My game Rebuild was more successful than my highest hopes. It’s nearing 2 million plays just on Kongregate alone, and is still the #3 game in their rankings. So there’s no doubt I’ll do a sequel and it’s about time I got started!
I’ve gotten heaps of suggestions by email, pm, and in the forums at TwoTowers, Kongregate and Newgrounds. I’ve been collecting these and trying to get a feel for how people are playing the game.
I noticed something interesting: many people play to completion, trying to get all four endings in one game, preferrably on the same turn. This is not at all how I play; I just want to get to an equilibrium where I’m not in constant danger of being wiped out, usually around turn 75. Mopping up the remaining 2/3 of the map isn’t interesting to me, so I didn’t make a lot of content for the lategame. This is how I imagined a game going:
- Turns 1 – 24: worry about food
- Turns 25 – 44: worry about zombies
- Turns 45 – 74: worry about happiness
- Turn 75: either you’ve stabilized and won, or you’re dead and don’t know it yet
These numbers are hardcoded: zombie mobs first arrive on day 25, and on day 45 the zombie spawning caps out and new happiness-related events start happening. But people are playing until turn 250 and conquering all 100+ squares. So, my first priority for the sequel is to take this play style into account and make sure the game stays interesting for longer, especially on easy difficulties. There will be many more random events, and branching storyline events where you have to answer yes or no questions which influence future events. Maybe even factions you can effect, or special named npcs that join the fort if you meet certain conditions.
I was also super pleased to see people swapping stories of their survivors; the funniest names or most eyes lost (I saw 9) and the random stuff that happened to them. So my second goal is to make survivors more customizable and unique, with equipment and skills and levelling. Varying skin and hair color and yes, there will be things to lose other than eyes.
The biggest complaint was the art (though some people liked it’s simplicity), followed by the fact that the zombie attacks weren’t interactive. The art will get some attention (hopefully with help from someone else), specifically the animations which I admit are totally pathetic. No promises, but I also want to replace the attack animation with a minigame that changes your odds by +/- 10%. Skippable of course, and hopefully more interesting than your usual point and click shooter.
So those are the big 3 (more lategame content, more unique survivors, better zombie attacks), but of course there will be new buildings and effects, improved art all around and I’m going to address some stuff that drives everybody (including me) crazy about Rebuild, like:
- All the clicking involved in sending 10 guys on a mission in the lategame
- Having to move people on and off guard duty all the time
- Squares filling up with zombies the turn after you clear them
- 20 zombies spawning every turn in the last couple squares on the map
- Losing a single 3% danger fight in Harder or Nightmare can ruin you
Of course there are a lot of suggestions that won’t make it in, like I’m not going to attempt multiplayer or add an XCom-style tactical battle system (I wish, that would be awesome!). I’m already starting a list of ideas for Rebuild 3 – hah, we’ll see!
I’m looking for a vector artist to help me out this time, so if you’re interested in working on Rebuild 2, drop me a line with your portfolio.
There are a lot of other little things that may or may not make the cut, and the possibility of versions for iPhone and other platforms. But I’m just getting started, so there’s still time to send me your suggestions!
Congratulations on a very well deserved success! Rebuild is just wonderful. I warmly encourage you to dive into the sequel and can’t wait to see the result of all your hard work. I would really love to see some tactics in the combat phase – perhaps not on an x-com level, but something to make it seem like you are actually doing the fighting. The minigame idea is fantastic. Maybe something simple like a “golf” style time-your-click-to-hit-the-sweet-spot meter?
Keep up the great work. You rock!
That reminds me of a terrible gamejam game… http://sarahnorthway.com/games/golf/
Something I did for fun was imagine that my leader (should he survive) was going from city to city, liberating one at a time. I think that would be a neat extended play mechanic to be able to take a small contingent of survivors to a new city with some modest bonuses.
Artwise, I really liked the main strategy screen artstyle, but the ending scenes and the zombie attacks wasn’t that great.
Mechanics wise, I don’t actually mind not having anything to do during a mission or an attack, because I liked rebuild as a turn based strategy. There are hundreds of flashgames where I need to actually pay attention for every second.
Overall, I think there is a real value to creating a feel of the player in the shoes of a leader, in charge of the survival of the entire survivor community, rather than someone mired in the details of each mission.
This was truly an incredible game, bravo. I really don’t have anything to add to the other people suggestions, except maybe having the option (OPTION!!!!!) of commanding armies, not quite like x-com, but Star Wars battlefront kinda thing, where you have a major confrontation. Show us WHY it was so hard to contain the zombies once the contamination started! Otherwise I just wanted to say KICKASS GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Also, you’ve still got several million plays and tons of suggestions on ArmorGames.com, which is where I am
You should make the sequel where you have some different modes.
Campaign: start out in a small town like 4×4, and you take that town and move on to other cities, make the leader more important, and make it like a adventure strategy game.
Free mode: you choose the difficulty, and the size and just take that city(p.s. Have more size options other than 10×10 and 12×12.
Survival:You start out in a city where you cannot attack but can defend and every three days or so you get attacked by a horde, getting more and more difficult each time. Have it so you can choose a city of 5×5 and fort of 4×4 or city of 10×10 and fort of 9×9.
Also have features like you can give your people better guns like from scavenging and finding them. scavenging should be far more important. you should need to get materials to replace buildings. also when someone gets sick they should not just get killed right off the bat but get sick, be unable to be used for anything, possibly recover or possibly die, hospitals giving them a higher survival chance (non-stacking). You should also fix the problem where zombies spawn when completely surrounded by your walls, how would zombies get in their?
Zombie Babies? lol jking XD
The only thing I would suggest is editing survivor names; naming all of the survivors and not just the leader. Male survivors named Maria and Julie? Not knowing which ones are male and female.
Survivor names and what “class” they belong to is what I’m suggesting.
Other than that, the game is perfect.
