Hello Living,
Today we want to talk about Extraction - how you get out of an Expedition, how extraction balloons appear in the world, and some of the systems we've built to make leaving the map a meaningful part of the experience rather than simply reaching an exit and disappearing.
We've also made several changes to extraction following Tech Test 3, particularly around how the extraction timer behaves and how we discourage extraction camping. These changes came directly from useful feedback during the test and are intended to make both systems clearer and less ambiguous.
How Extraction Works
When you enter an active Extraction Zone, a 30-second timer begins. Once that timer has completed, you become eligible to extract, but extraction does not happen automatically. You still need to reach the balloon itself and interact with it to leave the Expedition.
For a solo player, this means entering the Extraction Zone, remaining within it until the 30-second timer has completed, and then interacting with the balloon when you're ready to leave.
We require that final interaction because we don't want the game to automatically remove you from an Expedition just because an extraction timer has finished. Our extraction locations can appear in a wide variety of places across the map, and the Extraction Zone itself can cover areas where players might naturally be moving, taking cover or fighting. You could be behind a wall trying to deal with another player when your timer finishes, or moving around the edge of the zone trying to find a safer approach to the balloon. Automatically extracting you at that point would take control away from you at exactly the moment when the situation is becoming interesting.
Instead, completing the timer simply means that you're now able to leave. You still decide when to make the final move to the balloon and interact with it.
We also wanted to explain what happens when you leave the Extraction Zone while your timer is counting down. Leaving the radius does not simply reset the extraction timer.
Instead, the timer counts backwards when you leave the Extraction Zone, rather than immediately resetting.
For example, if you have five seconds remaining on your extraction timer and then spend five seconds outside the zone, you will have ten seconds remaining when you re-enter. The longer you remain outside the zone, the further your progress is lost, eventually returning you to the full 30-second countdown.
This gives players considerably more freedom to fight around an extraction without making the boundaries of the zone feel unnecessarily punitive. If you need to briefly move outside the radius to avoid an attack, reposition or pursue another player, you haven't instantly lost all of the progress you've made. At the same time, leaving the extraction still has a cost, and remaining outside it for long enough will eventually remove all of your progress.
We think this creates a much more natural relationship between the extraction timer and the fighting that can take place around it. The timer still asks you to commit to the area, but it no longer treats briefly crossing an invisible boundary as a complete failure of the extraction attempt.
Party Extraction
Extraction works slightly differently for parties because we don't want every member of a group to have to complete an entirely separate 30-second countdown.
The first party member to enter an Extraction Zone starts the timer for the group. Any other party members who subsequently enter the same zone inherit the progress of that timer. If the timer has already completed by the time another member of the party reaches the zone, that player is immediately eligible to extract.
The actual extraction remains individual, however. Every member of the party must reach the balloon and interact with it themselves. One player extracting does not automatically take the rest of the party with them.
This means that groups can become separated during the final moments of an extraction. One player might reach the balloon and leave while another is pinned behind cover, still approaching the zone or involved in a fight. Being in a party makes the countdown easier to coordinate, but every player is ultimately responsible for getting themselves out.
Extraction Balloons
Extraction Points become available through the arrival of Extraction Balloons. When an extraction is due to open, a balloon begins descending towards its landing location and can be seen from a considerable distance across the region.
Once the balloon reaches the ground, the surrounding Extraction Zone becomes active and players can begin their 30-second countdown.
Making the balloons physically descend into the world gives everyone in the Expedition a visible indication that a new extraction is becoming available. Players who want to leave can begin moving towards it, while other players can use the same information to anticipate how movement around the map is likely to change.
This is an important part of the system because extraction isn't intended to be private information. Once a balloon starts coming down, everyone who can see it knows roughly where players attempting to leave the Expedition are likely to converge.
Where Balloons Can Land
Extraction balloons don't land completely randomly. Each region contains more than 10 potential landing locations, with only a small number selected during any particular Expedition.
Over time, players will therefore be able to learn where extraction balloons are capable of appearing, but they won't know which of those locations will actually be used in a particular session.
We want that knowledge to become another part of learning a region. Experienced players will recognise potential extraction sites, know the routes between them and understand which approaches provide good cover or dangerous sightlines. That knowledge should be useful without allowing players to plan their entire Expedition around guaranteed extraction locations before they've even entered the map.
These landing sites can also be placed in very different environments. Some are relatively open, while others sit among buildings, courtyards or more complicated terrain. This is another reason we separate completing the Extraction Zone timer from actually interacting with the balloon. Players are free to move and fight naturally throughout the surrounding area without accidentally being extracted.
Preventing Extraction Camping
We've also made an important change to Deadsmoke following Tech Test 3.
