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Desert Survival FREE DLC now available

Survivors,

It’s summer, it’s hot, and it just got hotter. A new update for Judgment is now available on Steam, with a new, FREE DLC will let you fight of demons in the Desert!

The Desert Survival DLC opens up a new game mode which takes place in the desert, and changes some of the game mechanics. The desert is more sparsely populated, so a bit harder to find places to scavenge, and as if that is not enough, your base is also much less self sufficient, at least in the beginning - so you will need that scavenge more than ever.

If you like our work, don’t forget to Wishlist & Follow our upcoming survival city-building game:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1076750/Dream_Engines_Nomad_Cities/

You can also follow us on Twitter, join our Dream Engines newsletter, and come chat with us on the Dream Engines Discord server.

Desert Survival DLC

Desert Survival is a free DLC, anyone who owns Judgment can download and play it. Moreover, the DLC unlocks the desert game mode, but you can still play the regular “Vanilla” mode even if you download the DLC, so there is really no reason not to.

Here are some of the Major changes when you play the desert survival mode. Read below to see what other changes we have made in the game that will affect both this new and the base mode.

  • Your base map will be a desert biome, with a new sandy terrain and different resource distribution. Rocks are now more common while trees are less so.
  • Building farms and planting trees require seeds that can only be found by scavenging.
  • There are two types of trees, dead and live ones. A live tree will yield wood and seeds while dead trees only yield wood. Most of the trees in your starting map will be dead, but any tree that you plant will be live, so you will never “lose” seeds (unless you sell them).
  • Farms, trees and wells can only be built/planted on the dirt parts of your baes, not on the sand.
  • By default, enemies and loot contents of scavenge missions will be hidden. You will see which enemies are there, so you can estimate the tier/difficulty, but not exact numbers.
  • Removed the rain dance ritual and rain collector building. You'll have to work harder to get food and water.
  • A lot of balancing changes around food and water. A single survivor can handle more farms, but each farm feeds less survivors, so you'll have to work harder to gather materials and build farms, but once you do you will need more or less the same amount of survivors to feed your people.
  • The world map now has desert in the center, and grass/forests are rarer. Scavenge areas in the desert are much more rare now, so you will need to search farther to find those much needed seeds and other important loot.
  • By default, survivors will only eat one food type per meal, even if more are available, to conserve food. Players can change this if they want to gain multiple food type bonuses.
  • New desert combat maps.
  • Visual changes to some terrains and trees.

All in all, the desert survival challenge is significantly harder than the vanilla mode, and we recommend it to experienced players that have already played Vanilla and are familiar with the game. We also recommend starting with “Challenging” and not jumping straight to “Tough”.

Changes to all modes

Other than our work on the new game mode, we also went over all your feedback, and implemented several improvements and changes, many of which were requested by the community. Here are the main changes. For a full list, see below.

  • When starting a new game, players now have more customization options, including if they want the campaign story or not, if they want to enable the intro combat, and if they want the Halloween content or not.
  • A new very important setting allows players to play with loot & enemies hidden in the world map. You can still see which enemy types, but not numbers and loot. This adds some extra challenge and a random/surprise element to the game, which I personally love. These are displayed by default in Vanilla, but hidden by default in the desert challenge.
  • Many UX and ease of life improvements, including around defensive positions before being attacked, destroying multiple objects and font readability improvements, and being able to better control how many food types your survivors eat, balancing food spending and bonuses received.
  • Added several decorative objects that will allow you to create settlements that are more aesthetically pleasing and customized. You can also customize the appearance of objects that have several variances such as trees, beds, and the new decorations.
  • Fixed several smaller but annoying bugs reported by our community.

What’s Next?

It's been more than 4.5 years since we started working on Judgment. Now, with this DLC, we plan to focus most of our efforts in the near future into our next title - Dream Engines: Nomad Cities (you’ve already wishlisted it, right?).