To have the feeling that survivors are more ”alive”, maybe you could add to those NPCs with special skills you mentioned a small paragraph acting as a short background of their lives before the outbreak (and after?). I think that would truly make these characters shine amongst the others.
Really nice game, a unique concept. Even if the graphics weren’t as good as other things we may see, you’ve done both, this is quite good. Congratulations for making a gem! Have fun working on the sequel!
One suggestion I have for the sequel is to display, on a square with a mission-in-progress (in addition to the days remaining), an icon indicating the type of mission it is.
You could base the icons on the props the various character classes use. For example:
Flag = Recruit Survivors
Bag = Scavenge for Food
Binoculars = Scout the Area
Gun = Kill Zombies
Hammer = Reclaim Area/Build Defenses/Replace with a ….
Flask = Research
As it stands now you have to click on each square to find out the type of mission in progress. There are times when you need to cancel a mission and have to click around to find the right one. For example, you realize that you’re sending out too many soldiers, leaving your fort dangerously undefended, and need to cancel a zombie killing mission. Or you realize that you don’t have the room to house all the survivors you’re trying to recruit and need to cancel a recruitment mission.
The icon system I propose would make it easy to see at glance what missions are happening across the map.
P.S. Great game! I’ve beat it numerous times on Nightmare difficulty.
Hi Sarah,
As I put in my review of your game (http://www.tayloriscariot.com/2011/02/rebuild/ – shameless plug there…) what I’d really like to see in the sequel is the opportunity to play as the other side. All the zombie films and the majority of the games in existence only allow play as breathers. Frankly this is discrimination towards the living impaired and should be remedied ;)
What more fun could there be than wiping out the last few enclaves of huddled, frightened harmans?
Its a wonderfull game, congratulations! my sugesttion is for the future, maybe you can transform this game in a MMORPG, (like Travian or others..) it should be a succes for sure.
ty for the hours of fun…
Can you please publish what changes were made in each version?
notdoppler has 1.13
jayisgames has 1.19
Twotowers has 1.20
Kongregate has 1.21
I really would love to know what changes were made :)
Between 1.13 and 1.20 were bugfixes including food being calculated wrong, multiple endings not showing in one turn, survivors getting locked on nonexistant missions, text typos and some obscure loading bugs. Also highscores apis and other changes for particular sponsors.
1.20 and 1.21 were changes to kongregate highscores and badges, so effectively no difference.
Thanks :)
I am a little bit addicted to this game…. I woul love to see Rebuild 2 with some new features and content… bring it on!
Please dont change the art!I dont shit my pants with this game because you do not see that the zombies are zombies.
Ill probably get nightmares from betters art.
lives in swadlincote.
soz i thout that was to put info about me, im so dumb
rebuild 1 looks to babyish and cartoony. We need to change the art.
hey regarding the eye losses lol i started getting so many that every turn i was getting a report from a “cyclops” or “one eye” and there was one i got a report about someone losing an eye from someone who had lost an eye lol
There was something i was going to say… o ya i remember, harder har and nightmare is too hard like if you lost 1 person at all it would start a train of death, i was playying yesterday had about 12 people 1 died and im like no puls he was army so withdrew a army form the police station and then put some worthlesss teachers in replace pluss a builder and then they and my scout died. so now i have 9 now, started a recruitment ,mission then the next turn my leader died then o no! zombies are pressing hard on the fort so i better assign all exept 1 out of my 3 army people becuase i needed the recruitment mission im running out of people then after a few turns of faling he died and some other people. got 6 people now then through some probably poor panic decisions i got 1 guy left. so my suggestions is
A. anyone can do a recruitment mission eayser becuase it’s almost impossible without a leader,
B. make a bigger city size ( not incredbly huge)
c. Wtf loss and 4 squares are no more due to 3%
d. Publish when you release new updates and your next game
e. Do a good job on the next game i now you can do it
f. this game was awsome!
Thanks so much! Today I’m working on your point C: trying to reduce the damage if there was less chance of damage. So much math…
I definitely like the ideas about varying city sizes and possibly taking a band of survivors from one place to the next (with random losses on the way!), but there’s 2 specific things I’d really like to see:
1) Guard Duty – PLEASE just make it automatic that anyone not on a mission is on duty, and just make the defence % visible anytime people are being assigned to a mission so the player can decide if it’s too risky to send that many people. Having to add and remove people every turn gets old fast…
2) Survivor Experience – the more missions the survivors do (including guard duty), the more experience they should get, which should give them bonuses to what they do. I’d recommend 2 parallel experience “paths”: Combat and Skill.
The Combat path would give bonuses for participating in any zombie kill mission or defence, and would only get experience from those types of missions. That way, non-soldiers could still get combat bonuses if they fight enough. I’d max that at maybe 5 levels, with the defense bonus equal to the level.
The Skill path would give bonuses for participating in the survivor’s chosen career, and gain experience from those types of missions. Max level could be anywhere between 3 and 10, dependign on how you structured the bonuses. If you change skills, tour Skills EXP gets reset to 0 and you start over! Untrained survivors get nothing until they’re trained. For other careers, skill levels would do the following:
Soldier: +1 defense per level
Scavenger: +5% food scavenged per level
Scientist: % chance of reducing research by 1 day (check once for each scientist assigned, cannot reduce the time by more than 1 day for every 6 days of the original research time)
Leader: Not sure about this. If relevant, maybe a boost to recruitment efforts? Or possibly influencing the likelihood of happines-related events towards a positive direction?
Builder: Again, not sure about this one. I’m sure you’ll think of something.
In any case, looking forward to the sequal, whenever it comes out!