Previously, Deadsmoke could be triggered simply by a player remaining close to the extraction balloon for an extended period. While the intention was to discourage players from sitting directly on an extraction and waiting for somebody to arrive, feedback from the test showed that the system could sometimes be ambiguous. Seeing Deadsmoke didn't necessarily tell you whether another party was contesting the extraction or whether the smoke had simply been triggered by the party currently trying to use it.
We've changed the system so that Deadsmoke now only activates when two or more separate parties are within the Extraction Zone. We've also increased the range at which the system detects those parties.
This makes the information much more functional. If you're approaching an extraction and see Deadsmoke, you now know that the extraction is actively contested by more than one party. Equally, if you're extracting alone or your party is the only group within the area, your presence will not trigger the smoke.
We still don't want this system to prevent extraction ambushes. Players can watch routes into an extraction, position themselves outside the detection area or move in when they think another party is vulnerable. The purpose of Deadsmoke is not to make an Extraction Zone safe, but to provide useful information when multiple parties are occupying the immediate extraction area at the same time.
We also deliberately continue to use a visual warning rather than an audio warning. Extraction balloons can appear in a wide variety of environments, including open terrain, settlements, courtyards and more enclosed locations. A persistent alarm can quickly become intrusive and, more importantly, doesn't communicate the situation as cleanly as the revised Deadsmoke system.
The changes following Tech Test 3 are ultimately about making the mechanic less ambiguous. Deadsmoke now communicates a much more specific piece of information: there is more than one party around this extraction.
When Extraction Points Open
Extraction Points open progressively throughout an Expedition rather than all being available from the beginning.
The first Extraction Balloon arrives shortly after the Expedition begins, providing the first opportunity for players to leave. The timing of the second and final Extraction Balloon varies from Expedition to Expedition, so you won't know exactly how long you have between the first extraction becoming available and the final phase beginning.
When the final balloon arrives, Reynauld broadcasts a warning across the region.
At the same time, a 10-minute countdown appears on screen. Once that timer reaches zero, the Expedition ends and any player who has not extracted is lost.
The variable timing is deliberate. We don't want every Expedition to develop according to an identical schedule, where experienced players know exactly when they need to move and can plan every stage of a run against a predictable clock. You will understand the general rhythm of an Expedition, but there should always be some uncertainty about exactly when the final phase is going to begin.
Masteries and Hidden Extractions
The two standard Extraction Balloons aren't necessarily your only way out.
Certain Masteries can enable access to a third Extraction Balloon during an Expedition. Unlike the standard balloons, this extraction is not visible to players who don't possess the relevant Mastery.
This gives us another way to make character progression affect how you navigate and understand the world rather than simply increasing your combat effectiveness. A character with the right Mastery may know that another way out exists when everyone else in the Expedition is making decisions around the two publicly available extraction points.
That additional information can fundamentally change how you plan a run. It can give you another route home, allow you to avoid a heavily contested public extraction, or give you options that other players simply don't know are available.
Expanding Extraction During Early Access
The system we're launching with is also the foundation for a much broader set of extraction mechanics that we'll be developing throughout Early Access.
One of the major additions we're working towards is player-controlled extraction, giving players ways to influence or create extraction opportunities themselves rather than relying entirely on the balloons provided by the Expedition.
We're also developing smaller gadget extraction balloons that can be used to extract items rather than the player. The intention is to create opportunities during a run to secure particularly valuable items you've already found, allowing you to send them back to safety while you remain in the Expedition and continue taking risks.
Finding something extremely valuable therefore won't necessarily mean that you have to immediately abandon everything else you're doing and head for an extraction. Depending on your equipment and the options available to you, you may be able to secure that item and continue deeper into the Expedition.
These systems will develop throughout Early Access, but the fundamental principles behind extraction will remain the same. We want leaving the Expedition - or securing something you've found within it - to involve decisions, preparation and risk. As we add more ways to extract, the system should become more strategically interesting rather than simply easier.
Why Extraction Works This Way
The overall goal is to make extraction part of the Expedition rather than something that happens after the interesting part is over.
The descending balloons provide a visible indication that extraction is becoming available and create natural points of convergence across the map. Rotating between a larger pool of possible landing sites means that learning the region gives experienced players useful information without making every session predictable. The 30-second timer forces players to commit some time to the extraction area, while the new count-back behaviour gives them enough flexibility to move and fight around its boundaries without an unnecessarily harsh reset.
Requiring a final interaction with the balloon also ensures that the player remains in control of exactly when they leave. You might have successfully reached the Extraction Zone and completed your countdown, but if another player has you pinned behind cover, you still have to work out how you're going to reach the balloon.
