When approaching inhabited areas you can't initiate a trade yourself. It's common to return from scavenging to find a character has hung him or herself. When desperate children plead for food, turning them away always negatively impact the mental state of characters, making them sad, depressed and even suicidal. When the trader comes knocking, he doesn't care that you're on the verge of death, your acrid tobacco is worthless to him. The morality and bartering systems do not bend to accommodate your worsening conditions. The feeling of desperation is ever-present, you'll never quite have enough food to satiate everyone or the building materials to thrive.
Whether you're pillaging an abandoned house or risking life and limb in a heavily fortified hotel there's a feeling that it could all go wrong in the blink of an eye. Your characters are fragile and ranged weapons difficult to come by, so you never quite feel safe.
The slow, deliberate pacing accentuates the languishing, oppressive atmosphere. NPCs that hear the sounds or spot you in their line of sight will investigate, The defenseless cower, some propose a barter, others respond with deadly force. Enemies emit these same tells, as do rats scurrying around. Walking is silent but slow, while running comes at the risk of making noise, denoted by emanating circles of sound. Everything outside line of sight is enveloped in a fog, giving the exploration real tension. In the scavenging phase inspiration has been taken from Mark of the Ninja. Areas with more valuable resources are either inhabited or defended, while the safer places yield less. Locations include abandoned squallers, schools, hospitals, churches and more.
All of this is reliant on having the appropriate resources, which are gathered at night when a character can be sent to scavenge while the others sleep or stand guard. Like a grim version of The Sims, players click around to move characters and on icons to assign tasks such as making food, building, clearing rubble, rifling through resource points or administering aid-either medicinal or moral.
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