Done, done, done, done and done. I’ve been working on almost exactly the changes you’ve listed. Great minds think alike, right? :D
I agree entirely with these ideas, however I think you should have the option to ‘lock’ survivors on guard duty to avoid accidentally sending all of your survivors/soldiers on missions during the same turn without realizing it. An alternate possibility is to display ‘fort stats’ on every mission screen, showing how many survivors/soldiers you have on guard duty currently and how many survivors/soldiers you will have left after the current mission is accepted. You could also add the defensive percentage to the mission windows. If both features are implemented, you could also add a counter on the mission screens to let the player know how many locked survivors/soldiers they currently have in fort. Pretty customizable idea, just my two cents.
True and awesome Im looking forward to this game
im not writing my real name but i think you should make it so you can chose to be zombie or surviver somehow. please consider my idea
that would be fun, like start the infection! u would have some zombies and make them have alternate classes to survivors
polluter: destroy food u find when searching a building(scavenger)
Hunter:searches for survivers and turns them into zombies(leader)
demolisher: breakes down defenses fast (builder)
infection: makes survivors sick (scientist)
zombie: what do u expect? i eats people. can be transformed into other races at the learning hole ( zombie school)
I think leaders should be more rare and give bigger bonuses such as if they go on defense they increase moral and make everyone fight better and same for missions I think they should have a lot more than what they have now!
H Sarah,
Your game rocks big time. I try to play it weekly since it keeps you busy. The above ideas are realy good ideas but i still beleave that the key is to not make it too complex. The basics you created in this game are just brilliant and are realy fun to play. If you mix in too much RPG elements you could be spending more time managing your survivors than focussing on the assignments and who does what.
I do agree on the guard duty that it’s too much of a hassle to add survivors and remove them from guard duty.
I wish you the best of luck with the sequel. Do you already have an aprox. date when to expect the sequel?
p.s. Why does the virus come from Holland? I’m from Holland and we are proud of our export products :). Maybe the German seeds can be the fault in the sequel :D
Yes Yes, I agree with that.
I never knew why Sarah chose Holland.
Not Germany, Im from Germany
But it makes sense because they wanted to take over the world!
So NVM About that last sentence XP
I loved the game!
I just hated that, It was so easy to win
I got all 3 labrotories in about 30 minutes (On Nightmare)
Becuase i spawned next to a Bar, and 2 Labrotories.
I had 1% risk of fort being overun (Dangerous) AND 4 SQUARES WERE GONE!
I only had 5 squares.
Thats all that annoyed me about it…
I NEEDZ Rebuild 2!!! Hurry up already will ya!
But in all seriousness, good job with Rebuild 1, I really enjoyed and have spent WAY too much time playing it (I think I’ve played it more than Shogun 2). I thought I’d add a few small wishes for the sequel.
– I always seem to end up with nothing but soldiers, 2 leaders, and a few scientists. I’d be nice if non-soldiers weren’t quite so bad at defense.
– It’d be nice if building placement had an effect on defense and zombie attacks. For example, if I have a police station on the perimeter its gonna be easier to defend then having it in the middle of the camp with say a farm on the perimeter. Also if a breach occurs, a farm would be easier to abandon, while an apartment or hospital might have more serious consequences.
– Research is a bit wonky. If I lose a scientist 1/2 way though, I shouldn’t have to start from scratch.
– Perhaps have a survival victory condition. Survive for 200 days or kill 3000 zombies or something along those lines.
Anyways keep up the good work, looking forward to the next installment :)
i think you should add a new character the sniper these can be rare but if you have some the will pick of a set number of zombies each day and the more you have the more zombies that will die like the polce station whereyou assign guards for snipers you must put them on a watch tower each watch tower adds to the ammount of zombie killed
also the new look should be a human and the game should be about not us rebuilding but more of a war against them with different towns with different diffulculties this will also be like running your own country and since it only took me 1 day to finnish it this would keep people intterested for longer and you could see this game get to #1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i agree, make there be a bit more of a story to this game, like, with rival bands, u can fight them of or take the fight to them, but make them harder to kill than zombies because they have guns but not against every town and if u have a certain number of leaders, u can recruit enemy bands and join other forts
gas stations can be useful when you have enough of them say 4 or 5 you can send a group of survivors to another city the survivors must have the right amount of peole to go with them like 4 soldiers 1 scientist 3 builders and 1 leader and you must switch betwen them in the same turn making it harder to manage citys
also change the happiness sign to morale
wow please finish it soon i know you are very busy but please keep working im gettin antsy and check every day
also about turn 45 and on scavenging becomes useless but it does get usefull again about 75 to 80 and the rest useless
There should be different cities that are dangerous to you or cults but also people you can forge alliances with.
I have a few more ideas for the sequel, although some of them might be an issue in terms of balance but would make sense in my opinion.
Ability to upgrade the defense of individual squares. If the attack comes from that particular square or a group of squares with extra defensive fortification, you will receive a defensive bonus. I think this idea should have multiple upgrade levels, like 3 or 5, for the next idea.
Dynamic survivors/city. This idea might be a little extreme, but it would be nice for survivors to come and go on the unclaimed squares and (if the previous idea is implemented) allow the survivors in the unclaimed squares to build fortifications and be attacked by zombies like your own fort. I think the idea of allowing ai forts to grow indefinitely is a bit too extreme, but allowing seperate collections of survivors to claim 1-4 squares and fortify them is an interesting idea. As far as upgrade levels are concerned, I think that unclaimed survivors should only be able to build basic fortifications (or perhaps build different fortification levels based on their profession(s), but that is getting a little complicated for my simple brain)
Merging forts. If the above ideas are implemented, forts that non-recruited survivors have built could be merged with your fort. I always thought it was strange in the first game that a group of survivors would gather on a square and not fortify it. To me, it would make sense to be able to recruit the survivors and merge fortifications, rather than recruit the survivors and have to build all new fortifications. This would of course require the Dynamic City idea to work, but it could create balance issues, so I think that having a ‘Classic Mode’ and a ‘Dynamic City’ mode as an option when starting a game would be a good idea if these ideas were to be implemented.
