Hi, this is Joel, the programmer from Muriki Studio! This is my second development news post about Zombies & Bullets, and I plan to post updates more frequently to keep you informed about what’s new. Since the last post, a lot has changed in the game’s demo and we didn’t report everything, so some smaller things might not be listed here.

Also, if you played the demo months ago, try playing it again because a lot of new content has been added — your experience will be very different!

The old upgrade system used orbs collected as a sort of currency to buy upgrades in the pause menu. This made it difficult to balance the cost of upgrades and the number of orbs collected throughout the stages. Moreover, after watching many player playthroughs, we realized that upgrade purchases were often ignored, seen as more complex than they should be, or not impactful enough.

With that in mind, we’ve reimplemented the upgrade system in a way that fits into the game world, simplifies balancing, and provides a greater sense of progression.

The collected orbs now act as experience points, and the player gains levels like in an RPG. When leveling up, the player earns a skill point that can be spent to acquire an upgrade.

Upgrades can now be acquired at camps, which are campfires found in almost every stage. When sitting at a campfire, the upgrade menu appears, allowing you to spend skill points to acquire new upgrades.

The upgrades available follow the same premise as in the previous version of the game — each has a maximum level that can be improved — but the difference is that every upgrade level always costs a single skill point.

We also took the opportunity to add several new upgrades that can be acquired, including:

• Life Drain: melee strikes on enemies steal a bit of health

• Damage Reflection: when hit by melee attacks, enemies take part of the damage back

• Combo Time: the active combo lasts longer (more on this later)

• Point-blank Distance: increases the distance at which point-blank shots occur (more on this later)

• Quick Learner: increases the XP multiplier earned from enemies

• Hunter’s Luck: increases the chance for ammo and healing items to drop from defeated enemies

• Magnetism: increases the pickup range for XP and ammo (more on this later)

There are also new unique upgrades that can only be accessed through equipped backpacks, which we’ll cover next.

Taking advantage of the new camp system and greater flexibility in the upgrade system, we decided to add a collectible backpack feature, with each backpack offering a unique upgrade to the player. In the demo, there are four available backpacks:

• Simple Sack: starter backpack, allows longer dodge distance

• Dream Backpack: gives a small chance for enemies to miss attacks

• Hunter’s Backpack: increases the chance for weapons to deal critical damage

• Camping Backpack: converts healing items into XP when at full health

Additional backpacks for stages beyond the demo are already in development, along with their respective upgrades (such as increased movement speed, dealing damage to enemies passed through during a dodge, etc.).

Killing multiple enemies within a short period of time triggers a combo. Combos multiply the XP earned from enemies, encouraging you to kill as many as possible in the shortest time for more upgrade opportunities.

Shooting enemies at close range deals 50% more damage. This distance can be increased via upgrades.

With the melee strike, it’s now possible to deflect enemy ranged projectiles.

The weapon wheel is a great feature, but keyboard and mouse players suggested adding numeric shortcuts for weapons. Instead of assigning fixed shortcuts to each weapon, we decided to implement custom shortcuts directly within the weapon wheel: simply open the wheel, focus on the desired weapon, and press one of the shortcut keys (1, 2, 3, or 4 on the keyboard, D-pad on the controller). From then on, you can select that weapon directly using the shortcut, without opening the weapon wheel.

In the options menu, you can choose between holding the weapon wheel button or pressing it once to show and again to hide it.

Some keyboard and mouse players reported losing track of the mouse cursor when too much happens on screen and couldn’t tell where they were aiming. A suggested feature was a laser sight option, which is now available in the options menu (with several color choices).

Complementing the game’s cutscenes, there are now documents that can be found on corpses throughout the world, expanding the game’s story. All of them are subject to rewrites as the story continues to evolve.

• Several improvements to 3D models, textures, particle effects, etc.

• The user interface has been completely redesigned to take up less space and be less intrusive.

• Ammo and XP orbs now magnetize toward the player within a certain distance. The magnetism range can be increased via upgrade.

In the last update, we shared a few ideas we had for future implementation, one of them being a rogue-like mode. This idea was in the plans until less than a week before this post, but unfortunately, the team decided to scrap it for scope reasons.

We still plan to add a local split-screen co-op mode, which will be our next major update. It might seem simple to just split the screen, but the game wasn’t originally built with multiplayer logic in mind, so it will be a significant effort to adapt the game systems for this functionality. However, we’ve studied it, and it’s completely feasible.

At the moment, we don’t have plans for online multiplayer, but that could change depending on how popular the game becomes. Still, players will be able to play online in split-screen via Steam Remote Play Together.

Of course, we wouldn’t make a co-op mode featuring a twin brother of Captain Jacob — so we already have the new character who will join for two-player sessions: meet Sergeant Erin!

We’ve already created concept art and even an initial model of Erin. On the left is an early AI-generated concept, and on the right, a sketch made by Diego (our artist). We’ll still make visual adjustments (especially to her face), but we’re very excited to add Sergeant Erin to the roster of playable characters!

Quick note: we do not use AI-generated art in our game — all 2D and 3D art is made by our artist, Diego Almeida.

That’s it for this update report! If you’d like to suggest something to see in Zombies & Bullets (or report issues), don’t hesitate to follow our social channels, send a message on our Discord, or visit the Steam Discussion Forum.

Also, since we handle all the marketing ourselves, you can help us a lot by sharing Zombies & Bullets with your friends and influencers.

That’s all for now — see you in the next one! ːsteamhappyː