Judgment continues to be very important to us and will always be in our hearts. We will continue to support it, chat with players in the Judgment Discord server and on the Steam forums. We will fix bugs as needed, and perhaps later down the road we will release more content updates, special challenges, or any other neat idea that may come up. But first let’s enjoy this new content, and see how well it is received by you, the valued members of our small community.

If you want to chat with us, Discord is the best place to do so, but we still regularly check the Steam forums as well. Other players in the community are very helpful, so these are the best places to find answers to any questions you may have.

Thank you all for your continued support!

Full Change List

  • Mechanics [Community Request]: There is now an option to hide the exact enemy numbers and loot contents of scavenge missions, making the game less predictable and require more trial and error. This is hidden by default in the desert survival mode but displayed in Vanilla.
  • Mechanics [Community Request]: When an attack is incoming, survivors will no longer get tired or hungry. This will allow them to prepare for the attack without having to worry about starving or becoming tired just as the enemies are about to arrive.
  • Mechanics [Community Request]: You can now destroy resources to prompt more of them spawning. Beware, there is a cooldown before more can spawn.
  • Balancing [Community Request]: Limited the trader cooldown for neighboring settlements to 25 days, preventing them from becoming irreperable if you decline too many help requests.
  • Content [Community Request]: Made most of the halloween content a separate setting which you can toggle on/off when starting a new game. Some of the decorative content remains in the base mode as well.
  • Content [Community Request]: Added decorative objects - flowers, statues and roads (they don't affect walk speed, but they can help with base planning).
  • UX: You can now control how many food types your survivors eat. Instead of eating one of each enabled type to get maximum bonuses, the player can now limit how many types survivors eat to save food without having to enable/disable specific types. By default they still eat as many as they can in vanilla mode.
  • UX: Changed new game user interface, allowing for more customization options.
  • UX: Added a reset button to game settings.
  • UX: Rain collectors now show different images depending on how full they are.
  • UX [Community Request]: When a survivor enjoys bonuses from eating multiple food types there will now be an icon showing that in their info panel (when you select them).
  • UX [Community Request]: When an attack is incoming, you now see a timer near the notification icon.
  • UX [Community Request]: When an attack is incoming, you can now manually give the "go to defense stations" (from the colony management panel) before the game suggests it, and stay in those positions until after the attack. Useful for complex bases.
  • UX [Community Request]: A destroy button has been added to the create multiple tasks menu so you can destroy many objects at once (like trees, walls). Not that you will not get resources from destroying trees this way.
  • UX [Community Request]: Added an option to toggle whether speed returns to normal after battles or continues in the same speed as before the battle (different players had different preferences, this is the way to make everyone happy).
  • UX: When you have a confirm window (such as the one asking if you're sure you want to quit, or if you want to send your survivors to defensive posts) now acccepts keyboard shortcuts Enter/Esc.
  • UX [Community Request]: Improved our font so some numbers are clearer, especially the digit "1" and period/comma.
  • UX: Can now shift + click several objects in the "create multiple tasks" tool, instead of dragging a square area (or in addition to)
  • UX: You can now enable/disable mods or change languages without restarting the game.
  • Visauls: Change game saturation a bit, and players can now contorl it.
  • Visuals: Can now customize appearance of objects that have several random options (such as beds, trees, and many of the new decorations)
  • Fixed Bug [Community Request]: fixed some issues with combat preparations and guard towers.
  • Fixed Bug [Community Request]: metals and other resources will no longer spawn on the edges of the map where you can't build mines.
  • Fixed Bug [Community Request]: when adding a skill that affects survivor health, their health will immediately update now, instead of having to wait until they change armor.
  • Fixed Bug [Community Request]: fixed a bug where after loading an autosave in which survivors were on their way to their defensive posts, they wouldn't continue to their positions after the combat started.
  • Fixed Bug [Community Request]: missing localization to the text that explains some settings can only be changed from the title screen.