Lost Hope [2D Survival Horror Game]

Lost Hope
Hello Unity forums,we are Somber Pixel!
We are developing a pixel art survival horror game called Lost Hope.
Lost Hope is a survival horror game were you can freely explore a whole city and make decisions as you try to survive a mutant catastrophe.
We take a lot from Resident Evil(1,2 and 3) and the Silent Hill franchise.​

About the game​

Overview
What would you do if suddenly people are turning into violent mutants? Spending your days at home waiting for everything to get solved was an option but you have already done that for a long time and are now out of supplies.
What happens next is up to you : your objective is to escape from the city and (if you are curious enough) discover what actually happened.
Of course, we are working on great personalities for each npc you will encounter, the reason why we don't talk much about the story right now is because you will be able to tackle the game in many different ways but your main objective remains: survive and escape from the city.

Release date
Hoping for a late 2015 release!We aim to release it on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Features

Fun and fluid combat system
This does not mean it is easy though! We want you to feel the horror of having a mutant in front of you. So if you want to play Rambo on this one...you will end up torn into pieces by a mutant because bullets are scarce. There is melee combat too! Everything in order to survive.

*The following image is a work in progress just to give you an idea, all the streets will be highly detailed in the final version.

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Exploration and decisions
Explore a whole city full of rich and detailed environments from the very beginning at your own risk. You can explore the inside of every single building.Look for people full of personality, make then favors ... kill them!? wait,what? Wouldn't that destroy the game plot and make it generic? Nope, that is part of the game, in real life you would try all sort of things in order to survive a mutant catastrophe, but everything has a consequence in your ordeal,right?

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Deadly enemies that will make you feel blessed for living a normal life without them
Every mutant is designed with a combat strategy in mind that goes with their design, oh and they all want to kill you. Sometimes,it is better to avoid them and find an alternate route.

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Lots of items to collect
Which,again, does not break the game. We want it to be hard but enjoyable.

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And more
There are more aspects of the game that we would like to share on this post but need to be refined. We will be posting our progress regularly! And about the audio... we will have in covered in the future!It is an important part in a game like this.

Meet the team​

We are just 2 guys in Somber Pixel but we put all our effort and time in this game!
Left: Adolfo Jungbluth(Programmer) Right: Arturo Anci(Pixel artist)

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The most important part...your feedback!​

We would appreciate every single advice so that Lost Hope becomes the game you want.
A little late now that the holidays are over but: we wish this 2015 to be full of joy for everyone! Even though this Santa yells a Christmas message.

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Contact us
Twitter:
Somber Pixel: @SomberPixel
Adolfo:@adolfojo777
Arturo @Artan0728

Tumblr:
http://somberpixel.tumblr.com/

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/SomberPixel

Or directly here!​

 

Update 1: Inventory System​

Since we have just started here in the forums, we will be posting our updates and progress constantly.
This week we will begin talking about the inventory system from the game which was designed in order to keep everything simple but engaging.An update about this was written by us in tumblr but we better post it here so that we can receive your feedback!

Overview

Inventory system can be a pain if it is not designed correctly. We sat down a few days talking about what approach we may take.
In the end we designed a simple but interactive inventory system that merges with other elements of the game and does not feel ¨apart¨.

Pixel by pixel, our inventory started to take form
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Real time inventory

Yup, real time! It is a survival horror game so it makes sense that if you are looking for some batteries to recharge your flashlight or want to use a first aid kit the time must not stop, it would go against immersion The dangers of life are not going to wait for you to be ready, so brace yourself if you want to survive!

Categories are important!

The way the items are distributed in your inventory plays an important role in the immersion. We decided to go simple with this, so we only have 3 item categories : Consumables, Weapons and Key items.
As soon as you open the inventory, you’ll have to choose a category, and a preview list of the items is displayed. It is easy to navigate through them.This is a survival horror game, there is no need for 9001 categories Keep it simple and clean

Limited by weight

There are 12 visible slots in the inventory, but that does not mean you can only carry 12 items per category.The maximum amount of items you can carry is based on weight. If you are carrying too much weight you will have to get rid of some stuff!
But don’t think you will have too many items… we want to make you suffer a little This game is not a loot fest but will have a big number of items that can be collected and used during your trial.


So that means… I cannot have it all? What if I am a completionist?

Worry not! if you drop an item we will make sure you can get it back.
Key items cannot be dropped of course, or well… we are evaluating it ! Lots of things can change during the development process

And each item has different options regarding their type?

Each item has a different set of possible options that can be acceded. “Examine” and “drop” are the most common of them all, as you can examine every item you have and a description will appear on screen.


