Rebuild 2: Playtest and Playtomic

The Rebuild 2 main menu
The Rebuild 2 main menu may be the creepiest art in the game.

The Rebuild 2 playtest is over and was a huge success. I sent the test out to 63 applicants, and of those 45 played at least once and 21 sent me some sort of useful feedback (and get their names in the credits – thanks guys!). A couple shared their access despite being explicitly asked not to, but it was worth the risk and I had some security to impede ne’er do wells. So far my faith in humanity is intact!

Some testers were above-and-beyond awesome, playing lengthy games on multiple difficulties, finding all the endings and rooting out my many grammatical errors. They found dozens of bugs I’d missed, and helped me make Nightmare difficulty (now called Impossible) harder than ever.

Being fans of Rebuild 1, they weren’t as good at finding noob issues, so I did some extra tests with people who’d never seen the original. In person is best for this, although I find it nerve racking to watch people play my games. Like every other aspect of the game, the tutorial got an overhaul.

Stats broken down by day and difficulty
Playtest stats broken down by day and difficulty

I collected stats using Playtomic (formerly SWFStats), including the fact that a few games went 300, 500, even 800 days. That’s dedication!

Playtomic wasn’t ideal for such a small test. I broke down the survivors, squares, and food by day and difficulty, but when I added map size it all got out of order and became a wall of numbers. I needed more options to sort and filter, or download the data in an xls. I also logged any errors as custom metrics, but without room for stack traces all I knew was how often each error happened. Again, not what Playtomic was designed for, but it would have been useful.

What Playtomic does do well is analytics for published games, like Google Analytics but simpler and more game-centric. I wish I’d put something like it in Rebuild 1 so I could at least know how many plays that game has. 6 million confirmed on the big portals… maybe another 2 or 3 from the hundreds of smaller sites?

Anyway, with help from my army of volunteer playtesters, Rebuild 2 is now (just about) finished, and is off to sponsors for bidding. The process usually takes a month, so you’ll finally all be able to play the new game in September!

Until then, here’s a very brief Rebuild 2 trailer I cut together:

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66 thoughts on “Rebuild 2: Playtest and Playtomic

    1. I dont think that zombie suck but still I expected more from the design of the zombies… (smother image, better quality,how knows?)

      1. i sh*t my pants after reading a wikipedia page of Nightmare on Elm Street.
        I hte horror, so i liked the cartoony, paper-style ofthe previous game.

        1. Obviously, you are overeacting. It seems that the “Nightmare on Elm Street” experience has caused you a psychological trauma resulting in your fear of dramatic and violent scenes. The artwork was not as scary as I was afraid of, but the animated scenes were not that good as I hoped for.

          1. I think just from an outside perspective that the end result looks very weird. You have a very gory and sometimes shocking interface, comic “cutscenes” and characters… but the levels themselves are extremely cartoony and sparse. I think the product should try to go completely in one direction so the game itself fits together better, but… I’ll have to see when I play it.

  1. It was a honour to test a truely awesome game. I wish you the best for the game even though I know that this game will kick arses and will definetely be a serious candidate for Ng game of the year award…

    1. By the way, I did not like the image. I think that it could have been better if there was a survivor and a zombie looking at each other face to face with bad moods…

  2. i cant believe I missed it! Sarah, I’m so sorry that i didnt playtest! I almost never check my mail for some reason! I am SO sorry I let you down. And to show my sorryness, I made up a long cussword:BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

  3. woops my keyboard messed up. The part that did not make it was that I dont regularly check my email, and that I made up a long cussword to explain my sorryness

      1. I played Rebuild 2 as well but I did not see anything too horrifying. Rebuild 2 is a very dramatic game not a horrifying one. Still, I would love it if the images were more realistic (but not more hardcore). I think that if that happened, Rebuild 2 would be the game of the year in Ng without any serious competition. Even though I know that it is TOO early to say that, if you make Rebuild 3 please have the voice actor of Dead Frontier: Outbreak 1&2 for the ending scenes (and please add a scene at the beginning of game).