Nothing further to report.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that the first game was amazingly epic, especially for a first attempt at a game like this. Keep up the good work.
I loved (love, really) Rebuild! I love the egalitarian nature of the jobs in regards to gender, I love that it’s a turn-based strategy game instead of a point-and-click shooter, I love that you can train anyone to do anything, I loved the missing eyes, variable difficult levels, etc. I especially love that you can basically keep on playing forever if you want (although there isn’t really much to do after you win all of the victories, so even I give up after a while).
I am super excited about the sequel!
Perhaps this could be an option, maybe it would be at the harder/nightmare level? Your group has rivals. Not just your random drive-by stuff, but a concentrated group of other survivors that compete with you for resources. They also lure your people away from you if you don’t keep them fed/happy.
You can: a) try to get all the stuff before they do, b) poach their people and stuff (too much of this, though, leads to all out war and you might not win if you’re not stocked enough) c)practice diplomacy?
It needs work. Just a thought. :)
(and by “it needs work” I mean my idea, not your game!)
Its a really good game, but i got bored after beating in ten times :P
Anyways, i think you should be able to equip your people with weapons, like:
If you go scavenging, you have a [X]% chance of finding a weapon (G36, M4A1, USP .45, Baseball Bat, whatever.) you can equip your survivors with (Two weapons max, per survivor – two hands :P) to boost their stats. Example:
Zombie vs Teacher
Teacher – Unarmed. Death.
Teacher – Baseball Bat. [X]% Chance of survival.
Teacher – Gatling Gun, Rocket Launcher (Just an example :P). 100% Chance of survival.
You’d have to train your survivors to use weapon types, some sort of school for it (Like the school from part one – some sort of “Weapons 101”.) or sending soldiers and other classes to a mission.
Anyways, being able to play as Zombie would be pretty cool, as a lot (?) of others already said.
That would be fun
1: im not a spammer, im promoting my mom’s business which is at H2TB.com she does face and body painting. 2:you should make a special ops for people who have trained in all specialties (which btw you should add scavenger and make some more up such as jobs to MAKE more food, jobs to help increase population, jobs to to make new weapons, jobs to make defenses, and jobs to increase happiness [like bartender]) 3: add interactives 4:last but not least, theres bound to be some people who take advantage of this situation like raiders and mercenaries and you can choose to pay them or not. mercenaries wouldn’t care, but raiders would want you to pay “protection” money. wouldn’t want anyone gettin hurt would we?
and by add scavenger i mean be able to train people to do it. and when you train someone you should have someone of that class train them. eg. tom is a scavenger, bob isn’t, tom must not be doing anything and must be assigned to the schoolhouse in order to teach tom to be a scavenger.
I’ve noticed a bug in the game (not sure if you have been told about it yet): if you have multiple labs research “Cure Zombie-ism” and complete it on the same day, you will get multiple “Endings Found” credits for it.
As for the sequel, it would be great to be able to change your survivors names, and it would be nice to be able to know a survivor’s gender without them having to die first. And if your initial leader (the one you name at the start of the game) dies, I feel you should suffer double the morale/happiness loss than you do when any other survivor dies.
Also, I would like to see the option of choosing a sub-class for your initial leader (the career they had before they took charge of the survivors). The decision could give you a bonus (and possibly a penalty on harder difficulties). If they die, the bonus/penalty goes away, though you can retrain them to be something else (scientist, soldier, etc) without losing the bonus/penalty.
**Examples**
-SWAT Team Captain
Pros: Soldiers are more effective at killing zombies, which gives the fort a slight defensive bonus as well as giving soldiers an offensive bonus when sent out to kill zombies.
Cons: Soldiers feel the need to work hard and impress their leader, so they take more risks, making zombie-clearing missions more dangerous. (Again, cons could just take effect at higher difficulty levels).
-Farmer.
Pros: Farms provide slightly more food. Crops have a slightly reduced chance of suffering from crop-failures, even before appropriate research is completed.
Cons: Survivors have less respect for a “lowly” farmer, and are more likely to leave the fort when morale/happiness gets low. For the same reason, slightly fewer survivors come as a result of radio broadcasts.
-Clergyman.
Pros: Churches get a decent boost to the morale/happiness they provide. Death has slightly less of a negative effect on morale/happiness (say 4 points instead of 5). Parties thrown at churches give more happiness/morale.
Cons: Bars provide less of a boost to morale/happiness (maybe half?). Scavenging liquor provides no morale/happiness boost.
-Politician.
Pros: Politicians know the importance of propaganda. Radio broadcasts bring in survivors more frequently. Morale/happiness increases slightly when a new square is claimed as part of the fort.
Cons: Survivors expect more of an experienced leader, so happiness/morale is slightly more affected by negative events (survivors dying, prolonged lack of electricity, etc).
-Teacher.
Pros: New careers are learned more quickly (say 2 turns instead of 3).
Cons: Can’t think of a con. Seems like a modest bonus, so maybe let it be the one option that doesn’t carry a penalty at higher difficulties?
Look at all the suggestions! Lol. A small one for me, maybe make it so as time goes on, the survivors could have childeren, because that was a huge part that was missed in Rebuild #1. Taking the city back is one thing, repopulating is a whole ‘nother thing.
Love the game! you should put in a feature where you have general units, that can do any thing but are not as good as the normal, and are rare and cannot be taught
sorry forgot to say maybe if leader dies survival chances gets a huge decrease.
peoples moral goes down.
food goes down
danger goes up
crops die
basically every thing falls apart and wining becomes like a 1/100 chance
awesome game can u tell us when its gonna be realeased?
when will it be published
On a mission you should be able to cause random events or kind of bonus if you take other professions wtih you.
Hunt + Leader more kills fewer deaths
Scavanger along the recruting team: Find additional people to recruite.