And what is next in Lost Hope’s inventory system??

There are lots of things to polish. The inventory that is currently being shown is not a definitive version , remember this is work in progress !
We are still evaluating the option of combining items in the inventory screen… As for the font colors, some of them may change, like the item name text , or the weight.

In the end, the inventory looks and works like this, even though we still have to add the total weight.

Ignore the 5kg battery!
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Ha ha ha ha ha! That's so funny! I really like this project!

 

Thanks,as you can see ,Santa will not be able to play Lost Hope!We are doing our best to make of this game a great experience! If you have any suggestion just let us know

 

That's a really cool indie project! Keep up the good work, dudes!

 

I absolutely love the art! Did you draw everything?

 

Thanks Toonsylvania,that really motivates us! We are putting all our efforts into this game!

Sykoo, Hello there! Yes,we draw everything. Arturo Anci is the pixel artist, 50% of the team There is still a LOT of things to draw! We are glad you like the art of the game. At first, the game was designed to have a completely different style but in the end we decided this "no faces" style would fit better. We would be glad to share some of those old designs from the game in the future!

 

In my opinion, original and different stuff like this art where characters are pixelized and do not have faces is unique and thats what makes it awesome! Your artist makes a very well job I can say, as I tried myself pixel-drawing characters before and it's MUCH harder than it sounds and seems like ^^ Good job with the game and the art, I wish you the best of luck I'd be glad to see some at the asset store as well ^^

 

Yes! Pixel art can be tricky and it is time-consuming . Arturo does a great job, we are constantly thinking about fluid animations so that the game feels natural. Thanks again for the good wishes Sykoo, we promise a great game! About the asset store, we will be discussing it together, thanks for the idea. Also, if you have any feedback, just tell us anytime

 

Update 2: Defend Yourself!!​

What would you do if your life is at risk and some mutants just want to kill you? That’s right, grab a baseball bat or a pol, or something to defend yourself and TRY to survive with it.

There is no enemy right now but he feels like bating the air anyway
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This is a melee attack with a bat, it will be very useful and probably one of your best friends in the game, as ammo cannot be found so easily or in great numbers.

This is a work in progress and may change.The idea of this attack is that you have to be aware of the enemy's movement and hit with the right timing.

You don't want to be killed by this.Right?
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Hi there!

I was wondering one more thing:
How do you make your trails of weapon work? Do you use solo scripting only or have other methods like drawing? Even if you can't give alot of information, I'd very much appreciate just a little info about the method ^^ I'm very curious about this as I've seen some pixel games have amazing trails like this one!

 

Hello again Sykko !
The trail and the character are part of the same sprite. There is not a drawing method for it.
The reason is because we want it to be fluid, so Arturo draw it frame by frame with his pixel art powers! And we will control the interactions with the environment with trigger colliders.
Of course, this is still work in progress!

 

Thanks alot for this!

 

oh man ~
it looks cool!!!
please consider to release it on mobile markets

 

Do you already have someone doing music? If not, horror music is my specialty.

 

Looks like a Lone Survivor clone.

 

DMONGS Glad you like it ! Right Lost Hope is planned for windows Windows, Mac and Linux. We don't imagine Lost Hope being on the mobile market at the moment

Hello AgentParsec, you can email us and show us your music somberpixel@gmail.com

Razputin Hello, could you tell us why does it looks like a clone? We would really appreciate your feedback!

 

Just looks similar to lone survivor, but with better pixel art.


The monsters look fairly similar.

Even the menu's kind of look the same.

 

Hello Razputin! Well , it is hard not too look like Lone Survivor when you are doing a 2D sidescroller Survival Horror with pixel art since it was one of the first indie games to do something like that. Games likes Claire, Uncanny Valley and others took a similar style but the mechanics are different.
Our gameplay mechanics are different too, from the combat system to decisions and a big open city we aim to offer a different experience!
Thanks for the feedback, Razputin! We loved Lone Survivor but we want to do something different Even though the images at this early stage cannot tell much about Lost Hope.
We will be posting gameplay in the future and more updates!

 

Update 3: Event System!!​

In order to control events were everything plays automatically (such as a cutscene)or during dialogues we implemented an event system.

Lost Hope's event system consists on series of dialogues with animations and other triggered actions. You can have a look of how it is taking form in the gif image.

Basically, the “actors” are controlled by a script and a text is loaded from a file depending on the situation.

Testing our event system, still in progress
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I sent it, let me know if you're interested.

 

Sorry for the delay. We have just replied it!

