Urban Strife - turn-based zombie survival RPG

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

We'll have a new demo (probably) at a Steam festival in January and 100% we'll be attending Steam NextFest in February. The January participation depends a lot of we can isolate the base building part somehow and showcase it and might be too much of a headache so it's not yet a certainty. Our programmer can only work 26 hours a day and no more, when all is said and done...

The zombies will always be kept "vanilla" with no additional skills, like fast attacks or exploding zombies (State of Decay comes to mind). But... if lets say a base of fully geared soldiers becomes infected, you will face zombies in full kevlar gear. Good luck scoring headshot kills with .22 then. Other than that, we plan to keep the variations "natural", as they would've occurred in an alternate reality. We tried a small example in the demo with the bus victims. They were "fresh" zombies, hours since they turned so we didn't use the standard zombie body type, but normal refugees that moved and behaved like zombies. Funny enough, some thought our zombie models looked too much like civilians (duh!). But you get the idea.

 

[Harthwain]

Our programmer can only work 26 hours a day and no more, when all is said and done...

Senpai, teach me your ways!

 

[Maggot]

Gameplay is still great, but the dialogue could use some proofreading. Not a big fan of the new portraits either.

 

[PanteraNera]

Lol second time I missed the chance to try out the demo. Well on the bright side, it is for the better, I don't want to get to excited and waiting till 2025 for release.

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

Just keep in mind we'll have a demo at the Spring NextFest 100%. Maybe one in January at smaller fest, not sure yet.

 

[spectre]

I just got told about the game yesterday and downloaded the demo with big plans to give it a serious spin today.... fuck me, right?

 

[Modron]

you can still play it...

 

[PanteraNera]

you can still play it...

Maybe but for sure you can not download it anymore.

 

[luj1]

Somebody could make a Steam backup and send it to you

 

[c u in da ballpit ashren]

I like this a lot but it's not hitting Dead State buttons for me.

 

[Alienman]

I like this a lot but it's not hitting Dead State buttons for me.

Dead State got a nice melancholic feeling. Think that will be hard to replicate.

 

[agris]

I like this a lot but it's not hitting Dead State buttons for me.

Can’t tell if this is net pos or neg

 

[rojay]

you can still play it...

No, you can't. At least not if you downloaded it from Steam. Please correct me if I'm wrong, USG_whateverthefuck.

 

[c u in da ballpit ashren]

I like this a lot but it's not hitting Dead State buttons for me.

Dead State got a nice melancholic feeling. Think that will be hard to replicate.

It's also the fact that it had choices in how to handle characters you recruit. Haven't seen that with Urban Strife. I liked the fact that I could send innocent people to die in it, as well as the internal faction leader system.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

dead state is very underrated, I hope USG_Mucifikatorul & co have played it

 

[Modron]

No, you can't. At least not if you downloaded it from Steam. Please correct me if I'm wrong, USG_whateverthefuck.

Library>Manage>Browse Local Files>Run the .exe.

Sometimes (not this time) you have to fiddle around with adding a steam_appid.txt with the game's app number saved inside but 99.999% of steam demos continue to work just fine when steam itself says no you can't do that.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

we're at the point where we have to rely on Mr. Goldberg to make demos run

 

[luj1]

My impressions,

• combat is great
• crafting is great
• music is great
• production standard (assets) is mediocre
• animation is very good
• difficulty is kind of high (good)
• UI is great
• writing, story, characters (for now) are shit (less important for a combatfag game)
• art direction and overall style points are poor (everything is generic)
• building characters is weird (only 6 attributes controlled via sliders, noticed no skills or feats/perks)

USG_Mucifikatorul few questions,

1. Why isn't to-hit chance displayed as a percentage? Or is that not how your system works?
2. Same question for aimed shots.
3. Do aimed shots produce different effects like in Fallout? I feel like shooting the head is overpowered compared to the legs (wasn't able to cripple zombies).
4. Are AP for movement and combat combined? What is the max AP and are they based only on agility?
5. Is there a way to highlight lootable objects? Can you loot abandoned cars (not that I've noticed but would be quite enjoayble)?
6. Can you tell us more about leveling and building characters? Are there skills or feats?

Thanks, I really like this demo. Maybe my impressions are a little off because it's a demo where not everything is available or shown but I believe this game can be a 4/5 at least.

 

[c u in da ballpit ashren]

It sincerely bothers me like fucking crazy whenever I look at Urban Strife, because on one hand, I love it, on the other it misses so much. It's like meeting a really beautiful girl who blows your mind and then she tells you she's a scat fetishist, goddamn.

I'm looking at footage of it and I want to buy it when it comes out, then I see them little portraits of characters come up and my mind goes to how Dead State had 8 options to say who you were back on the plane that crashed in the prologue and how wild it got when you could bribe internal faction leaders into shutting the fuck up about lying to everyone about a radio call from rescue services, and that at any time you could old yeller somebody out back the shelter and there were even consequences to them not showing up to their loved ones back home.