  4. I hope Two Towers Games doesn’t get it. They’ve been tweaking the first to where a lot of the options are locked out unless you play on their site, which is obnoxious. It’s strong-arming people into making an account there who might not want to.

    Complaining and whining aside, I too am looking forward to the sequel of a fantastic game. The first was simply exquisite, so I can’t wait to get my e-hands on the second. :D

    1. I am almost sure that either Ng or Kon will sponsor the game. Rebuild was a massive success after all.

      1. I hope that’s the case. I don’t know about Kongregate, but I’m pretty confident that Newgrounds doesn’t use such tactics.

        1. I think that the game will end up to Kon. In Ng it had 500k plays (not bad but not good as well), In Armor Games it had 2m plays (impressive but still…) while in Kon it had 3,3m plays. So it seems that Ng will definety not sponsor R2 while Kon will be more into the sponsorship than Armor Games. I think that whoever site wins the sponsor bidding will be the sponsor of the sequels of R2 as well.

          1. There’s always Crazymonkey, which while small is generally fair, and Armorgames, which 90% of the time wants some sort of exclusive but insignificant bonus to it’s own offerings.

  5. Damn, sucks that I’ve been too busy to keep track of the blog. Would’ve loved to play test this one. Expect a very in-depth review when it comes out though!

  6. I also got a chance to test RB2. Spent many hours going through all the levels. Graphics are cool but its the gameplay that always excites me. Sarah added extra layers to strategy and richer resource management. You can tell a lot of work went into this version.

    1. Yes, the anticipation is killing me like a zombie hoard. Do you have an estimated release date for Rebuild 2? Please let us know. Thank you.

  7. I don’t think so, Edwin. If I understood the post correctly, they’re shopping out who is going to host it and so forth; I think Sarah said that takes about a month, so presumably any time now.

  8. For you info, the game is currently on flash game license and sponser for the game being found, untill this happens only people with a FGL account of high standar can play it. Trust me ive tried to play it but sadly my current account on FLG has not contributed sufficiantly, sigh, it went on around a week, itll be next month i suspect!

  9. When R2 will come out? It is almost Octomber and I miss it. By the way, is there any way to play flash games on mobile phones?

  10. i just want to comment on x said, i though you should find the sponser first before making this game. The game called “The last stand” first find it and starting making this game, but although he release about 2 year but because he found a sponsor and make things faster if not it takes 1 more year so something.

  11. That’s a catch-22, as I expect most sponsors won’t sign on until they have a game to look at, even with a proven seller like Rebuild.

  12. Hi

    You have to have at least a working game on flash game licence,it can be unfinished but agreed with wayne its doubtful anyone will sponser an unfinished game

  13. One thing I’d like to see in rebuild is an option to create rooftop and lawn gardens on the apartment and suburb squares, and possibly an upgrade to greenhouses if the people gain enough knowledge to build them.

  14. May we please have some kind of announcement regarding the release status of Rebuild 2? A lot of people are chomping at the bit to play it, and there has been no news of any kind for weeks. I’m sure we would all appreciate something, anything, even the smallest scrap of information. Thank you.

  15. I have just finished the game at armor games but i only got 4 endings the one when you kill the last judgement gang ,the one when you take the helicopter ,the one when you cure zombies and when you get the city hall ,i wanted to know is there any more endings thanks

  16. Hi Sarah,

    First of all congratz with the finishing touch. The game playes great and most of the old features are stil there. For me it does kinda feel like a version 1.5 then a version 2. Not to be negative about the product since it’s great but it looks like it’s the rebuild that should have been the first one if you know what i mean.

    Ah wel enough said, now back to the game!

  17. I hope they develop the First Person Shooter (FPS) (Call of Duty Style) and Role Play Game (RPG) (Diablo II) of Rebuild 2 version type game. For example, As I am a soldier, I have to protect scavenger, scientists, and leaders from zombies as given assignments. Helping the my colleague soldiers on guard mission and killing zombies will be fun. Also, including the multilayer games with different real players will never be tired. You select as scavenger, soldier, builder, leader, or scientists.

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