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The Sandbox Alpha Season 3 - The Walking Dead: A Day in Alexandria
When players first find themselves entering A Day in Alexandria, they’re greeted with an interesting set piece. Mounted soldiers fend off nearby zombies amongst broken, rusty cars and buses. Fans of the series will quickly find themselves face-to-face with Michonne — someone that should be very familiar to them. She’s the first one to direct players to the iconic Alexandria Safe-Zone, complete with its walls and numerous residents. Players will find the names of other familiar characters such as Eugene, Rick, and Negan, but there are also a couple of named survivors not present in other Walking Dead media. This ties into the world’s story, making some notable departures from events found elsewhere in the franchise.
Rather than following an exact timeline, the version of The Walking Dead featured in The Sandbox seems to be a collection of famous characters all together in one famous location.
There are many aspects of this world that don’t line up with the hit TV series or other media.
Even some characters that can be found in places like the novels or the show don’t reflect their Sandbox counterparts at all, though this might simply be a case of common names showing up in more places than one. It could be argued that this was done on purpose, though more critical fans might wonder if any writers involved in The Walking Dead had any input on this collaboration at all.
The “Gameplay” of A Day in Alexandria
Despite any arguments that can be made about A Day in Alexandria’s faithfulness, one can’t help but acknowledge how heavily it focuses on its writing.
Every quest is focused around getting the player to connect with Alexnadria’s inhabitants through dialogue and worldbuilding.
The player is never in any danger, but the constant air of mistrust and aggressive nature of some survivors can still lead to tensions rising every now and then. The world acts somewhat similar to a visual novel in that sense, using its quests to tell a story for the player to get immersed in.
Unfortunately, this focus on storytelling leads to extremely poor gameplay. For a franchise so heavily focused on survival, betrayal, and conflict, there’s no point in which players will need to fend off anything.
Even the walkers found outside of Alexandria are nothing more than animated statues unable to harm the player. This wouldn’t be too big of an issue on its own, but the quests given to players don’t offer a very good substitute.
They simply involve running from place to place, occasionally carrying an item over to another survivor or just inspecting random areas within the safe-zone. The most these quests offer is busywork, and though players still get rewarded for completing them, it’s hard to feel engaged with them and their stories.
Final Thoughts on The Sandbox Version of The Walking Dead
It’s hard to recommend The Walking Dead on The Sandbox for any reason other than earning rewards from quests. A lot of the references to The Walking Dead itself are very surface-level, and the quests surrounding them don’t offer any sort of challenge or variety. It’s especially a shame because there are many Sandbox worlds that offer a lot more than this, so to see such a grand franchise represented so poorly can only make one wonder where it all went so wrong.
A big reason why the concept of the metaverse turns people away is because there haven’t been many metaverses that rival the creativity and variety of other games out there. The Sandbox has numerous tools and resources to allow that creativity, but many of the official worlds don’t make use of them. It makes sense when considering worlds based around celebrities, but not with major franchises like The Walking Dead.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time The Sandbox has collaborated with The Walking Dead. They featured a Game Jam back in 2021, giving players the chance to make their own game based on the franchise. Some of these games are actually very fun and creative, pitting players against massive hordes of zombies. It’s a wonder the official experience featured in The Sandbox Alpha Season 3 turned out so poorly in comparison.
A Day in Alexandria makes one thing clear. If major franchises want to make a leap into the metaverse, they have to push themselves harder than simply plastering their name onto a virtual world. There’s a potential for entire Triple-A titles to be published on metaverses like The Sandbox, but if there’s not much effort put into the games themselves, this possibility isn’t going to lead anywhere.