Leader + reclaim / Build: Sometimes saves you 1 day
Scavanger on scount: Find more people and stuff
Leader on defense: More kills more effected people. Might boost only a few soldier so more leaders support the success of additional soldiers.
I have done some hunting missions with 30 soldiers and added some leaders. But appearently no difference. Would be fine if you add something like this hidden bonus and dont tell the people to let them find out accidently or while guessing.
Its Recruit
1:Playing as a zombie would be awesome, and having different cities 2: different weapons and items. 3: have a blacksmith to forge weapons/items. Can’t wait for the sequel!=)
i shall only say this once more to make sure it’s heard. increase the duration of teaching to ten days. and if you teach someone all the professions, they become a special ops unit that can be assigned to anything and always have the positive effects of all professions. the cons are:
1. there would be 5 professions times 10 days meaning the shortest time is 40 days and the longest is 50.
2. they require more food.
3. they count as more population.
4.will sometimes leave to start new city (can also be positive by receiving supplies and survivors from successful city.
5.requires weapons
You CAN LIVE WITH LITTLE FOOD!
Needing more food would ruin it, And make it too hard… And NO Dont start a new city. Thats a stupid idea!
What if your JUST ABOUT TO FINISH THE GAME! And also LEAVING THE CITY YOU COULD DIE GOING TO A NEW ONE!
Noob
Population… One Person is ONE POPULATION
One person isnt 2 Population
Deleat the comment nub
geez just offering ideas! besides why u guys hating on me? you obviously have nothing to do in your life except haze people on the fact that you dont like their ideas, you could just say that you dont think thats a good idea. so get off the internet and get a life you 40 yr olds with horrible acne living in your mom’s basement earning enough money for WOW by mowing her lawn.
don’t be so harsh, just think your ideas through, I think special ops is good but not more pop. or food.
and look at a LOT of RTS games, they’ll have infantry units THAT COST MORE THAN ONE POPULATION AND THEY’RE NOT A GROUP OF PEOPLE.
There are two things that I would like to see. Vehicles and Mercantilism. You should be able to find vehicles and then use them to boost the speed at which missions go as well as increase the survival chance depending on the vehicle. Also vehicles should require gas to be used. For the idea of mercantilism you should make it so that traders stopping by are not just random events that give you food. You should be able to actually buy things off of them, such as weapons, gas, food, wines and other things that make you happy, and resources that you might use to build walls. If you were going to do this then you should add some sort of currency system such as money that is scavenged with food, or something. Then you should also be able to send your own caravans out with supplies that you don’t need and they might bring back money or other resources depending on where they go.
I think Rebuild is a GREAT Game! But i think you should be able to rename all survivors, Have a upgrade feature, So you can have survivors (After a long time) can get all of the classes, You could also gain Upgrade Points for the missions that they all get sent on, They get 1 Point for every successful mission they do.
I think this is a great idea!
P.S – I played That Golf game, Lol, It made me laugh SOOO HARD.
Good luck!
i dont know. i think your idea is great, but make it so it upgrades everyone at once. cuz you can have about 100 people and it gets pretty old opening up every person’s upgrade window. not sayin it’s dumb, in fact i think it’s the exact opposite. just sayin it needs a little revision.
when will the game be published sarah?
maybe a multiplayer, where multiple people fight to gain land to build stuff on, like civilization IV. also, you should be able to build anything on rubble.
I would like an actual sequel – not just a remake of the original game, as good as it was. City to city, town to town – the game on a larger scale. I would like gameplay to be managing a city, defending it from vast zombie hordes, clearing out other towns and cities on a much larger map. Of course, this would hardly be easy, but you already raised the bar for games of this genre – perhaps you could do it again.
Failing that, however, the ideas of other survivor forts, the ability to expand outside the city, mercenaries, currency and trade are ones I find myself liking most.
One other thing; why were there farms inside the city in no. 1?
there should either be a much bigger, far more infested map, or a few cities/towns that you have to reclaim. It would be cool if it was set early on into the infection, so as there is more technology to access/research, such as perhaps missiles or basic aircraft for scouting missions.
I HAVE SPENT SO MANY NIGHTS PLAYING REBUILD, IT IS AN AMAZING GAME AND I HAVE HIGH HOPES FOR THE SECOND INSTALMENT
umm….. may i playtest rebuild
I’m afraid the playtest is over, sorry!
What about the survivors not recruited in the reclaimed areas? They simply disappear? Would it be possible to send a leader to recruit them when you reclaim the area?
In Rebuild 2 those survivors will try to move to an adjacent empty square when you reclaim the square they are on. So you can kind of chase them around the map now until you are ready to recruit them.
i loved rebuild especially the story like with the Swiss flue witch came from vegetables shiped from the country having the attack and also the fact that they start a civilization and also about the zombie grave yard with the portal the only thing i didn’t like was only certain spots could have certain buildings and also that there wasn’t that many building types. Another thing that bugged me was that the grave yards couldn’t be used for anything i thought they could put some kind of special building you could build there. there is one more thing i didn’t like and that was how at places like Mc Noodles you couldn’t put a farm or something crucial there
Cant wait for rebuild 2 but here is what I think could Improve..Instead of making gas stations useless you could use them to supply gas for vehicles p.s. do you already have vehicles as an idea i think that maybe that they could have the ability to reduce the time it takes to scout other regions and adds a def bonus by like barricading…THank you for making a sequel i love this game
a lot of people thought the art work in rebuild was a little crud but people barley ever watch the zombie attacks anyway and besides if had done everything people wanted on the first one then people would have been disappointed when the second one came out and it was about the same however i do think they could do a better job with movement during the zombie attacks the zombies move like stick figures
i really liked rebuild so much that i wish that i could be a beta tester (even though i know i’m not impotent enough. :( ) i do have some ideas thought. you can move your old save from rebuild and put it in rebuild 2, just like mass effect. in the mean time, ill wait another day before all see Sir Knight Wolf raise the flag of Kickassia over a new city
Dear Sarah Northway,
I am a big fan of your game and I am really impatient to play rebuild 2!
