Sometimes, a game just fails to sell. My first exposure to Keldyn Interactive’s age-of-sail zombie masher Dead Meets Lead was via our own site here. And after that? Nothing. It’s entire existence flew under the radar for most after it’s release last year. It also completely failed to sell, despite a strong showing at the Swedish Game Awards. Now, at the end of a long and troubled road and after a rather damning postmortem, the developers are disbanding and releasing the game as freeware.

It’s an interesting and sad story. While I disagree with some of the conclusions they reached in the postmortem (especially ‘Why release an indie singleplayer game in 2011 when you can make an F2P multiplayer game?’ – an especially absurd statement given that most of our favourite indie games of 2011 were singleplayer and sold very well), it’s hard to argue with others, such as a crushing difficulty curve and a lack of an obvious market for a pseudo-Diabloish (but minus loot, levelling or progression) historical zombie hack n’ slash.

It didn’t help either that the initial teaser trailer for the game was rather laughable, showing off bland terrain and awkward character models and little else. The subsequent gameplay trailer showed little more than a man standing in a field full of zombies, repeating the same one or two melee animations over and over again. It’s not exactly a game that sells itself on it’s looks, but now that it’s freeware – available via torrent or direct download, and activatable via a master CD-key available on the front page of the site, you can give it a spin and judge for yourself, or just download it straight from Desura.

From what little I’ve played – only a couple of levels – it does seem to be a quite interesting concept that they never really explained clearly. Combat is almost DOTA-esque, revolving around a small handful of attacks, stuns and evades to manage the crowds of zombies and their own stuns and lockdown powers. It’s almost puzzle-like in nature, with someone going in expecting an arcade arena shooter likely to be disappointed. You often can’t move and attack at the same time, and there’s little to no variety in the animations or enemy models, meaning that a feeling of deja vu sets in quicker than the voodoo zombie fever.

The fate of DML is a sad reminder that while 2011 was a great year for gaming, indie or otherwise, there were no shortage of releases that didn’t capture anyone’s attention, flew under the radar, or were generally poorly recieved. Still, it’s worth a download and a try now, at the very least. Powder up your wig, load your flintlock and make yourself ship-shape. Let’s give poor ill-fated Keldyn a fairwell they’d be happy to see; blood-soaked and knee deep in zombie chunks.

[Dead Meets Lead]