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Zombie MMORPG ‘Dead Frontier’ Goes Into Beta
Bolt your doors and barricade your windows, the zombie virus is real and spreading fast! Jagged Blade Games is proud to announce the open beta of their free to play zombie horror MMORPG, Dead Frontier.
“The game has been in development and various stages of testing for the past 2 years. We’re now at a point where we believe the game is ready to be enjoyed by a wider audience,” said Lead Developer, Neil Yates. “I’m excited to see what gamers will make of a true horror MMORPG, it’s a pretty unique concept.”
Dead Frontier combines 3rd person survival horror action with more traditional role-playing elements to create a totally unique MMO experience. Players will need to have their wits about them as they struggle for survival in the decaying, zombie infested city of Fairview. Will you stay in the relative safety of the last remaining human outpost, or attempt to create your own hideout in the depths of the city? The choice is yours.
Dead Frontier plays exclusively in your browser and requires no extra downloads of any kind. What’s more the registration requires only a few seconds so you’ll be playing in no time!
Head to deadfrontier.com to download the official beta!
Read on for screens and more info! 1)Unique survival horror gameplay. Unlike other MMOs, survival is a high priority. Food, ammunition and medical supplies are rare so there’s a lot more to staying alive than just defeating monsters. What’s more the game is hard, you’ll need keep on your toes if you want to do well. Despite being purely 2D, we believe Dead Frontier is one of the most scary and atmospheric games available.
2)100% player driven economy. There isn’t a single NPC vendor in Dead Frontier, everything is either bought from, or sold to other real players. The net result is a realistic, but highly unstable post apocalyptic economy. This opens up a lot of new interesting trade centric gameplay.
3)Create your own hideout. In Dead Frontier you can choose to live in the last remaining human outpost, or barricade an abandoned building deep within the dangerous inner city. Surviving away from civilization is hard, but the potential rewards are great.
4)Global events. At certain times during the day the main human outpost will be attacked by hordes of undead. Up to 3000 players will need to work together in order to fight off the horde and protect the innocent civilians in the outpost.
5)Explore a huge deserted city. Fairview is a massive metropolis spanning several miles. Loot from a huge array of realistic buildings, from office complexes to restaurants and supermarkets.
6)Choice of either single player or multiplayer. In order to give Dead Frontier a true horror feeling we decided to implement a single player version of the game when you venture into the dangerous zones. This gives you a feeling of isolation which adds to the eerie atmosphere. It also means you’re not forced to interact with other players if you don’t feel like it.
Future Features:
Currently Dead Frontier is still in beta and several planned features are missing. These include:
Extensive avatar customization system
Missions
Clan System
More enemies
More locations
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Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
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