points are thoughtfully designed to appeal to strategy-minded RPG veterans, while still being accessible enough for casual players.

Like many MMOs and RPGs, Empires offers flexibility. If you want to avoid zombies and explore the world aimlessly, that’s perfectly fine. However, if you prefer a hack-and-slash experience, there’s plenty of that to enjoy as well.

Screenshot showing different types of crafting skills that can be leveled up. The dark UI displays five levels per skill type.

Monitoring crafting ability growth in The Walking Dead: Empires. Image: Decrypt As with most multiplayer games, though, it’s far more enjoyable with friends. As a solo player, it can be challenging to stay constantly engaged. The resource-harvesting grind can feel repetitive, as there is little visual variation between lower-level areas. However, with friends, you can spend hours hanging out at your base, chatting before embarking on either game-suggested quests or challenges of your own making. It’s much more of a social RPG and less of a tense, eerie survival game.

Fortunately, there’s plenty to see and do since the game world is expansive. In higher-level areas classified as “Mythical” or “Legendary,” the enemies are significantly tougher to defeat. You’ll want to spend hours getting lost in its various sectors—it feels much larger than Diablo 3 but smaller than the truly vast world of World of Warcraft. However, because it’s divided into “zones,” TWDE’s map is just big enough to feel expansive and exciting without being so large that it becomes overwhelming.

While still in development, TWDE already shows a lot of promise as an MMORPG, offering intuitive gameplay and clear paths for progression. At this stage, it seems like a solid choice for both casual gamers and grinders who don’t mind that it’s not an especially scary zombie game.

Stay on top of crypto news by receiving daily updates directly in your inbox.