 

This looks cool! I can't wait to see more.

 

Sounds really good, hope you dont fall for cheap jumpscares like so many other horror games did

 

Silver Games thanks! We will keep posting updates. If you have any feedback let us know!
(Motivation + 99 points)

Drunk_Irishman, Hello! We won't fall for cheap jumpscares such as screamers or so. Worry not
We want the full experience to be scary and make you feel like you really have to survive. We have to work hard on the design part so that we can transmit those feelings naturally.
We don't plan to rely on jumpscares! By the way, could you mention us some jumpscares you really hated? That would really help us to avoid such things

 

The ones where "scary" or intense music plays then something jumps out and screams. Like duuuuuuu-DDUUUUN! JUMPSCARE! Try to avoid those, very generic.

 

Hahaha! We will NOT have those in Lost Hope. That was a good example Silver Games I just tried to imagine that situation in Lost Hope and thought : NOPE.
Thanks for the feedback

 

Update 4: Picking up items!​

In Lost Hope, you will come across all kind of items, explore different places such as abandoned houses in search of useful items!

Depending on the position of the item, a different animation is played. This is because we didn't want the items to magically disappear from the room, but instead give the impression that the player is actually picking it up from a position.

Of course there is a lot to do, all in all , details. Some items may be too tiny so we are thinking on showing a little icon if you are close to an item.
Also we need to put some kind of information on screen about the item you have just picked up.

Work in progress!

There is still a lot to do here!​

 

I really like how smooth the animations are, and love the art. Your artist is very talented!

 

Really dig the art!

 

Thanks a lot again, Whiteleaf! We are focusing on detailed animations so that the game feels fluid. Expect more animations!

Hello bob1234 , glad you like it Still more to come!

 

Update 5: New scenarios, camera , details and a sick programmer!​

This days have been hard for me(programmer!),I fell ill during the week and obviously with fever my logic was not the most reliable to do a lot of code for Lost Hope.

Luckily, I am now feeling better and continue to code! And Arturo is making a lot of pixel art for the game!

This update shows a simple camera that follows the player as he walks through a house. More advanced camera functions are also being programmed such as the ones we will use for triggered events and effects.

When the player enters another room, there is a fade-in effect, then the next room loads and a fade-out effect is called and you can continue exploring.

Check it!
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Update 6: Run,run,run!​

Running away from trouble is something most of people do! It may seem coward sometimes but … if a mutant wants to kill you it may be a good idea to run. Unless you have the proper equipment or tactics to face it.

You can see the animation in the gif. We are thinking on controlling how much you can run through a stamina system. Your stamina would be reduced with each significant action you make such as running, perform multiple physical attacks and others.

Other things have been programmed , such as the save system and more things that we will show in upcoming news!

Sometimes,it is a good idea to run!
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Update 7: Combat Animations!​

There is a lot of action involved in Lost Hope. With lots of mutants lurking around the city you cannot have some static animations for such a rigorous combat. That is why, in order to achieve a fluid combat system, we are investing a lot of time making fluid animations.
Combat is very important so we want to make it fun and challenging, it is still being programmed and not all the animations are completed but we want to show you a first look at what will be the combat system for Lost Hope.

Aim and shoot!
*Work in progress*
Mutant catastrophe means you have to search and equip weapons that may help you to survive.
The basic ranged weapon is a gun.

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If you are using keyboard and mouse input for the game, you can aim while pressing the right mouse button. You can control the angle with the mouse, moving the mouse up or down or to the sides will control the angle so keep that in mind when trying to kill mutants!

Bat attack, again!

Just a reminder of what the melee combat will be about, there will be other kind of weapons. In this case we show the bat attack which is pretty useful in case you want to save some ammo.

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Right now the main character is just attacking the air, but that is because the combat system is still being programmed. We will soon show how this attack can be a powerful ally when fighting mutants.

Evade... you will need it!

An important aspect of the game is to evade in order to survive. If a mighty attack is about to hit you, you can evade it while maintaining your direction and then strike back with a melee attack. You can have a first look at the evade animation.

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That is not all

We have just showed what we have done so far for the combat system, but there are still many things we need to do, such as enemy behaviors and more actions of the player that will make of the combat a fun and challenging experience.
As always, feel free to comment and give us some feedback! Remember this is work in progress and may change for the better.

More aspects of the game will also be revealed soon
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Update 8: We are back!​

Somber Pixel is back! And with it, Lost Hope development will be a lot better. We made some changes in our management and control process and now have much more time to develop Lost Hope than before. The team is still formed by both Arturo and I (Adolfo) , but now we have managed to find a incredibly suitable workflow for Lost Hope.