For this sequel, here are a few points that I would like to improve :
– You say you “hardcoded” stuff like zombie hordes coming from day 25 and REALLY troublesome happiness-related events like riots, strikes or suicides (2 days without being able to do anything…painful!) starting to develop. However, players have no way to know that such “hardcoding” took place, especially for happiness. Personnally I discovered that only today, even though I am a “veteran” player, having completed the game about 10 times on nightmare level. I would advise you to warn players about this.
Exemple :
– on day 20 : a message that says that mutated zombies have been spotted, that they are regrouping, and they seem to be planning a major offensive.
– on day 45 : a message saying that citizens have begun to regroup in labor unions, and that they are demanding work conditions that are similar to what they had before the zombie apocalypse. If you refuse to comply, they will take the necessary mesures to thwart your economy.
– for the “squares filling with zombies the turn after you clean them”, I think that it is actually realistic for it to happen this way : zombies are swarming everywhere, so any “empty” square gets filled up with these guys straight away. However, I am contesting the rule that only squares with ZERO zombies on them can be reclaimed, since this rule is unrealistic. You can send a well-escorted builder to wall a region with a few zombies inside, can’t you? That’s why I think you should keep the “reclaim” mission (demanding that zero zombies be inside the square), but also add a “clear and reclaim” mission, which would correspond to sending the soldiers to wipe out the zombies AND sending the builders to wall the area AT THE SAME TIME. This mission would of couse be much riskier than the previous one (which is mathematically zero risk). For exemple this way you could reclaim a square with only 1-3 zombies in it with only a builder+2soldiers with ~0% risk (maby a fe percent still). Very useful in late game, and also (to my mind) much more realistic.
Also, the “one person can only kill 3 zombies per ‘kill zombies’ mission” rule is too unrealistic to my mind :
– soldiers have weapons, so they should be able to kill more zombies than ‘civilians’
– there should be some technology or some weapon upgrade that enables to make that limit higher.
For example (just indicative, not necessarily optimized gameplay) :
– a civilian can kill 2 zombies
– a soldier can kill 3 zombies
– by equipping a soldier with better weapons, they can kill more, like handgun (3z/attack), uzi (5z/attack), M-16 (7z/attack), etc.
– a technology like zombie vitals or laser sight that can increase that limit by 1 for everyone.
With this you won’t have to send whole armies to kill 40 zombies. Like, 5 soldiers armed with M-60 can clear 40 z in no time.
Nice ideas, both of you, I really like this, if not put this into the 2nd then make a third, if so make a third anyway!
yes, but maybe end it there, that way it wont turn into a final fantasy long online flash series.
Leaders could also be given more power. Right now, they are only useful for recruiting new folks and organizing parties ; is that what’s leadership is all about?
Here are a few suggestions to make leaders a sort of “super-unit” that can give bonuses to about anything.
– assign a leader to a zombie killing mission to give a bonus to the number of kills and/or a reduction of the risk
– assign a leader to the fort to boost its defence by 10%
– assign a leader to a research lab to give a chance of quicker research completion
-assign a leader to the farms to have a bonus to food production
-etc.
Of course this makes leaders much more powerful so it should become harder to get them. For exemple, you can train only one at a time at the school and this lasts 5 days instead of 3.
Oh and, as a result of low happiness, people should try to get vengeance against their leaders, like lynching them.
Another idea : there could be a way to provoke zombies into attacking the fort. Like throwing fresh meat at the base of the walls (-50 food).
I was about to put ‘WHY MAKE AN ATTACK HAPPEN?!’ but then I realised it stops them from building up their force, good idea
Imagine a horde is coming in 3 days. Say there are currently 500 z around and you have ~500 def if you put all your survivors in the fort. If you wait for the horde to come, then there will be ~800z and you will have a high chance of being doomed. On the other hand if you provoke an attack you will wipe out, say, 150 zombies with minimal risk. So you will be ready for the horde attack. This feature is actually very interesting for players, to the point that I was actually wondering if this wasn’t overpowered. Actually if it didn’t cost such a high food price, it WOULD be overpowered. If it were free, you would just have to provoke an attack each turn and the number of surrounding z would be reduced to 0 in no time :)
I’m Your Fun.Please create rebuild 2 pleaseeee!!!
Rebuild is probably the best online game I’ve ever played, but it’s hard as crap when I play it on “Harder”! No complaints though.
Can’t wait for #2! Awesome.
This the suggestion thread for Rebuild 2? Goody.
I’ve played the game before, and I’d like some stuff added. Such as:
1.New scavenging/building mechanical:You require materials to make buildings, and scavenging can get it. Also, making a building from another building has the cost decreased by the amount of material(i.e. the stuff making up the building) from the previous building.
2.Factories/Workshops:New buildings that produce an item or certain materials from other certain materials if given a production order. There will probably be 2 different workshops: a Metal workshop, which works with metal and plastics, and a Carpentry workshop, which works with wood
and other “soft” objects.
3.Vehicles: Simply put, double speed, double ability(i.e. haul from scavenging or more zeds killed). Requires gas though. Maybe different types of vehicles for different bonuses?
4.Stationary weapons:Provides increased attack/defence values and/or ranged attacks and other things(zed repellant). Vehicles can move these around.
Hi, Rebuild is a wonderful game, a more of its success goes to its simple easy going style of playing. You know u can win anytime, unless you do something really stupid.
I do appreciate all the inputs coming in to make this a great game with large in dept in gameplay and all, BUT JUST ONE SUGGESTION :
Keep it simple like the original, do not doo daab around too much to spoil its originality. Such that you are on your toes all the time, wat next wat next !!!
