Zpocalypse: Survival - Rogue-lite strategic survival game - post-nuke zed apocalypse

Zpocalypse: Survival is a game about exploration and survival in a gritty post-nuclear zombie apocalypse setting. Your job is to help a group of survivors attempt to eke out an existence and build a place for themselves in a brutal world. You will need to scavenge for supplies and food, find and fortify a shelter, recruit other survivors to your cause, defend your people, and attempt to grow and expand, facing challenges every step of the way.



We have been working on developing Zpocalypse: Survival over the last 19 months.

You will recruit, train, and lead a squad of flawed survivors through broken cities and beyond. You'll battle not only undead and human foes, but stress, disease, internal conflict and the dangers of a post-nuclear world. Uncover stories and journals from the past while learning more about the cause of the apocalypse, and pit the survivors against an array of foes with a real-time and tactical pause combat system.

You will have to tend to characters’ spirits as much as you do to their Hit Points. Zpocalypse Survival is not a game where every survivor wins the day with useful gear and a happy disposition. It is a game about hard trade-offs, endurance, and surviving as long as you can.

Do you have what it takes to survive in the destroyed world of Zpocalypse Survival?

FEATURES:

• The Morale & Humanity System – survivors' personalities, their likes and dislikes matter! Contend with paranoia, aggressiveness, fear, irrationality, and a host of other gameplay-meaningful characteristics
• A sandbox world with full 3D environments and characters that you can interact with in multiple ways
• Real-time combat with tactical pause allows you to think strategically when the situation warrants it
• Classic CRPG and roguelike features, including meaningful permadeath, procedural environments, and incredible replayability
• A deep game world featuring tons of unique playable character backgroundssuch as the cop, the athlete, the white-collar worker and more
• Select your starting gear, gender, appearance, and more with our custom character creation
• Base building and defense – build a place to survive, rest and defend against the threats that come at night. Manage your survivors and their activities while you are out exploring.

Build someplace safe to survive, manage your survivors tasks while at base and help increase their morale by giving them some down time, defend against the horrors of the night from behind the safty of your walls, doors, and traps.


After something has gone horribly wrong in the bunker you are thrown back into the brutal world once again. Without someplace secure you won’t last long when nightfall sets and the undead become more active and aggressive. As you explore, scavenge and recruit more survivors you will be able to build a base anywhere in the world you please. Setup a base in the middle of town where you might attract more zombies but you will have a solid framework to build upon? Or go out into the woods and start from scratch, attracting less attention but having much more work to do in order to have a defensible position? Yet again your choices will drive the gameplay experience!


As you recruit more survivors to your cause, leave some behind at your base and let them continue to work on the base, research new things, train other survivors to improve their skills and rest from their physical and mental injuries while you take your squad out to explore . As night falls, make your way back home to defend what you have built. The undead are attracted to the light, noise and activity at your base. Did you spend enough time reinforcing the walls, setting up new traps, and arming your survivors for the almost certain undead hordes? When they come, and they always come, get all of your survivors involved in defending the base and holding back the undead for just one more day!



Use the light of day while it lasts, investigate the ruins of a destroyed town, avoid environmental dangers and scavenge for what you need to survive...


The undead aren't your only adversary. The world itself is a dangerous place not to mention other potentially hostile survivors. However, in order to make it you must brave your harsh surroundings looking for supplies, gear and hopefully other survivors that might be worth recruiting.

Inspired by classic Roguelikes, you'll work your way through the procedurally generated town in pursuit of your goal. Though once again with Zpocalypse Survival, party composition remains a crucial consideration! Do you bring your brightest survivors with you to try and find more gear leaving work or research at your base to get completed at a slower pace? Or maybe bring all your melee fighters who are proficient at keeping out of sight and quite to avoid as many threats as you can along the way? As always, your choices matter.

Some of the biggest hazards come from your own party. Infighting, breakdowns, and unpredictable behavior driven by stress and more will all effect your decisions on the best group of survivors to bring along. A need for revenge on the undead may cause a survivor to abandon the group in search of as many zombies as they can kill. A sudden deep fear of death may drive another survivor to panic and flee, leaving you to fend for yourself or worse attracting unwanted attention...


Real survival is not only about blowing up zombies or other survivors. It's about scavenging and base building and just trying to make it to the next day. When you have to fight though make sure you have some friends with you!


Fast paced and strategic or slower paced and tactical, combat in Zpocalypse Survival combines real-time action with tactical pause design. Keep the action lively while in real-time dealing with the situation as it unfolds or take a moment to pause and consider your options assigning more tactical options to deal with the situation at hand. Party composition is crucial for avoiding combat when needed or setting up attacks while trying to reduce your own casualties. At all times, you must juggle the need to do damage with the importance of protecting your survivors and avoiding making the situation worse by attracting more enemies.


The post-apocalyptic world is a dangerous place but with our full 3D environments you have a lot of different options when forced to fight. Use distraction methods to avoid combat or setup the perfect ambush. Build traps to help keep the undead from overwhelming you. Barricade choke points to even the score with your limited ammunition and supplies.

As survivors progress they will learn how to fight against the ever present undead better while also learning how to work with their squad more efficiently. Learn to construct and manage the right combination of characters and abilities to become an effective fighting force or a stealthy scouting squad!


Permadeath gives extra weight to each decision, and makes sacrifices matter.


Every event affects your heroes' morale and their humanity, or how they perceive you and the world they live in. What will happen when they reach their breaking point, or they don’t agree with your decisions?