As you may already know, Lost Hope is a survival-horror game with both exploration and action involved to keep things fresh. You will take the role of a man who is living in a city surrounded by terrible mutants due to a catastrophe and you will be able to freely(but at your own risk) explore the city in search for survivors, items and information.Story is an important part of this game and we are giving the players the option to decide their actions and change how the story develops.Also, each NPC will have a unique personality and you will be able to talk to them ,do some favors for them(or not), attack them and more. In other words, we are aiming for a rich world were you really feel the need of survival and interaction with the characters.

We were inspired by other games in the genre such as Silent Hill, Lone Survivor, Resident evil(1,2 and 3) and other games we consider scary and fun.

Our last update was a while ago but do not think we were lazy this last months! Most of our advances have been code and game-design-related and not much about visual or gameplay implementation( which is what we usually write articles about). A lot of things have been coded, such as our own custom input manager, an enhanced event system, data-related things, micro-systems that allow flexible code and more. Technical aspects will not be covered in this article though!

Main character's enhanced movement


As you may have read in other articles, in Lost Hope we put a lot of attention in details. We want this experience to be unique and immersive so details are as important as the main mechanics. Look at the before and now animations of the main character's basic movements.

Walk direction change

Before​

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Now​

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Run stop

Before​

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Now​

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Run direction change

Before​

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Now​

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Even though it is not a massive difference, we want this to be a detailed experience.

Thanks for your time, both of us are pretty passionate about this game and we will work harder everyday in order to release a significant experience for the players.

We plan to keep you updated much more often now and you can always find us on twitter or the links we have provided. Stay tuned for more updates(There will be a lot more of these!).

 

Looks a lot cleaner and nicer. You have a very talented artist!

 

Thanks Whiteleaf, long time no see! We want Lost Hope to be an immersive experience so we must pay a lot of attention in details. We will post updates more often now by the way, stay tuned

 

Update 9: Stealth mode preview​

Last time, we talked about our return after 3 months unable to post updates. As we promised, we will now post updates more often so here is one for you! On this update we show you a preview of a simple, yet interesting mechanic we are preparing ... Stealth mode!

How much noise you make plays an important part in Lost Hope. Some mutants may detect you if you are just running around the place or shooting. This is where stealth mode comes to play.

First of all, let's be clear about the name of this mechanic. Lost Hope is not a stealth game but we did not find another name to call this mechanic! Stealth mode consists on reducing how much noise you make by adopting a special position. It can be triggered at any time and its main purpose is to avoid being detected by mutants. We decided to embrace this mechanic since this is a survival horror game and sometimes the best strategy is to just avoid dangers. This might save you some bullets and health problems.

*Work in progress

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In stealth mode you will be able to move while reducing the odds of being detected by a mutant. If used correctly, stealth mode can save your life and some precious combat items.

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This will also help you to pass through some places which are impossible to pass while standing.

Keep in mind that now each time you change direction, there is an animation to keep things smooth.

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That is all for this update. As you can see, this is a simple mechanic since we don't want to lose the immersion of the game but really helps you to avoid some encounters.

As always, your feedback and suggestions are appreciated. We are still thinking of other way we can make the most out of this simple feature without loosing the immersion that this genre needs. Stay in tune! Until next update.

 

How about Sneaky mode?

Either way - the animation improvements incorporated are subtle - noticeable - and overall a great enhancement to the game. Great work.

 

Thanks , theANMATOR2b!
haha ,sneaky mode is indeed a great name for the mechanic!
We are glad you noticed the animation improvements, we hope to exceed your expectations.
If you have any feedback let us now!

 

Update 10: NPC design preview​

Character design is one of the most important parts in Lost Hope's development. Even though the last months we have published articles about gameplay and features of the game, we have been designing the story, the characters and how they will interact with you and between them.

This article covers the non playable characters' design. We will show some NPC we have designed but will not talk about their role in the story and the relationship they have with you. We will leave that for later.

The strong and proud woman

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A woman who will not let herself be devoured by a mutant so easily. She is strong and her desire to survive is unique. Compared the other survivors, she gets things done even risking her life in some cases. She is proud and would not accept help so easily.

The confused little girl

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A little girl whose parents are nowhere to be found. She is still wondering where might they be and, no matter what happens, she will not separate from her best friend teddie bear.

The boy who thinks of himself an adult

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A young boy, barely entering his teenage years. Both of his parents are alive but are way too naive. He wants to protect his family but his parents tell him that he should let that to the adults. Most of the times, he acts as if he was older and does not measure the dangers ahead.