That is just my point of view.
when is this game coming out?! I’v been waiting for ages reading ‘ypjapangamer’ for updates and he says hes done with it, WHEN!?!
hello,i love this game and i have some ideas for the sequel:
1.:the player can select an real city in a real country,like munich in germany or london in GB,and i can start to reclaim an city,then a region like munich in bavaria or london in england,then the entire country,then the world
2.:there can be different weapons like MG and sniper rifles or so,and the player can give the weapons to some people for some missions
3.:there may can be some planes or helicopters and airports,so if the player has oil and war planes or armed helicopters,he can send the airplanes for an airstrike on a city,or on a guard duty
4.:also there can be factories who build some things like bombs for planes
i know this is pretty much,but,if all this things will be in the sequel,this game will be the coolest game EVER
oh and a MMO version of this game will be awesome and some vehicles too
Have you considered making a Xbox Live or PSN version? I would totally buy that.
anyone seeing this rebuild 2 came out today! hurry and go check it out (came out 10/6/11)
Thank you so much for telling me this!!!!!!! :D
i am playing rebuild 2, and i created the chosens one church. the problem is that some day my survivors started suiciding each day, one per day. and, the others wont work because they are celebrateing. so, in 30 days lost all my survivors exept for 3. but, that day the zombis killed them.
tell me, is this a bug or the church is intended to kill all your survivors?
the mayor problem is you cant play at all, because the survivors refuse to work, just click “end day” till you lose.
that just started happening to me at day 386, I played to get all endings, I think I only needed two, and one of them is starting a game from that one the other is all squares.
it sorta wrecked the game when I couldn’t do anything, the rest was good though.
Game is amazing but the zombie fighting scene really need to improved. Glad you are an expert women game maker.
Map need to be bigger so its like a massive city where you can conquere almost everything.
Amazing ^)^
Please please please increase the limit of the skills.
I mean all my soldier are at level 10 and that is the max?
Please make it playable for players.
Haha, should add some zombie boss anyway.
Good job on Rebuild and Rebuild 2 which just came out. By the way, when will you need beta testers? If you need me you know where to contact me.(zaktherandomfunnyguy@yahoo.com)
Why is fullscreen mode not available on Rebuild 2? Only flaw.
Hi Sarah!
Absolutely love your game! Already played Rebuild “1” dozens of times… Like the skill system & equipment and the extra buildings. And of course the soundtrack :)
I just started a new town (huge + impossible) with the 5 best citizens of my last town (“Leave Town”). Of course i first maxed them (skill 10 at everything) and equipped them with rocket launchers and toolboxes before sending them on the “impossible” adventure. Too bad that this way the game was
easier than expected :(
first days scavenged everything in sight. next days housing recruiting and training the new people on missions. day 47 i already had 63 squares, 44 citizens, and always between 50-100 rations food. 40% happiness with the possibility to double it in the next 3 days by building 4 and acclaiming another 4 churches just at my doorstep.
at this point anything could happen and nothing would stop you from winning.
one skill 7-10 builder and a skill 1 builder is enough to acclaim a building within 1 day allowing to expand very fast while teaching the greenhorn. killing missions get easy this way too.
—
my suggestion is (if there’s gonna be a update to v1.02) that if you leave the town for a new game the zombies should attack earlier – if not already on day 1.
Or maybe their skill should be lowered by/to 50%.
(so max lvl 5/5/5/5/5 when they arrive at the new town) Because they made all their experience in the other town where they already knew the streets like the back of their hands. New town, new streets, new things to learn, 5 more levels to go…
—
Again very awesome game and nice enhancements on Rebuild 2! Awesome Music too! But if you’re playing long enough the noisy tunes make your head want to explode like the zombies’.
But awesome (intended?) feature, that you can switch to the next song by turning music on/off :)
Cheers
Jack
Seriously, what happened to fullscreen?
I love the game a lot less without it…
I have played this game multiple times due to its awsomeness. There is one thing I would like to know, is there an offical release date yet? Or an estimated date say “In a few months or so”
If the sequel is still in development or I have stupidly missed an answer to this question then please let me know :D
I dont have any suggestions for new gameplay options, storyline or events other than better graphics, but hey im no game expert haha.
I’d really like it if we had the option of uploading, say, a text file full of names (or typing them in and saving them, if places like Kongregate won’t go for that) that we can use in lieu or in addition to the default random name generator. The old Sleuth game had that, and it is hilarious beyond description to read those random occurances with your best friends’ names.
I’d also like to see a greater variety of nicknames earned over the course of the game. I love how someone who loses an eye can get called ‘Winky’ ‘2d’ or ‘One Eye’, but I’d like to see them gain nicknames for other things as well. They wouldn’t need to be explained; for instance it’s fun to try and imagine how Random Dude #12 got the nickname, “The Kiwi”. Does he really love kiwi fruit? Did he used to raise Kiwi birds before the zombies came? Who knows? That kind of stuff is awesome.
Also, I like how we can keep clicking on the male/female symbols to get a new, random leader’s name. It would be nice if clicking on the 10×10/12×12 buttons would generate a new city name. I know, I know, I can go into the field and rename it whatever I want, I’m just a loon who feels like it’s not the city’s ‘real’ name unless it’s automatic.
Also (last one, I promise), I feel like recruitment should work a little differently. Like, if you recruit people from a square that has at least a little food, the newbies should bring some of it with them (not all, but some). I’d also like it if I send a leader out to scout and they find survivors, if there was an X% chance that they could recruit them then and there. I get so mad at them for coming back home and going, “Gee, I met some survivors, maybe if we send a leader we can recruit them.” I also feel that if you scavange the last of the food from a square that has people living on it, you should either lose some 5% happiness (your people are sad to sink to the level of stealing food from other survivors) or those survivors should flee the area. OR, maybe they could stay, but they would never be willing to be recruited by you, since you stole their food and left them to starve.
