End of the Living Devblog #1: Into the depths of the city

Greetings, fellow survivors. We have been keeping some special news for the first devblog of EOTL. Today, we will be revealing a bit of something significant incoming and preparing for what's waiting for us!

First of all, since the beginning of the game's journey, we have collected large amounts of feedback from your reviews. They showed us the things that the game does best and also the things with room for improvement. We want to thank you all for your valuable thoughts and ideas. By them, now we have a path upon us to elevate the overall player experience to a higher level.

Anyways, so what's ahead of us? Well, folks, we have been working on a new major update. We internally term it a grand rework, but it is officially called Posse Update. After this update, you will be able to pave your way into the deeper regions of the city. In these regions, new types of undead, mutants, surroundings, and missions await you. Especially these new mutants might not be as you expect; however, more on that later.

In this update, various new mechanics and content will be added, and we will cover them as time progresses. But, for this devblog, let's look into a few of them. Note that all the visuals shared with this devblog are work-in-progress, and they may appear different in the actual update.

Overhauled Visual Style

From the beginning, one of the unique parts of the game has been its distinct visual style. It has been reflecting the post-apocalyptic environment of the city, with a bit of retro touch.

Well, now things are about to get more intense. With our team of talented artists, we are working on overhauling a majority of the visuals of the game to emphasize this atmosphere better while keeping its prior identity. This includes reworking all the characters, animations, objects, environments, interfaces, etc., seen during your gameplay experience. Aside from this part taking a considerable piece of our effort, it's far from stopping all the other new bits from coming. We will share more examples of this new visual style later. Still, for now, I will leave you alone with a comparison of some of the reworked undead and portraits in the game. We will be talking about the rest in the upcoming sections.

Undead visuals & animations - Before/After

Undead Portraits - Before/After

City Map and Districts

Metropolis. The city of dreams and hopes, at least once upon a time... The journey starts from Crossroads, passing through the suburbs and wildernesses, to end or to eternally continue.

In the previous versions, the main gameplay logic was quite simple. You pass through different waves as you upgrade your basement and time goes on, as you are in the same battle arena. There wasn't any apparent selection of levels; they were automatically there for you depending on your basement's capabilities and skills. However, this approach was lacking variety. There were no variations of the battlefield between different waves apart from differentiation in the incoming undead, and not giving you any chances to revisit the old waves.

With the Posse Update, this system has changed completely to a form that reflects the city and its challenging environs. The automatic wave system is being converted into a district-based wave system. From now on, you can battle through different areas of Metropolis called districts. Each district has its own varied environment, meanwhile, containing diverse types of undead and mutants. You can change your location of battling as you want, as long as you have unlocked that location. And here, I present you the map of Metropolis and the Battle menu tab:

As you may notice on the city map, the city has 5 regions. Each region hosts multiple districts, and each one of the regions is subjected to a different kind of biome that has an impact on the gameplay and incoming types of fleshies.

Furthermore, as you saw above, in the new Battle menu tab, you can take a glance at the amount of your Facility items before the battle so that you don't run out of any items during the survival. But have you noticed something unusual there?

Various Battlefields with Obstacles

Now, let's go into the details of the previously mentioned districts. As you see on the city map, each district lies under a specific region and reflects its characteristics. The location scenery, the weather, the undead, and mutants are some of the things dependent on the district's region. But what do these districts look like, and is that just it, only visual changes? Of course not! Each district has its own setup of on-field obstacles. With these obstacles, you have to form new battling tactics around them. Some of these obstacles might already be in your favor, but we don't think many of them are. Real mastery will come into play when you can manage to use all of them to your advantage. It is going to be fun seeing all your different gameplay styles.

Before we move on, here are some visuals of a few districts. Can you guess which objects might be obstacles?

Side Missions

Okay, now it's time to lock in, dear readers. I would like to take your attention back to the city map. Can you notice some locations that are out of the usual route? If yes, then we are introducing you to the side missions!

Side missions are battles for rescuing important locations around the map from the fleshies. In these locations, you will take control of a settled-down basement, usually in a poor condition, and try clearing out the zone by using some specific Facility items. This way, you will have a chance to get used to new Facility items and practice the situations in which they may be helpful. However, there is a reason why these are called rescue missions. They introduce one more piece of challenge in addition to their already more intense fleshy hordes. You have a limited amount of ammunition in these missions. Hence, you should make the best out of each bullet. How to do that depends on you...

For this devblog, these are going to be the words from us. For our Patreons, we will be sharing additional content about the Posse Update besides these devblogs. You can check our Patreon if you would like to have a hand in the game and stay informed about it more often. Thanks a lot to everybody for their support and interest. We believe we will build something astonishing together. A community where people enjoy their time, share their experiences, and feel part of something big. Maybe a city, perhaps like Metropolis? Remember to follow us on our social media to keep updated, join our Discord to chat with the rest of the community and us.

Take care of what's behind, keep aware of what's ahead. Good luck...

- Kerem