The big guy

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Do not let yourself be fooled by his appeareance, thisbig guy is actually a really good person. He wants to keep the survivors together to raise their chances to survive. He is always putting everyone before him and will not hesitate to help anyone who is in danger. He worries about what the people lack to survive and would find a solution to problems.

There are way more npc, everyone with a different personality. We want each npc to be unique based on a personality. There will be other npc that will only care about their own survival and so on. We will post more about this in the future but this serves as an idea of our approach when designing characters.

As always, feel free to tell us what you think. Stay tuned for more updates!

 

Update 11: Equipping weapons and using strong attacks​

On this update we will talk about equipment and how melee weapons work, introducing a new feature for the game : the strong attack.

First of all, we will talk about equipping weapons from the inventory window. For this, we wanted to make it simple so each item has a number of actions that can be triggered by pressing the positive button. For weapons, one possible action is Equip/Unequip. Pressing the "Equip" action will enable you to use that weapon depending of its category. There are two main categories for the weapons : melee and ranged.Melee weapons are equipped in the left square and the ranged weapons will take the right square. You can see it for yourself here!



We will not talk about the numbered slots right now nor the equipped ranged weapon.On this article we are focusing on the melee aspect of the game.

As you can see, we added a new section in the bottom-left part of the inventory!Its main purpose is for you to see your currently equipped items.

When equipping a melee weapon, you will have access to a combo and a strong attack.Strong attack deals more damage than a regular combo attack but takes more time to execute and will consume more stamina.

*On this GIFs, we have not added any kind of darkness to the weapons so that you can see them more clearly



The GIF above shows the strong attack with a wooden bat. Imagine how much that thing hurts!

In Lost Hope, we plan to have a plenty of weapons to keep things always fresh. You can see now a regular blunt combo with a fire axe that you can get in the game.



Of course, that hurts a lot more than a bat! But mutants in Lost Hope are known for being strong and vicious creatures, so you need more than that to get rid of them.

We are still implementing similar aspects such as the ranged combat. We will talk more about that in future updates.Keep in mind that everything so far is work in progress and we would really like to have your feedback. Lighting is also WIP, we don't have any definitive lighting so far but we are looking for something that really fits the game.

Stay tuned! We are progressing more and more in the development. Until next update!

 

Great job , love the art style!

 

Thanks a lot Tesfor! More updates for Lost Hope are coming soon!

 

This is looking super legit Love the fluid animations!

 

OMG I wanna play this gameeeeeeeeeeeeeeee looks excelent!!!

 

Thanks TheValar! We are glad you noticed the fluid animations. It takes a lot of time draw and animate but we think it is worth the hard work

Hey,luciano182! Thanks a lot! We hope you watch our updates closely We are always posting more information about Lost Hope

 

Love the art style guys. Reminds me so much of the old King's Quest games I used to play over lunch back in the early to mid 90's!

 

Hello JamesArndt! Sorry for the late response, we totally missed this! We are glad you like the art style, and it is great you are comparing it with a classic such as King´s Quest! We hope you enjoy our future updates as well

 

Update 12: Aim and shoot!​

Living among deadly mutants is not easy.If you don't equip yourself well you may end up dead. Melee weapons are awesome and are essential means to stay alive but, sometimes, they are not enough.With this in mind, we will talk now about ranged weapons and how they work in Lost Hope.

As we always repeat, we want Lost Hope to be a fluid and immersive experience. That is why, in order to open all kind of possibilities, you can aim at any angle you want.This way, you can have more strategies at combat because you are not limited by fixed positions.

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Another feature we added is the possibility to walk in both directions while still having control of the arms to change the angle. This allows you to keep your distance while trying to kill a vicious mutant

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Some updates ago, we showed the gun fire animation.That animation was just for a fixed position. Now Lost Hope is programmed to support ranged combat at any angle, therefore, you can now shoot at any angle as shown in the following gif

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Also, we did not want you to be limited to just one direction while aiming, so we added a turnover animation that plays whenever you want to change direction while aiming

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This feature was designed thinking about the mutants from the game. Having the freedom to shoot wherever you want was the only way to fight some mutants we have not yet revealed! But expect more updates about them soon.

It is important to note that there will be various ranged weapons in Lost Hope. In the previous GIF images you can see a M9 pistol, but there will be more types of guns and other ranged weapons such as shotguns.

We hope you enjoyed this update! If you have any question,advice or anything to say to us, you can always comment or contact us directly! We always enjoy reading your feedback.Stay tuned, until next update!