Over 9000 Zombies! is going to see a few fundamental changes in this patch as well as new content. The immediate changes players will see are those to the map. The world map is now much more concentrated and will focus on the player defending a particular structure. This leads to other design changes related to the mechanics of the map as well. For instance, given sufficient time, the structures themselves can now be completely torn down by the horde of zombies. The player will also find that it is their responsibility to create barricades to keep zombies from wreaking havoc on their gun positions and portions of the structure. Players will have to keep exits clear should the need arise to abandon their position, since player created structures now act as barriers for both the player and the zombies. The map is more focused and concentrated, so zombies now spawn outside the bounds of the compound as opposed to scattered around the players location.
In between the waves of zombies players will discover that they are allowed to upgrade one of four select attributes to aid them in their zombie slaying. The first is Durability, which will increase the player’s maximum hit points as well as regenerate a small amount of health points regularly over time. Durability is key to staying alive for as many days as possible and can be critical to recovering hit points when trapped by the zombie horde. The attribute Carnage, will increase the players damage as well as lower their reload time. Carnage’s effects will especially be noticeable on certain guns where the reload time is the main bottleneck to dishing out damage. Such is the case for the shotgun, M-16 and grenade launchers for example. Resourcefulness increases the players ability to salvage scrap metal, increases the hitpoints recovered from health packs and increase the number of grenades collected. This will allow the player to construct a fortified base much more quickly, receive a large cache of hit points from key health pickups and keep their grenade habit well fed. The final attribute is Engineering, which upgrades the player constructed turret’s rate of fire and their damage. As the zombie horde grows larger, players will become more reliant on their turrets to dish out more damage, so investing in engineering will prove useful to survival.
Players will also discover some new content as well as various other changes. They will find a new Damage Per Second and Kills Per Second visual meter on their screen as well as some associated Steam Achievements. To aid the player in their survival three new constructible turrets have been added, including a rail gun, a white phosphorous launcher and a plasma projector. Turrets also now emit their own source of light so they do not get misplaced and lost in the dark. There have also been various balancing related changes made across the board, some visual improvements and several bug fixes.
Full change log:
- New attribute system!
- 4 new achievements
- KPS / DPS Meter
- New Turret: Rail gun turret!
- New Turret: Plasma Projector Turret!
- New Turret: White Phosphorous launcher!
- Changed the stats on various weapons to adjust for balance
- Turrets now act as their own light source
- Players are no longer able to walk through player constructed turrets and walls.
- Zombies now spawn off the map as opposed to randomly around the players
- The maps starting environments walls are changed in design and size. They are also all now vulnerable to zombie attacks
- Improved animations on Zombie Ravens.
- Changed item indicator rings
- Changed Fire spitting zombies to fire just 1 fireball at a time.
- Adjust Zombie counts on various days and zombie hp to adjust for difficulty.
- Flame throwers and Flame Turrets now have increased base damage and slightly increased rate of fire.
- The save/load game feature has been phased out.
- Ambient objects are no longer just randomly spread about the map
- A new smaller, but more focused and dynamic map has been implemented.
- Floating combat text has changed in scale and color to make damage more visible.
- Some minor changes in sound design
- Turrets have improved Line of Sight detection
- Various bug fixes, including collecting items after death, broken counters, etc
- Map editor coming soon!
If you discover any new bugs please make a post about it in the game's discussion forum. Also feel free to share your thoughts on the new update!
Loren Lemcke
@LorenLemcke
Over9000zombies.com
