We're one week away from our first Early Access update, so we figured it was time for a dev update and check-in.
Early Access Update #1
As a reminder, Update #1 will be releasing next week on 27 May PDT / 28 May NZST and will contain the following new features:
- CURVEBALLS: Environmental and world events can now affect your shelter over time. These can be positive or negative and may force you to alter your strategy.
- ZOMBIFIED SURVIVORS: You may encounter your zombified survivors when returning to the location where they "died".
- NEW THROWABLES: Expanded range including additional offensive, distraction, and explosive options.
- DOOR BARGING: When you don't have time to be subtle, sprinting through a door may get you where you need to be faster.
- NEW STARTING SHELTER: When starting your game, there will now be a new possible shelter location.
As well as various general bug fixes and improvements.
Here's a sneak peek at some of the recent work in progress - with the usual reminder that it's in active development, could change and includes some placeholders!
DOOR BARGING
NEW THROWABLES
General development
Ongoing development for the game continues alongside our regular core updates. This includes exploration of roadmap features further down the road, like our trusty animal companions.
We're also exploring other quality-of-life updates, including the much requested ability to easily navigate between your survivors, especially as your shelter gets full.
And, as always, our art team continue to work on new locations for you to explore.
Demo Availability
With all of the above going on, we've gotten to the point now where the demo is lacking a number of core features, bug fixes and optimizations. We had to make a call on whether to focus the team's efforts on updating and optimizing the demo or working on new content, and we've made the call to focus our development solely on the full version of the game for now.
For this reason, we want to give players advanced notice that we'll be taking down our demo at the end of this week. If you've been meaning to try out the demo or you've been trying to get your friends to give it a go, tell them to have at it before the end of the day this Thursday 22 May PDT / Friday 23 May NZST. As with all Steam games, players will still be able to play 2 hours of the full game and refund it if it's not for them (subject to Steam Ts&Cs).
Developer Livestream
Our Senior Game Designer James Bodnar and Senior Programmer Sarah Dobie recently joined the team at Unity to do a little deep dive into zombie behaviour. Check out the playback of the stream over on YouTube if you're curious how some of our systems work from a technical standpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMCAtKjP-Ao
______
That's all for now! We can't wait to hear your thoughts on the new update next week. Don't forget to join the Discord to chat directly to the team and let us know your feedback and ideas.
Harriet
& the Into the Dead team