• Rebuilding: Getting Your Food Fix

    “Food security”, despite what you may think, doesn’t actually refer to whether your household food supply is safe from thieves and grizzly bears. No, it actually refers to whether your food supply is sufficient enough to prevent starvation, which is a constant threat in the post-zombocalypse world of Rebuild.

    When you first start a new city in Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville, you’ll find yourself in possession of a bright-eyed group of four survivors, but very little to feed them with. One of the most important tasks early in a new game is to achieve a state of food security; that is, to start bringing in at least as much food as your Hungry, Hungry Survivors are putting away.

    hugefarmLike the previous games in the series, the most reliable source of food for your survivors are farms. Unlike previous games in the series, however, farms in Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville come in a few different sizes and shapes. Regular 1×1 Farms produce 1 unit of food per day, while 1×2 Big Farms produce 1.5 units, and 2×2 Huge Farms produce 3 units of food per day.* Farms produce food for your crew automatically, but you can also assign a survivor to work a farm to double its output. Since a survivor consumes 1 unit of food per day, having someone work a farm produces at least enough extra food to feed the worker, and in the case of a Huge Farm can produce an accordingly huge surplus! For that reason, and since you can only ever construct regular sized Farms yourself, you should definitely seek out and try to reclaim any Big and Huge Farms you happen to see near your base.

    Try not to think too hard about what kind of food these farms are producing, though, especially since they start producing food immediately after being built. Quick-growing mutant crops?! And you thought genetically-modified food was bad for you. Don’t even get me started on what makes up the 1.5 units of food that come from the Pig Farm.* Who’s been taking care of those pigs all these years? I don’t think I want to know


    pigfarm

    That’s not the only way to get juicy units of food to cram into your survivors food unit-holes, of course. Hunting for wild animals in Fields and fishing in the ponds of Parks are also good sources of food, but can be a bit unreliable. Of course, if you’re starving and have a survivor to spare, why not try scavenging for goodies in a nearby apartment block, or trading materials to a wandering merchant in exchange for food?

    Wait, we haven’t talked about either of those things yet? Well, I suppose you’ll have to wait until next time
 or you can find out for yourself right now by picking Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville up on Steam Early Access!

     

    * These numbers are, of course, subject to change as we tweak the game’s difficulty. If you’re a food production number enthusiast, be sure to keep an eye on the official wiki’s Food and Farming pages for updated information!
  • Rebuild 3: Steam Early Access on May 16

    Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville is set to go live on Steam early access next Friday. That means the beta’s about to begin and you can all play it! I’ve been waiting for this day for about, let me see… about fourteen months!

    Beta? Why isn’t the game finished yet?

    Lovely new mission icons for the many-many things you can send survivors to do
    Lovely new mission icons for the things you can send survivors to do,
    several of which were not, *ahem*, exactly in the original design doc

    Yes, it’s been longer than expected, and I’m cramming more content into this game than I imagined when I first set out. But I was playtesting Rebuild 1 and 2 last month for the Survivalist Edition bonus content, and was shocked at how clumsy and simple both games seem compared to Gangs of Deadsville. This is, like, a real game we’re making here.

    For Early Access launch I’ve decided to raise the price of the game from $10 to $15. So turns out all y’all pre-order-ers got a good deal. One more missed marketing opportunity on Rebuild’s road to success.

    Okay, so why early access?

    Steam logo

    Just ask my awesome alpha testers. I’ve been sending them monthly builds since last November, and their feedback has affected everything from the UI to difficulty balancing, making me rethink survivor skills and zombie attacks. They’re even helping us write random events. Let me tell you as soon as I have a spare minute I want to add Steam Workshop stuff so you can mod the game.

    There will also be a direct-download version for Kickstarter backers and anyone who preorders through the official site, and an Android beta build later this month. But Steam’s a more public, mainstream store, and I’ve found the Early Access community surprisingly cool and forgiving with other beta games I’ve played.

    I’ve been developing this game in public since the beginning, and though it’s been extra work (my stuffed inbox for instance), the motivation alone has been worth it.

    Speaking of that inbox…

    Community Managementarianism

    I do need some help in this department, since I’m about to go from hundreds of playtesters to thousands. So I’m bringing on my good friend Jack Shirai (@Roshirai) as Northway Games’ new community manager. He’ll be haunting the forums as Roshirai, posting here about Rebuild’s development, and taking my place at all the tedious political luncheons that we game developers are often forced to attend.

    One more week to go. Wish us luck!

  • Rebuild 3: The Tech Tree

    My first pass at a research tree in Google Docs
    My first pass at a research tree in Google Docs
    In Rebuild 3, engineers won’t be the silly white-lab-coated scientists of earlier games. They’re gonna have to get out there and get dirty.

    “Tech” isn’t even the right word for what they get up to in those labs. Most of the things you’ll research in Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville are pretty mundane… Irrigation, for example, is a matter of digging ditches to bring water to your farms, because city water and sprinklers no longer work reliably.

    They’ll be designing medical training programs, rigging up generators to power electric fences, organizing more efficient night watch routines… and of course pulling zombies apart to see what makes them tick. Come to think of it, that may still require white lab coats and safety goggles.

    techtree_v2  techtree_v3  techtree_v4
    Earlier versions of the tech tree in development.

