The Walking Dead is an episodic graphic adventure video game series developed and originally published by Telltale Games, based on the comic book series of the same name by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard, taking place in the universe of the comics but following a different story and characters. The first "season" of the game series was released in April 2012, and the series currently spans four main seasons of five "episodes" each (excepting the final season with only four episodes), an additional episode as downloadable content (DLC), and a mini three-episode spin-off game, with the fourth and final season having premiered in 2018 and concluded in 2019. Currently published by Skybound Games, the games have been released to personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices, and have had both digital and physical releases. It is Telltale's flagship franchise, with the combined games having sold 80 million episodes and generated over $300 million in revenue as of 2023.
The series, like the comic, starts with a pandemic that turns the dead into zombie-like "walkers" that decimates civilization, and takes place along the United States eastern seaboard. The series focuses on the character of Clementine, a young girl that is cared for by Lee Everett during the first season, and subsequently travels both by herself and with other groups in later seasons after Lee sacrifices himself for her. During the second season, she becomes the adoptive caretaker of AJ, an infant left parentless. When Clementine later joins with a survival group called the New Frontier in the third season, they strip AJ from her, and Clementine works with another survivor, Javier Garcia, to rescue both their families from the New Frontier. During the final season, some years later, Clementine and AJ join other teenagers holding out at their boarding school to protect it from bandits and walkers. Some of the characters from the comic series, such as Shawn Greene, Glenn Rhee, Hershel Greene, Michonne, Siddiq and Paul "Jesus" Monroe, have appeared during the video game series.
The games in The Walking Dead series eschew typical puzzles and exploration found in most adventure games and instead offer a stronger narrative and interaction with other characters. The game mixes such scenes with more action-oriented ones based on quick time events to elicit excitement during the games. Telltale introduced the feature of having numerous determinants that could result from the player's choices, such as which of two characters to save during an attack, that influenced the story in later episodes and seasons, and the company has used this aspect of player choice in its subsequent adventure games.
While the series was primarily developed and published by Telltale Games under license from Skybound, the studio effectively shuttered in late 2018 in the midst of the fourth main series, The Final Season. Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead and of Skybound, felt it was necessary to finish off Clementine's story, and hired some of the Telltale staff to finish off the series. Skybound also took over publishing duties for the other games in the series.
The series has been praised for its strong narratives and impact of player choices. The first season was particularly noted as having been considered as revitalizing the waning adventure game genre, which had been languishing since around 2000.
Concept The Walking Dead series is based on the comic series of the same name. The game's events run concurrently to the comic, starting at the onset of a zombie apocalypse, where dead humans have become undead "walkers" that feed on the living which quickly overwhelmed most of the population. As established in the comic and show, this is a result of a virus that all living humans possess that takes over the brain of the body once the person dies, and the only way to stop this is to destroy the brain.
The game series initially starts in Georgia, with the whole of the first season and the events of 400 Days content taking place within the state. The second series follows the protagonists as they move north along the United States' eastern seaboard, believing there to be a human encampment in the north as well as the colder temperatures slowing the walkers' speed.
Gameplay The Walking Dead games follow the same point-and-click adventure game approach that other Telltale Games episodic series have followed. Within an episode, the player controls a protagonist as the story progresses through several scenes. Within a scene, the player can move the character to explore the area, examine items, and initiate conversation trees with non-player characters; in these dialogs, the player has the option of selecting a number of options to reply to characters, including the option to stay silent. Other scenes are based on cinematic elements using quick time events in which the player must hit a controller button or a keyboard command as indicated on screen to react to an event. Failure to do so in time can lead to the character's death or other undesirable ending, and the game will restart just prior to these scenes.
All choices made by the player in The Walking Dead are tracked by the game, and certain choices ("determinants") will influence later scenes across the episodes and the series to date, when the player continues from the same saved game state. For example, in the first episode of the first season, the player has an option to save one of two non-player characters from a walker attack; the other character is killed, while the surviving character will uniquely impact other aspects of the story. Other times, selection of certain dialog options will influence the attitude of a non-player character towards the protagonist, and can manifest in later scenes as providing additional options for the player to select from. Telltale Games tracks these decisions, including five main choices made during the course of each episode, allowing players to compare their choices to others.
