PBBG Lab

Site: Dead Maze
Genre: Zombie PBBG with zoned PvP
3D Game: No (Flash)
Free To Play: Yes (alpha)
Premium Pay Options: Yes

This is the first time that I've top listed a PBBG while at the same time planned to retire it. The fact is, there are tons of retired PBBG's, but rarely were they top ranked. During development, there were lots of consistent updates for Dead Maze but these updates stopped not too longer after Adobe announced that Flash would no longer be supported beginning in late 2020. Ordinarily, I would not rank a PBBG that did not appear to be developing beyond Alpha. But the truth is, this is a solid PBBG and even if it doesn't get ported over to HTML5, there is still plenty of time to enjoy the game… depending on when you read this review.

Play It While You Still Can

Many fans complain that there hasn't been any updates in over a year. In fact the last update seems to coincide with the public post by Adobe announcing the end of Flash in 2020. Lack of updates have led many Deadmaze fans to assume that the project had been abandoned. Despite what appears to be a halt in development, the game still sees an occasional event and is fun to play.

Key Features

• Top down 2D view
• Playable in a browser but also available on Steam
• Walkable world map with multiple zones
• Guilds & Party system
• PvP in specified zones
• Group-instanced player housing
• Interesting Crafting system
• Quests with main story line

Player Housing

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the game includes player housing, this isn't something that you often see in a PBBG. With an all time peak of 3819 logged in players, there's certainly not enough room for landscape housing. However, the developer over at atelier801 has worked out a compromise by creating a group-instance for your neighborhood each time you visit your house. Due to the nature of crafting, you are often making trips back to your house. This means that each time you head home, you might have new neighbors and this can lead to interesting interactions with other players. New players quickly gain a new house simply by completing the main story line quest. However, taking full advantage of the benefits of owning a house can take a lot longer.

Crafting

With the exception of a bit of on-the-fly recycling of items to gain materials, and a few items that you can craft from recycling panel, most crafting takes place in your house and this is the primary purpose of housing. This also translates into the ability to organize your house with various crafting stations, supportive farmland, and even pets. Crafting can be a bit tedious though as you will often need lots of materials to craft something specific and to gain materials, you will have to scavenge the zombie-infested zones. Gaining recipes can be a pain too. To be honest, gaining stuff to deconstruct isn't that hard, but the fact that your pack space is incredibly small means that you will be making frequent trips back to your house to drop of materials that you've gained.

New Player Tips

I don't usually include tips for new players within my reviews but due to the unfinished state of this game, I think a few tips are in order.

1) Don't fall for the newbie traps. Each time you level up your character you will get to choose from 3 random rewards. It could be an item such as a nice weapon, a consumable, a new skill or even a stat increase. For the most part, you will always want either the new skill or the stat increase. You will be tempted to grab the legendary weapon - that's the trap, don't fall for it because…

2) Weapons eventually break. Early on and during the tutorial phase, the game doesn't bother to explain that a weapon will wear down and break and when that happened, the weapon is gone forever. Due to limited inventory space, you will be tempted to keep only the best weapon and dump the rest. But as a general rule, you should always keep at least two decent weapons on you. The last thing you want is to be caught surrounded by zombies and have your one and only weapon break.

3) Watch your XP count and be sure to collect your new-level reward as soon as your level up. Early on you will be leveling quickly and if you happen to level twice before collecting a reward, it's possible that you will lose one of your level-up rewards.

4) For better immersion when playing PBBG's, I like to press F11 for full screen mode. However, this is a Flash based PBBG and once you're logged in, it does not always want to cooperate to let you into full screen mode. As a work-around, hit F11 on the login screen and then login to the game. This will force the game to remain in full screen mode even after logging in. Just be careful if you press F11 while in-game as you may not be able to return to full screen mode unless you relog.

5) You can learn new crafting recipes by keeping the item you want to be able to craft after obtaining it as a drop. Recycle it from your house, not your backpack.