    In Rebuild 2, research was in three linear paths: getting more food, defending against zombies or recruiting and keeping survivors happy (also towers in the mobile version). The Rebuild 3 tree is 3x the size and more meandering. You’ll be hard pressed to research everything in a single game, so choose your path wisely.

    I decided to tie more lategame abilities into the research tree so you could unlock things gradually as you play, for example the ability to craft traps, medkits and fireworks. Policies, building upgrades and workshop missions all need to be unlocked via research now before they’ll appear in the game.

    Other research projects improve your fort defense or reduce your casualties in one way or another. You’ll definitely want a few of those as the zombie hordes start to build up outside your walls.

    Research tree as it appears in alpha version 0.53 (temp art)
    Research tree as it appears in alpha version 0.53 (temp art)

    Getting your first lab will be harder now because you can’t build them initially (you need to research that of course!), but you’ll usually start near one you can reclaim. Events in the game also give you a chance to build labs, and even to get research for free.

    One of the problems in Rebuild 1 and 2 was that you’d run out of thing for scientists (now called engineers) to do. With this much larger research tree, plus a new mission to craft items in workshops, they’ll have plenty to occupy their time inside the fort. Hopefully enough that nobody will send them out to shoot zombies or scavenge or any of that dangerous stuff.

    God forbid they get their white lab coats all dirty!

  • Rebuild 3: Books and comic books

    This month Stephen and I are hard at work on the random events and stories of Rebuild 3. We just passed short-novel length (say Chamber of Secrets) and are plowing on towards Goblet of Fire. Of course, you’ll never see all the events during a single game. Some of them relate to a specific faction, and even the biggest game map only has 4 of the 12 factions. Plus Gustav the trader of course – he’s everywhere.

    We’re also doing a fun little project on the side: a short promotional companion comic with EvilKris, the artist for Rebuild 2. It’s a day-in-the-life story of a trade deal gone wrong, using characters from Rebuild 3 and Kris’s grungy horror art style (best known from his Insanity series – he’s working on a third one!).

    The comic will be posted online, and I may give out printed copies if I show the game at PAX Prime this year. I’m happy to be working with Kris again; his corrupt environments and gruesome corpses delight me… in a stomach-turning kind of way.

    Panels from EvilKris’s in-progress comic:

    Zombies... walkers... we call them gankers.
    Zombies… walkers… we call them gankers.
    Dara from 1337cREw and her bike. Forget cars; everyone will ride bikes in the zombpocalpyse
    Dara from 1337cREw with her bike.
    Forget cars; everyone will ride bikes in the zombpocalpyse
    Thugs from the Pharmacist faction.
    Muscle from the Pharmacist faction. The one in the front scares me the most. You’ve got to be pretty nuts to use a meat cleaver as a weapon.
    You probably don't want to know what that head is for.
    You probably don’t want to know what that head is for.

    The next alpha build will be out at the end of February, then I’m planning to focus on tech, resources, and zombie attacks during March. At that point the base game should be close to feature-complete and hopefully ready for Beta around the end of April. It looks like I’ll have to push release back to Summer 2014, but every person who pre-orders will be able to play the beta in May.

    Writing this game has been more stressful than I’d expected, so I’m super grateful to all the fans, Kickstarter backers, and to the alpha testers on the forums for your help and support. You guys are the greatest! I’m making this game for you. :)

    I’ll leave you with an alpha teaser from Espen of No Studio, featuring the Rebuild 3 music:

  • Rebuild 3: Alpha of Deadsville

    Nearly all the buildings are done - recognize that tech company in the middle?
    Adam’s new buildings are nearly all in – recognize that tech company in the middle?
    We’re a couple months and four versions into Rebuild’s early alpha test, and so far so good! Of the 1500 people in the alpha, 500 have logged in, played 3000 cities, and found more bugs and typos than I’d care to think about.

    The forums are hopping, with insightful gameplay discussions and some great suggestions I’m desperate to squeeze in the game. Release date wise… we’re starting to fall behind, but there will be a very playable beta in a few months for backers and anyone who preorders. If you missed the Kickstarter, you can still get into the early alpha if you preorder the $25 deluxe edition.

    Meet the pig farmers. What happened to his legs???
    What happened to Farmer Bucket’s legs?? I needed temp art for the leaders so Sara’s character sketches made it into the game…

    I added factions yesterday with version 0.44. Finally! These are the “gangs” from the game’s name after all. They’re in there in all their temp-art glory, hitting you up for protection money, selling “meat” of dubious heritage, and raiding your fort if you piss them off or just look like an easy target.

    That's more like it: Malik from The Riffs
    That’s more like it: Malik from The Riffs

    You can also trade with them, which will soon be invaluable when I drastically reduce the resources you can scavenge for in the game and create new resource sucking policies (a gun isn’t much good without ammo, and johnny’s gangrenous leg ain’t going to heal itself without proper medicine).

    The faction events are still pretty barebones, but Stephen and I have been working on a heap more content which I’m hoping to get in this month along with fort-wide policies. So much to look forward to!