 

[ropetight]

Played the demo and liked it overall.
Good combination of atmosphere and gameplay systems.
I hope you don't overdo shelter management and make it some kind of Factorio-lite, because core tactical gameplay is already good.
Especially liked how urban environment can hide potential danger behind every corner or window.

Couple of features I missed:
1. Add shortcuts or inventory manipulation (splitting/combining 10s, 100s or something similar). Game with scavenging, crafting and resource management for base will make you interact with inventory a lot. If there is any in demo I haven't found them.
2. Add quicksave slots and shortcuts for it - game relying on stealth and activating attention of smaller groups of enemies is prone to catastrophic errors.
3. In the same vein I hope silencers and some weapon modification besides crafting will be available.

 

[PanteraNera]

Somebody could make a Steam backup and send it to you

we're at the point where we have to rely on Mr. Goldberg to make demos run

Honestly, why bother? To much, for to little, at least to me.
If they want people to play the Demo (and get more reach), they'll be able to. If not than yeah, whatever.

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

1. Why isn't to-hit chance displayed as a percentage? Or is that not how your system works?
2. Same question for aimed shots.
3. Do aimed shots produce different effects like in Fallout? I feel like shooting the head is overpowered compared to the legs (wasn't able to cripple zombies).
4. Are AP for movement and combat combined? What is the max AP and are they based only on agility?
5. Is there a way to highlight lootable objects? Can you loot abandoned cars (not that I've noticed but would be quite enjoayble)?
6. Can you tell us more about leveling and building characters? Are there skills or feats?

Thanks, I really like this demo. Maybe my impressions are a little off because it's a demo where not everything is available or shown but I believe this game can be a 4/5 at least.

1. there is a color indicator on target dummy that tells you everything you need to know about how good your chances to hit are that takes into account cover, weapon, bullet, skill, range. We felt percentual chances serve no purpose except make good memes with 99% cth misses. Also, most important, the target MOVES during idle stances and since this is a real ballistics simulation, your numeric CTH would constantly vary 5-10% as your enemy goes in and out of cover.
2. same as above; but if you really miss the old simplified system, we still use it with melee weapons that have no ballistics or cover calculation - there we display the %% chance.
3. health of the character is a weighted sum of the body parts; meaning that head for example counts more in the total hp than an arm, because wounds there are more often serious; there are lingering effects of a wound after you stop the bleed, check the stats on your mercs (but no special animations, limbs flying off, etc sadly)
4. pressing ALT highlights all lootable containers; both cars and furniture have different full/empty looks so if you see an abandoned car with hood/bonnet closed, that usually means there's loot inside.
5. there will be a special update concerning perks/specializations before the NextFest demo; the system is still WIP so I don't have many details except that would love to keep it realistic and if possible close to JA2's system of learning-by-doing.

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

Played the demo and liked it overall.
Good combination of atmosphere and gameplay systems.
I hope you don't overdo shelter management and make it some kind of Factorio-lite, because core tactical gameplay is already good.
Especially liked how urban environment can hide potential danger behind every corner or window.

Couple of features I missed:
1. Add shortcuts or inventory manipulation (splitting/combining 10s, 100s or something similar). Game with scavenging, crafting and resource management for base will make you interact with inventory a lot. If there is any in demo I haven't found them.
2. Add quicksave slots and shortcuts for it - game relying on stealth and activating attention of smaller groups of enemies is prone to catastrophic errors.
3. In the same vein I hope silencers and some weapon modification besides crafting will be available.

Shelter management will make sense once it has all the mechanics in place and has been tuned to be just enough to push the player to advance & upgrade, without becoming a chore. Having own team of scavengers and more production industries will gradually allow you to focus more on combat. The only major strategic decision you need to make, both when picking the ally and when spending time to build-up the base, is how much you want to invest in end-game defence (too little might make winning costly) and how much you want to invest in stuff that makes your mid game easier.

Shortcuts, quicksaves and more QOL features are coming and so are weapon attachments

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

dead state is very underrated, I hope USG_Mucifikatorul & co have played it

While we have the zombie combat shared with Dead State and some other similarities, we do not plan to make Dead State 2 (although many have stated that the game feels like one). That's for Brian Mitsoda if he ever wants to revist his game. A lot of the intrigue in DS happened inside, ours depends on the outside campaign decisions. In DS you had to satisfy a lot of individual wants and needs, we'd rather have you fill up meters for everyone at once. Maybe to some people feels like a dumbed down system, but we feel that the focus of the game should be exploring and combat, not internal politics.

 

[luj1]

Couple of features I missed:
1. Add shortcuts or inventory manipulation (splitting/combining 10s, 100s or something similar). Game with scavenging, crafting and resource management for base will make you interact with inventor

Same, agreed