Games YearTitlePlatform(s)Developer(s)2012–2013The Walking Dead: Season OneAndroid, iOS, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox OneTelltale Games2013–2014The Walking Dead: Season Two2016The Walking Dead: Michonne Android, iOS, macOS, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One2016–2017The Walking Dead: A New Frontier Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One2017The Walking Dead Collection PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One2018–2019The Walking Dead: The Final Season Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One Telltale Games (episodes 1–2) Skybound Games (episodes 3–4)2019The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox OneSkybound Games
Series overview
Season 1 (2012–13)
At the onset of the zombie apocalypse, Lee Everett rescues young Clementine whose parents had traveled to Savannah prior to the apocalypse. They join with other survivors in Macon, Georgia to protect themselves from the undead, taking shelter in a defensible motel. When their position is overrun by both walkers and scavengers, the group flees and heads towards Savannah hoping to find boats to flee the mainland. Lee promises to reunite Clementine with her parents while teaching her rules of survival in this new world. In Savannah, they find no boats, and a strange man communicating to Clementine via walkie-talkie. When Clementine goes missing, Lee in his panic searching is accidentally bitten by a walker. With his time short, Lee assures the safety of the remaining survivors and goes to rescue Clementine, held by a man who has blamed Lee directly for the death of his family. Lee and Clementine overwhelm the man, and as they escape, they witness Clementine's parents, who have already become walkers. Clementine drags a weakening Lee to a safe location, and Lee, in his final moments of rationality, directs her to find the other survivors, before telling her to kill him or leave him before he fully becomes a walker.
400 Days (2013) 400 Days is a downloadable special episode. It focuses on five different protagonists and it serves as a bridge between Season 1 and Season 2. In the final scene, the survivors of each story are offered to be taken into a safe camp.
Digital pinball theme A 3-D virtual pinball theme based on the first season, developed jointly by Telltale Games and Zen Studios, was released on August 27, 2014, as downloadable content for most of Zen Studios' family of pinball games and also as a standalone paid mobile app.
Season 2 (2013–14)
More than a year after the first game, Clementine is separated from the other survivors and forced to fend on her own. She meets up with another group that are attempting to flee a man named Carver, who runs the human survivor camp at a strip mall, as alluded to in 400 Days. Clementine learns Carver seeks to capture Rebecca believing her to be carrying his child while she insists it is her husband Alvin's. They come into another group, discovering that Kenny, one of the survivors that Clementine traveled with from the first season and who had lost his wife and son to walkers, has managed to survive. In the midst of a walker attack, they are captured by Carver. Learning that a massive walker horde is approaching the strip mall and will readily overrun it, the group manages to escape with other prisoners, killing Carver in the process after he kills Alvin. During their escape, a woman that Kenny had taken a romantic interest in is bitten by a walker, forcing Clementine to intercede to kill her before she can turn, angering Kenny. As they regroup, Clementine becomes close to Jane, a loner that was part of the prisoners at Carver's camp and who teaches Clementine survival skills. Later, Rebecca dies after giving birth to a child, which they name Alvin Jr. (AJ) As winter sets in, Jane and Kenny become hostile towards each other, and Kenny's distrust of the group leads to a fraction of them fleeing from Kenny, Jane, Clementine, and Alvin Jr.. Jane forces Clementine to see what Kenny has become from witnessing the deaths of his loved ones by faking the death of Alvin Jr., and Clementine is forced to intercede, killing one of them and opting to continue with the other while overseeing to Alvin Jr. herself.
Michonne (2016)
In June 2014, Telltale announced a three-episode series The Walking Dead: Michonne. The mini-series released on February 23, 2015 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One; February 25, 2015 for iOS and Android; and March 1, 2015 for PC, and serves as a tie-in between the first two The Walking Dead seasons developed by Telltale. The series mostly focuses on Michonne's untold story on what took Michonne away from Rick, Ezekiel, and the rest of Rick Grimes' trusted group and what brought her back. Samira Wiley voiced Michonne in the game. The mini-series was originally scheduled to be released as downloadable content for Season 2. However, in December 2014, Telltale announced that the game would be released as a standalone title that would not require any previous game in the series to play
Season 3: A New Frontier (2016–17)
The third season of The Walking Dead launched with two episodes on December 20, 2016. The season plans to tie in all the possible endings from previous seasons without compromising the story to avoid pushing away new players to the series. In an interview with IGN, Kirkman stated that the third season would bring the video game closer to the comic book's time frame. It takes place a few years after the second season, and includes a somewhat older Clementine along with AJ, the infant she rescues at the end of Season 2 who is now a toddler. Clementine is a playable character along with a new character, Javier. A New Frontier uses the updated Telltale Tool, the same game engine Telltale used for Batman: The Telltale Series.