I love Rebuild, by the way, I must have played a couple dozen times over by now. I can’t wait to play Rebuild 2.
Make Rebuild 3!!
Really, Really loved your Rebuild 2, am hoping you will have a chance to get to a Rebuild 3, unless you are super burned out on it.
But loved it, and am hoping you have a chance to expand it, or make it player sizable (250 x 250 campaign? or more?) :)
Or like someone mentioned, perhaps one city after another.
Last thought, loved it, but was hoping it would get a little harder to survive, or missions had a 50/50 chance of failing. Maybe i should just play harder levels.
Anyway, thank you very much for a very interesting game!
Take care,
-Teal
Nice work. I discovered Rebuild2 on Kongregate very recently and I’m completely hooked. Every time I play through, it feels like a unique story – I’m betting this will change as I see more repeated names/events, but you’ve given it enough ‘random’ to keep it fresh each time, and multiple endings gives you the chance to try some different strategies each time.
Recommended to anyone with a few minutes hours or weeks to kill… Am hoping you’re considering a third :)
Rebuild 2 is AWESOME
but
where’s the +/- 10% minigame?
it would be nice if the minigame emerged for every events where the main character (the one you get at the start) is involved.
I imagine it would be a point and click top down shooter.
And it would be nicer if the minigames differ (or at least varies a little) for each event, like a game for defending base, scavenging, recruiting, clearing area or reclaiming land.
when will this game be finished!:)
thank you so much for creating an incredible game, cannot wait for the sequel and reading your blog i know you will do an awesome job.
from those 3 main aims i totally agree you should focus on them, hope it all goes well :)
A game can be endless with poor story, or shorter with a good story. The latter is the game anyone wish to play endlessly. Think about Baldur’Gate to have an idea of what I’m talking about.
So I suggest to focus on events and storyline.
First of all, bravo on a good game series. To this day it remains one of my favorite games to play on the computer. I enjoy it very much!
I have a couple ideas/suggestions for Rebuild 3 that I would like to share; they are just ideas for it, not much else, but they might help you!
I don’t know too much about editing/making games or creating software, so I don’t know if all of these are possible.
1) The first idea I got was an event type: what if some of the survivors got married? I would think that in a apoptolypic world love was still available. It could happen every now and then and boost the happiness of the people. In the case that one’s parter would die they would spend, say, two days at a church mourning before they went back on duty.
2) Another thing was specialized terrain; put a river with a bridge to the other side of the city, or a cliff that you have to go to the base of and go up to claim the city. Perhaps put a melted down nuclear powerplant on one part of the city, making it so survivors must go around the area to avoid radiation. Little things like that would add realistic-ness, I believe.
3) Specialized cities. You have a preset city, and I love how you can choose if you want a small or large city, and it’s name. But you could perhaps make an option of having a pre-built city; one could be Seattle. The advantage of this is you could put the Space Needle into the game, and add to the aspects of it being hard to grow things because its rarely sunny. In New York you could put the Empire State Building, and other things. But people still have the option of the preset large or small city that they can name.
4) I like Gustav; he adds the trait of roaming traders in a post-apoptolyptic world. I would say, though, instead of him coming by every now and then and offering you X amound of food for X item or vice versa, you have an open store setting that allows players to get exactly what they want; they can trade that unused toolbox for 10 days’ rations, or give 5 days’ worth so they can get science books for their up and coming scientist.
5) A rival group. It would be unlikely that there is only one group trying to retake a city; most won’t succeed. But say there was one to fight against the player; both groups have the same goal, but the enemy group is very non-negotiable, stealing your supplies and sabotageing your barrier. The player either must fight back or find a diplomatic way – that involves both teams coming out on equal terms, not the enemy group being the leading soverign – to come to terms with the other survivors.
6) Bank building. Nothing says secure and tight like a bank. This could be a building like malls and all-marts; it adds to the defence of the barricaded area.
7) Children; when it comes to games like zombie survival, like Last Stand and others, children are left out. Yes, there will be those men in the Kelvar outfits, sporting a hockey mask and revving a chainsaw, but rebuilding a city also means being able to leave it to the next generation. Have children in the group that can’t go on missions, but require food. Perhaps they could do small tasks, like helping care for a farm; they could be stationed with an adult at a farm and add +1 food per day.
8) Hockey stick weapoon. Adds +1 attack/warrior ability to person who has it equiped. No particular reason for this… hockey sticks are nice. A couple more you might want to consider are baseball bats, crowbars, Japanese katana, WWI trench spikes (considered one of the best weapons for zombie survival melee weapons).
9) That brings me to the long range vs. close range/mid range. Guns, guns are indeed necessary in such a world. However, if you’ve got a nice group of stationary humans and one fires a gun, thats almost like a signal to zombies around the area. Players could not only pick what survivors they want on the mission, but whether or not guns would be allowed. Allowing guns adds greatly to the saftey of the group, but also increases zombies near the barricade and increases chances of bringing a horde near you. On top of that, players should need to find ammunition for guns. Not necessarily, every bullet, but 1 ammo could mean enough ammo for a mission; in reality that would be 20 or 30 bullets minimum, but in the game, in order to make measurments easier, 1 ammo is enough for 1 person to wield a gun for 1 event.
That is what I have… I apologize if some of these had already been suggested. I don’t really have time to read every suggestion. I hope these were helpful! If you ever want me to go more in depth, you should have my email. I’ve read zombie survival books and scored A on all the zombie survival tests I’ve taken, plus I train regularly with diffrent melee weapons and know how to shoot several guns. If you ever need help with anything, I am always willing to help!!
-Firestar2200
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hey i just want to say rebuild is awesome and rebuild two is so much better i really cant wait for rebuild 3 i just cant wait i hop you make it awesome like the otheres
I was just wondering if theres any plans to bring rebuild 2 to android since one and 3 are on android and 2 is my favorite of the series