It’s been quite some times since the last news and we are not dead yet… I wish I could say the same about our zombies!
We have been nominated for 2015 SXSW GAMING AWARDS in the Gamer’s Voice category. They offered us a stand, one of us will be in Austin from March 13 to 15 to show a playable demo of the game and we hope some of you will be there to test it. For the occasion we put together a small in-game trailer:
New Mutations
We have been working hard on the game since our IGF submission in October. Mutations have been completely revamped to support new mutations and combos. Jump has been implemented and all transformation can be combined with any action so you can make a climber run and a tank jump! Spitting is the only mutation not implemented yet but after this one, only minor tweaks and polish will be needed on the mutation subsystem.
The Overlord
He is a replacement for the blocker, he gives orders to nearby zombies to change direction, run, jump or regroup. It’s a big gameplay improvement to control the pace and movements of the horde.
Running is now temporary
Zombies now slow down after some time to move back like normal zombies, the change was made in order to have logical separation between transformations and actions, all transformations are now permanent where actions only last a brief moment. On the other side, they can attack from a distance and leap over small gap when attacking. This will hopefully balance out the changes we’ve made and make him stand out from the crowded zombie horde.
New human behaviors
Human are now alerted by nearby threats, while alerted they can alert their friends which make them much harder to take by surprise. This make civilians more dangerous because they will alert others while fleeing.
We’ve also added a patrol system to have more control over human movements and add more life to our levels. Instead of being static or moving like headless chickens they will have complex patterns, more when they will be able to perform actions along the way. The system is still a work in progress but core features are there and will be extended depending on our needs.
Props interactions
One main flaw we had with the gameplay flow was the stairs, characters could only use them in one direction and the player had no control over them but now he can choose which way they should be handle by the horde. We took the opportunity to add props interactions (doors, generators, etc.) so the player can now choose to make zombies attack a prop or leave it be, this change was made to allow more control on timing and path.
