We're Alive: A Story of Survival

© Wayland Productions

The Gist
The definitive aural experience for zombie apocalypse fans. Ads not optional.

The Story
As the beginnings of an unexplained global outbreak unfolds in Los Angeles, three soldiers are caught in the middle of the chaos as they are called back into active duty. As the city falls into mass panic due to the ever increasing numbers of the infected horde, they will need to work together with a ragged band of survivors to try and outlast the end of the world.

As events unfold across California's Central Coast, the ragtag group must fight for their very lives not just against the infected but also against other survivors in the vast wastelands that were once populated by millions. The story would test the survivors' resolve as they attempt to start anew and learn as much as they can about the now alien world that they once called home.

Impressions
I've started listening to a couple of audio podcasts sometime last year before stumbling onto We're Alive.

The first one was Welcome to Night Vale, a strange fiction podcast that was dressed up as a community radio show. It was fairly amusing and I've gone up to four episodes before stumbling onto another podcast which grabbed my attention a little bit more. I plan on returning to this series in the near future, however, as I've not seen a worthwhile podcast since We're Alive.

The second one was The NoSleep Podcast, which featured stories from Reddit's r/nosleep forum - a collection of user submitted tales of horror and the macabre. I've been reading the subforum for a long time now (which may have been accountable for a few sleepless nights) and hearing the stories as they are narrated by voice actors took things to another level. Unfortunately, only their first season was offered free and soon enough I was looking for another podcast to listen to as I wasn't ready to go back to Welcome to Night Vale.

Upon reading several reviews on the Internet, I decided to go ahead and download episodes of We're Alive: A Story of Survival. I've been listening to it ever since for the past month and have just recently finished the series' concluding chapter. Needless to say, I was hooked. We're Alive not only has a compelling and gripping story, but it also features amazing voice acting and extremely high production values that were consistent across all forty-eight hours (which is ridiculous by any standard) of audio content.

Perhaps the best part of this is that We're Alive is available online at no cost. Personally, I think the podcast is something definitely worth paying for (and the team behind it is exploring this option for their Kickstarter project).

The end result is an audio drama that has to be amongst the best out there for the zombie apocalypse genre, which features memorable characters and their plights in a world gone mad. Did I mention that it's available for free?

Verdict
It's incredibly easy to be absorbed into the story's established universe, and it's highly recommended to give this podcast a good listen. We're Alive is the perfect thing to listen to for those idle hours of the night, or during those ten-hour bus rides both inside and outside the Metro.