First of all: Merry Christmas!

Whether you join in the festivities or not, we wish you a wonderful holiday season. While various circumstances have prevented us from bringing you a full update release just yet, we’d like to invite you to see first-hand what we’re working on in the Update 0.5 Public Beta.

IMPORTANT: To reduce any possible confusion and accelerate the implementation of changes, please keep all the discussion related to the test versions to the spaces listed below:

• A dedicated #yazs-beta channel on our Discord server.
• “Public Beta Test” sub forum on YAZS Steam forums.
• Comments under this post.

You can also send us your feedback at contact@awesomegamesstudio.com
adding “0.5.0 BETA” somewhere in the title of your message. Thanks!

Want to help us out & get an early look at the new version of the game? Awesome!

If you understand the potential problems and are willing to take the risk, here’s how you can get in:

1. Open your Steam client, find Yet Another Zombie Survivors on your games list, right-click its name and select the “Properties…” option.
   
2. Enter the “Betas” tab, click the “None” drop-down menu on the right, and select the “public-beta” option. You can always return to the default version of the game by selecting “None” again.
   
3. If you want to share your feedback about the beta version (thanks in advance!), click the image below to join our Discord server (you’ll need an account for that, but it’ll be worth it, believe me!):
   
4. When joined, you will be able to comment on the current beta version in the new #yazs-beta forums, which you can join by selecting it from the drop-down list:
   
5. And that’s all! If the beta/test version of the game is different from the current one, the Steam will update the game with its changes. You will know that the Beta Branch is active from the “[public-beta]” text to the right of the game’s title in your game’s library.

There are multiple things we’d like you to take a look at and share your feedback on them.

Here are some of the things added/changed in this version:

• New leveling system:
  • Minor level-ups offering passive stat upgrades.
  • Major level-ups offering weapon & ability upgrades.
  • All weapons & abilities to have 3 levels instead of 5.
  • Always 4 selection options in major level-ups.
  • Increased XP gain and decreased level requirements.
  • Minor level-up options instead of money/health in cases of empty reward pools.
• New stats: Ability Duration, Area, Critical Chance, Critical Damage.
• Elemental damage system and new stat scaling: Fire, Ice, Electric, Chemical.
• Stat reworks: Armor (percentage damage reduction), Ability & Weapon Cooldown Reduction.
• New playable Survivor, melee/ranged hybrid focused on fire-type elemental damage.
• 17 new items, 28 item reworks (item banning / pool customisation planned for Update 0.6).
• 18 new achievements + redesigned item rewards for most.
• UI/UX reworks of multiple different interfaces + language improvements / terms unification.
• Completion marks for game modes, different for one victory and completion with all team leaders.
• Balance changes and systems update to weapons & abilities.
• New accessibility option: Arachnophobia mode.
• New soundtrack & sound effects improvements.
• Potential fix for freezes related to V-Sync being enabled on some of the 120+Hz displays.

We’re especially interested in your feedback on:

• How do you like the new leveling system?
• For you, is the game as fun as it was before, or less / more?
• What do you feel about the current game difficulty & balance?

Please remember that Elemental Damage Sources & Synergies is a work in progress that will likely take more than one update to fully complete and polish. Please also note that there are a lot of changes under the hood in this update, which will hopefully make each future update faster to develop.

Given the holiday season and the amount of system changes this update will bring, we expect the 0.5 beta to run until around the first half of January, after which we will release an updated version of the game.

Thank you so much for your support and for your patience
Have an awesome, warm holiday!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2163330/Yet_Another_Zombie_Survivors/

• Pyro now unlocks properly.
• Base experience per XP gem increased to 15 from 13.
• Huntress’s Explosive Arrows are exploding once again.
• Glass Cannon now properly works as described (removes 10% of max HP).
• Apple now has the correct description and works properly. Also it grants +1hp/s for each 200 max HP now.
• Item Chest Chest now properly increases Dodge Chance by 0.2% per chest instead of 2%.
• Jewel of Life should work properly now (previously it did resurrect the player but somehow still passed the damage, so when killed on low HP or when overkilled it would just kill them again).
• Music should not glitch out that much anymore.
• Pyro achievement description now correctly displays the required elemental damage value.
• Nuts & Bolts now correctly highlight Weapon Damage when highlighted.
• Eagle Eye and Critical Protocol now apply correct values on leveling up.
• Eagle Eye now grants +20% Critical Damage on level 2 and +10 Critical chance on level 3 instead of +8/+8 on each.
• Critical Protocol now grants +20% Critical Damage on level 2 and +10 Critical chance on level 3 instead of +8/+8 on each.
• Added Weapons Volume to Game Options (also please keep in mind that a total SFX rework is currently in progress).
• Barrel Roll now grants +0.1s immunity time
• MedKit now slows the player accordingly instead of speeding up
• Toilet Paper now grants +5% Chemical Damage per stack (previously 25%)
• Limit of carried Camping Sets set to 1 (previously incorrectly 3)
• Arrow Rain particles now properly scale with Ability Area
• Progress bar isn’t displayed in the Achievements Menu anymore when achievement is unlocked.
• Banish now works properly for minor level-ups.
• Added Weapons Volume to Game Options (also please keep in mind that a total SFX rework is currently in progress).

Also, a note from us, developers – we really want to thank you for your feedback! It helps us a ton to know what’s good for the game and what’s not. We also want to assure you that every single one of your messages is read. We may not have enough resources to answer them, but we do receive them and we do read them (by the way, the current record for the length of a single feedback we received is 12,168 characters).

In the meantime – once again, we wish you all happy holidays!

ㅤStay awesome,
ㅤㅤAwesome Games Studio