Survivors in Zpocalypse Survival are not the zombie killing machines of other games to which you might be accustomed. While they are certainly tough and capable, they are also very human: they will respond emotionally to the horrors they encounter. They get stressed, develop phobias, have their own agenda, and deal with situations differently. Their abilities evolve based on their experiences in the world, back at base and through your leadership. On top of this, you will need to make sure you recruit survivors that can not only help you out, but won't cause issues with your other survivors or drag down everyone's mood.


Survivors' morale and humanity respond dynamically to events in the world and back at base. Seeing your best friend eaten by the undead may lower your morale and unnerve one survivor, or may fuel anothers rage driving them to an undead killing spree. If the pressures become too overwhelming, they may start to lose their humanity, and they will become depressed, paranoid, panicked, sadistic, or worse.

Survivors with morale or humanity in the extremes, both low and high, will act out in a variety of ways that impact the play experience during combat, exploration, base building, and base defense. You will have to decide how to lead your survivors and deal with their ups and downs.


Consider the needs of your survivors carefully before sending them out to explore – the consequences of your actions could be severe, and are likely permanent.



To learn more about Greenbrier Games you can check out our site at http://www.greenbriergames.com/gbg/

Thanks in advance for any feedback, and stay tuned for updates about the demo!

 

I am intrigued. The name is very creative compared to the likes of the predictable 'Dead Island' and/or 'Dead State'. The description is engaging for a survival game. I hope to see more in the future. I read some of the posts on the indiedb site and if the game is going to include ': Survival' in the title I would suggest removing it.

Although I believe there is a game similar to this called 'How To Survive' although I have never played it I have seen screenshots and a friend has described it to me as a top-down, zombie, survival, shooter, pretty much what this is. I'd suggest giving some information about what makes your game unique relative to others and what experience are we going to have. Dead Nation is also another example of this. Neither are point and click or the sort that it is called in this situation.

Scott.

 

im going to be honest when i saw the title in the forum i thought oh god another generic zombie survival but just looking at it........outstanding love the smoothness of the light view there was one thing that bugged me and that was the point to walk but thats just my preference cannot wait to see it develop

 

@Scott TS Thanks for the interest! As for the name we went back and forth on this a lot. The Zpocalypse piece is a tie in to our physical boardgame which we are basing this digital game. We added the : Survival because we wanted our existing fan base to know this isn't just a re-make of the boardgame but is its own individual product. Plus the : Survival plays in really well with the core of the game which is you trying to survive.

For How to Survive, I'll have to take a look I recall seeing it but hadn't look too indepth at it. Although I have updated the main post with more details about the game itself. So feel free to take a look. While there are a number of survival and zombie games out their we are trying to differentiate outselves by merging genres a bit and not focusing on just survival, just one survivor, or just the story. Instead combining those things into a proceduraly generated and AI driven world to allow players the opportunity to experience multiple stories through their gameplay.

@jameos Thanks! Like I mentioned above we are striving to differentiate ourselves. We made our boardgame Zpocalypse because we wanted a different type of a game than the other zombie board games out at the time and we are wanting to carry over that same passion into this digital game.

 

Not bad at all. not sure I like the view darkness, especially where youve already searched..

View culling for enemies should use the same technique, but yep looking promising so far.

 

@JamesLeeNZ Thanks! Yeah we are actually still tweaking the FoW system. We definitely have plans to expand on it.

 

Cool.

FYI, getting a compliment out of me is like getting blood out of a rock, so you should consider it the highest praise

 

I have a better understanding of the name now as previously I hadn't heard of the boardgame. I appreciate the additional details added to your post. I have a question about the player dying, does the game end upon death or do they become an alternate survivor at the base center? Additionally are there a form of companions that the player can bring on their scavenging adventure?

I read in 'The Character' paragraph 'players will control numerous characters' does this contribute to my question players override others upon death or does this mean players can just change?

Scott.

 

@JamesLeeNZ I see from your signature Thanks again!

@Scott TS And this is why I am extremely happy for everyone’s feedback. I know how all these things work so, as is evident, I leave out details that are so common to me but would help to make things clear for others. So there are essentially two aspects to the game - base management/defense and exploration/scavenging. With the exploration side you will have anywhere from 1 to 4 survivors in your squad. With these survivors you have direct control over all of them, they aren't completely AI driven. You can manage them individually or as a squad by multi-selecting any number of the 1-4. When you have more than 1 selected you will choose one as your primary (which dictate the perks/weapons/gear that display in the UI) otherwise they move as a group. You can put them in dynamic formations and they try to adhere to them as they move.

When a survivor dies they are dead for good (well unless they come back from the dead and try to eat you) but you do have the extra survivors (think XCom). If all your survivors get wiped out then the game may be over, dependent on your base. Any extra survivors you find or recruit over your max 4 for the squad will stay at the base and work on things there like building fortifications, crafting, etc. You will have to manage who you want to take with you to go scavenging and who you want to stay behind to work on the base in preparation for the night when the zombies are much more active and aggressive.

Hope that clarifies things! Also, thank you again for the questions and feedback it really helps me ensure I get all the information people are looking for.

 

Added a what makes us different section to the main thread for reference.

 

News update #7 up on IndieDB. I've updated the main thread to have links to all of our news as well as buttons for all the social media places you can find us!

Update #7 includes: First preview of the exploration UI, updated survivor, finalized demo level, new check us out section, more about the game features!

 

News update #8 - First audio preview! More UI, base building, scavenging, and a secret side project.

News update #9 -
PAX, New Audio, Deadly AI in the works, character customization.

 

Looking awesome guys!

 

We are now live on Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight!

 

Updated main thread to have more details about the game as development has progressed these last 7 months, with new screenshots and video.

 

Here is the new Kickstarter page https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/greenbriergames/zpocalypse-survival-reanimated/
And updated Greenlight page http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=243681071