The revised Deadsmoke system follows the same principle. Rather than attempting to eliminate fights around extraction, it gives players clearer information when an extraction is actively being contested by multiple parties. The result should be a system that still produces dangerous and unpredictable encounters without relying on mechanics that feel arbitrary or difficult to read.
As we expand extraction through Masteries, player-controlled extractions and item extraction gadgets, there will increasingly be different ways to solve the problem of getting yourself and your equipment home. The mechanics around extraction will continue to become more interesting throughout Early Access, but the core idea will remain the same: leaving should involve commitment, information, risk and a final decision to get yourself to the balloon and get out.
Development Update
Development has continued apace over the last few weeks. A lot of the work happening at the moment is the less immediately visible but incredibly important work that goes into getting Hunger ready for Early Access, while at the same time an increasingly large portion of the team has begun moving onto content for our first major update, which we're currently planning for around three to four months after our Early Access release.
If this is the first development update you've read for a while, we'd recommend going back through some of our previous updates as well. We've covered a lot of the changes coming out of Tech Test 3 already, and this isn't intended to be an exhaustive list of everything we've changed since the test. These are simply some of the things we've been working on most recently.
At this point, we feel pretty good about having addressed the lion's share of the feedback we received from Tech Test 3. Changes have been made across almost every part of the game, including the major correction to the lunge mechanic, extensive changes to the Mastery trees, combat balance, movement, equipment, UI, extraction, matchmaking and a large number of smaller systems.
Our approach as we get closer to release is relatively straightforward. It would obviously be more fun for us as developers to keep pushing new weapons, enemies, features and other content into the launch candidate, but we don't think that's the right thing to do. Our priority is to make the version of Hunger entering Early Access as polished, stable and reliable as we can possibly make it.
That means we're now increasingly working across two tracks. One part of the team is focused on polishing and stabilising the launch candidate, while an increasingly large portion of the content team is already building what comes next.
Continuing to Polish the Game
Our engineering and design teams have continued working through a very large number of improvements. This includes continued polish on Masteries and their supporting systems, substantial UI work, bug fixing and a lot of smaller changes to default values across the game.
We've also been working through a large number of animation issues. These range from relatively minor visual problems through to animation bugs that can affect how readable combat feels, so there has been a significant amount of work going into cleaning these up across weapons, characters and interactions.
Combat balance has continued to change as well. We've rebalanced melee weapon damage to reduce the frequency of one-shot kills and create a little more room for fights to develop without moving away from the high lethality that we want Hunger to retain.
We've also continued expanding and refining the parry system. This remains an area we're spending quite a lot of time on as we work towards making melee combat feel increasingly consistent and readable across the full range of weapons and situations players can encounter.
One very small change that has actually made a surprisingly significant difference is the addition of a vault indicator to the HUD. When you're looking at an object that can be vaulted, a small on-screen icon now appears to make it clear that the action is available.
Previously, there could be quite a lot of ambiguity around whether a particular object was actually vaultable. You'd approach something that looked as though you should be able to get over it, attempt to vault, and instead jump into the object without getting anywhere. Apart from being frustrating in itself, this also meant you'd just expended stamina for an action you hadn't intended to perform.
It's a tiny addition, but having a clear indication that the game has recognised a valid vault has removed a surprising amount of friction from moving through the world. These kinds of small quality-of-life improvements are a significant part of what we're concentrating on at the moment. Individually they aren't particularly exciting features, but collectively they make the game feel considerably more polished and predictable to play.
Alongside this, we've continued updating and fixing different aspects of the combat log, as well as making a large number of smaller UI and readability improvements throughout the game.
We've also replaced the visual effect that plays when a character extracts from an Expedition. Our previous extraction effect relied on a relatively resource- and development-intensive setup without producing a result that we felt was particularly effective. We've now replaced it with something considerably more appropriate to the world and visual language of Hunger, while also simplifying the underlying implementation.
Equip and Draw Animations
We've introduced an important distinction between what we call equipping a weapon and drawing a weapon.
The draw animation is what happens when your character pulls out a weapon that they already have equipped. If you swap from your primary weapon to your secondary weapon and then back again, the animation of physically bringing that weapon into your hands is the draw animation.
Equipping is different. This is the process of taking a weapon from one of the stowed positions in your bags and moving it into your primary or secondary weapon slot.
Previously, the actual equip process was effectively instantaneous. You still had to open your inventory and interact with the weapon, but you could double-click a stowed weapon and immediately move it into an active weapon slot. This created some undesirable behaviour where players could carry multiple high-capacity weapons in their bags and rapidly cycle through them during combat, circumventing some of the intended limitations of the primary and secondary weapon slots.
We've now added a dedicated equip animation and equip time to this process. When you move a weapon from your stowed inventory into your primary or secondary slot, your character spends a short period physically taking that weapon out of their bags and equipping it before it can then be drawn normally.
