Rebuild 3: Survey Says

I started a survey back in November 2012 asking fans of the Rebuild series what they’d most like to see in the next game. It was advertised on the Rebuild 3 ideas wiki which at first was mostly visited by players from Kongregate, and later also mobile players. I collected the first 100 responses after a few weeks, then the full 1500 after six months.

1. & 2. Demographic

The most surprising fact to me was that the results from the first 100 were mostly within 5% of the results of all 1500. The only variation was that later respondents were more likely to own the mobile version and pay more for Rebuild 3. No shock that these things correlated, but what else did? Do those people who’d pay more want something different? Well it turns out… no. They all want the same things in Rebuild 3:

rebuild_survey_1

3. Play style

Most people (66%) play Rebuild 2 until they get every building in the city. I’m more inclined to stop after the first ending or when I know I’m going to win, so this is good to know.

4. Art

The consensus is that the art should be more polished, and bloodier is better. This latter might be because I called the other option “cuter”… but at any rate this is the only place where I’m going against fans’ wishes and instead making the art less gritty and gruesome. This is a) because I want to and b) to appeal more to new players who might have been turned off by the creepy art in Rebuild 2.

5. Complexity

Almost a no-brainer. Fans want more complexity and more numbers. Me too!

6. Stories

While everyone can agree that Rebuild 3 needs more random events, they’re split between wanting more funny or more serious. Well… more of both it is then!

7. Combat

It surprised me that 45% like the combat from Rebuild 2 just fine – I personally thought it was a little dull. 33% are interested in seeing it go more tactical, which works for me because I’d like to take it halfway there. I’m this out: zombies that approach and attack the fort as usual, but you can see and preemptively attack them or shore up defenses where you know they’re going to hit.

8. More of what though?

Everyone wants new buildings and events, but nobody cares about new endings. Makes sense if most people play until the whole city’s saved. This works for me; I’m thinking of taking alternate endings out entirely and showing (very simple) cutscenes for major achievements instead.

rebuild_survey_2

9. If you had to choose…

Overwhelmingly, if fans had to choose between deeper fort-building strategy, better combat, bigger cities, more events, or better graphics – they’d pick deeper strategy. Second comes more events/plots/endings and both will I provide!

10. Put a price on love

Believe it or not, I was pleased to see only 40% of fans wouldn’t think of paying for a Rebuild game. I know most of them (75%) have only ever played the free Flash versions of Rebuild, and I assume as with all surveys there was a bias towards respondents with more spare time than money. Of those who would pay for a downloadable pc version, the average was $10, which sounds fair to me.

Of course I’ll still release a free version of Rebuild 3 which will be lighter in content and bells & whistles, but won’t cut off halfway or do other annoying demo things. I’m still super nervous about backlash from either those who pay then find out it’s free, and those two don’t then find out they’re missing content. But for the most part people on the ideas wiki have been supportive about it.

And heck, maybe I’ll reach a totally new group of people with this game who’ve never even heard of Rebuild before. With that firmly in mind, I go to do my fans’ bidding.

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14 thoughts on “Rebuild 3: Survey Says

  1. Have you thought about “Rebuild with Friends” or Rebuild persistent world MMO. I played the flash version, liked it a lot. A way to cooperate or compete with your friends would be nice. I am very biased in this regard though, the way I like to play is on PC on a mumble VOIP server.

    1. No offense but I think that’s a terrible idea. Making Rebuild an mmo would, in my opinion, completely ruin the experience. I personally don’t like mmos because they are generally watered down, repetitive, and boring. Rebuild stands very well as a single player experience.

  2. As for the paying for the game. I think you either should make game fully payable or fully free. It pisses me off when people make free game and put premium content on it. If I have to pay for a full game experience why bother putting free stuff at all?

      1. If it’s only free to play: Not a good idea because she needs to make a living for herself and have money to make her future games better.

        If it’s only paid: Well, what about the 40% fan base that will either pirate the game if available (probably) losing a lot of money; or leave losing fans.

        1. Normal life, everything has pros and cons.

          I simply gave my oppinion, If it’s wrong then thats my problem.

  3. Hey Landbark, Rebulid 3 won’t be Freemium. We’re not big into freemium stuff either.

    1. Well im thinking if your gonna make it payed for wich will be needed seeing that its gonna be a huge game this time and cost resoures u should just add something in game were its if u do the free verison then a support donation of about 10$
      And then if they do they can get a little gift or something extra for helping out and donating

  4. Hey, I like the Idea of a pay version for Desktop but about you make a 3.5 which cost money and comes with Multiplayer, make GUI elements slightly better and give off a bit of extra stuff. Main series 1 and 2 didn’t cost anything so why should 3? Alot of people don’t like Premium content so don’t add it! just have another game that works different and is better the 3.

  5. I don’t mind certain content to be paid for, I just hope you keep that amount to a minimum. some people, like myself, don’t have the means to purchase things online. Thus, to add a great deal of content that requires payment will be a severe drawback. However, a few bits and pieces of paid content will not be so bad.

  6. Thanks for asking!!

    I play the game to maximize my score. So that means I play on the hardest level until I have earned every ending and every building, especially the endings that you can earn more than once.

    My wish list for Rebuild 3 is:

    1) When I scroll through the list of people, scrolling doesn’t work right. Like if I click on a person, then that person is off the top of the window and I have to search around just to find the person that I clicked on. And things like PageUp, PageDown, and the scrollwheel on my mouse don’t work right at all. So I would very much appreciate improvements to the coding for scrolling.

    2) When I look at a list of people, I would love to be able to sort the list in many different ways, and maybe filter them too. Also I would like to be able to flag a few of the people so that I could find them again in the list quickly. And the ability to search the list for a person by name.

    3) More transparency in what I need to do to earn each achievement and how far along I am toward it. Like for example I have no idea how much experience I need in order to start restoring the airplane. I’d be glad of a way to know that I have, say, 50 out of the 700 points needed to restore the plane, and that scavenging at a mall earned me another 22 points toward the goal.

    4) When I have a ton of people in the game (probably many more than the average person ever has, but I always maximize the number of people in every game), some things get extremely slow, such as scrolling through the list of people. I’d like it if this worked more quickly and smoothly.

    5) I definitely don’t want gorier graphics!!! I’m an intense pacifist. To me the nice thing about playing a zombie game is that it’s ethical to kill zombies, since they are already dead. Making things more gory would not be fun, in my opinion.

    Again, thank you for asking!! I love Rebuild and Rebuild 2 and am eagerly looking forward to Rebuild 3!

    -eValerie

  7. I would like to see better graphics (less cartoonish) but not gorey.

    Conflicts with other established forts. Perhaps a merger if the right finesse is applied or an event like rescuing one of their own.

    I would like to play this game with a few other real people too but not MMO.

    Thanks, I had fun playing Rebuild on the iPad but ultimately it seemed repetative. I defintely got 24-30 hours of play out of it.

  8. i dont care what u do sell the game or make it free ill still buy it and play it i support rebuild games 100 % i also think making a multipliyer would help because lets get real for a second who the hell would play an MMO im a strategy fan i will always be a strategy fane. my suggestion would be to make it like the normal way just like in rebuild 1,2 but make it so 4 players can join in the world after you take back the city you battle it out to be the last society that remains after wards peace and harmony and how bout a new thing like instead of curing zombieism u just keep dukking it out just like the final judge ment clan yours trully smashkiller13

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