This is similar in principle to the way equipping armour already works. Moving equipment around during an Expedition should be possible, but doing so in the middle of a fight shouldn't be instantaneous. Your primary and secondary slots represent the weapons you have immediately available, while weapons stored in your bags are things you're carrying with you rather than an extension of your active weapon slots.
The practical result is that carrying additional weapons remains useful, but you can no longer instantly cycle through every weapon in your bags during a fight. If you want to change your active loadout, you need to create enough time and space to do it.
Blood Bags and Repair Tongs
We've made changes to both Blood Bags and Repair Tongs, particularly in response to feedback around how long they could take to use when recovering from significant damage.
The most substantial change is to the Blood Bag. Previously, the rate at which it restored you was essentially flat, which meant that recovering from very severe injuries could require you to sit there using a Blood Bag for an excessively long period of time. In an extreme case, this could result in something like seven minutes of continuous healing.
We've changed this so that sustained use becomes progressively more effective over time. After you've been continuously using a Blood Bag for a while, its effectiveness begins to accelerate, with the rate of recovery increasing the longer you remain committed to using it.
The intention is to preserve the importance of finding somewhere safe and taking time to recover without making the total recovery time scale linearly into absurdity when somebody is particularly badly injured. If you commit to using a Blood Bag for a prolonged period, the system now rewards that commitment by increasingly accelerating the recovery process.
We've applied similar thinking to the Repair Tongs. Both systems should still require time and leave you vulnerable, but the amount of time involved needs to remain sensible at the extreme ends of damage.
These are exactly the kinds of relatively small systemic changes that we've been making as a result of what we observed during Tech Test 3 and the feedback we received afterwards.
Our First Major Update
While we're deliberately resisting the temptation to keep adding content to the launch candidate, that doesn't mean we've stopped making content. Quite the opposite: an increasingly large portion of the team is now working on what comes next.
We're currently planning our first major content update for approximately three to four months after our Early Access release, and a significant amount of the early content and production work for that update is already underway.
As part of that work, we're currently looking at several new weapons, new Hunger, and a new map that will form a major part of the update.
There's considerably more associated with the update that we'll talk about closer to the time, but we're deliberately beginning this work well before release. Rather than continuing to push everything we make into the launch build, we can keep the launch candidate increasingly stable while the rest of the team builds up a substantial body of new content that can arrive afterwards.
That's broadly how we expect development to work going forward. Hunger isn't a game that we're building towards Early Access and then considering finished. We intend to support and expand it for many years to come, with new regions, Hunger, weapons, systems and other content continuing to build out the world over time.
For now, though, the priority for the launch candidate is polish.
Infrastructure and Matchmaking
A considerable amount of engineering work has also been happening behind the scenes on infrastructure.
In particular, we've been continuing to improve the way we manage our server fleet and matchmaking systems. This includes making the systems that create and track matchmaking tickets more robust, ensuring tickets aren't lost as they move through the system, improving how servers are allocated and generally making sure that the entire process behaves predictably under the different conditions we expect to encounter at release.
This isn't necessarily the kind of work that produces an exciting screenshot, but it's some of the most important work we're doing. The matchmaking and server infrastructure needs to be able to handle large numbers of players entering and leaving Expeditions continuously without requiring players to think about any of the machinery underneath it.
A lot of our development work at this stage looks like this. There are still visible changes to combat, animations, equipment and UI, but an enormous amount of the work is simply fixing things, improving things, testing edge cases and making existing systems more robust.
This is also why the list above isn't exhaustive. There are hundreds of smaller changes being made across the game that aren't individually substantial enough to warrant a section in a development update. If you've been following these updates since Tech Test 3, you'll have seen that process happening progressively across almost every major system in Hunger.
Our focus between now and Early Access is to keep doing that work and get the launch candidate as polished and stable as humanly possible. Meanwhile, the content teams can keep building the things that will take Hunger forward after release, beginning with our first major update a few months later.
Stay Tuned for Our Open Beta Dates
We've obviously seen a lot of questions about when you'll next be able to play Hunger. We're currently lining up exactly when we'll be announcing the dates for our Open Beta, and we'll have more to share on that soon.
We've been thrilled by how many of you have already signed up to take part. If you haven't yet and you'd like the chance to play Hunger in the Open Beta, you can sign up through our Steam page, and while you're there, please make sure you've wishlisted the game as well.
Our plan remains to launch Hunger into Early Access in 2026. We'll have more to share about that in due course, but for now our focus is on getting the game into the best possible state for the Open Beta and, ultimately, our Early Access launch.
Wishlist Hunger to follow the journey and join our upcoming tests.