Update 0.4 – “Lock ‘n’ Loaded” is here! This release includes several much-needed improvements suggested by our great community, quality of life features, and fixes to most reported issues.

Scroll down for a full changelog, but here are some highlights:

To spice things up a bit, this update introduces two new game modes that are available one after the other, waiting to be tackled once you have completed the Hardcore mode challenge. These two are aimed at players who are looking for a greater challenge than any of the previous modes in the game. We hope you find them an exciting addition, and we’d love to hear your thoughts on them!

Boss Rush is similar to Hardcore mode, but with a twist. The twist is that you’re constantly being attacked by waves of mini-bosses (and probably big bosses in future versions). It also borrows some of the mechanics of the Endless mode; you win if you survive to the 10th minute, but then you can continue to play further with no time limit!

One Hit is all about the player’s agility and reaction time, as you can be defeated with a single hit. It’s a condensed 5-minute challenge with greatly increased experience gain and chest/SOS spawn rates, with additional tweaks to remove redundant stats, abilities and items. For the potential players who would still find it a relaxing experience, it also has no upper time limit, so you can race your peers to see who gets the highest minute mark!

One of the biggest changes in this patch is the update to the level up, item chest and SOS signal option selection interfaces. If you’re playing with a full team, the level-up interface will now offer a choice of 4 options, to reduce the overabundance of options and help you build your team the way you want to play. In addition, the “Skip” function has been redesigned as “Lockdown” to help in all cases where there are two good options to choose from. Now you can lock any upgrade in place so that it will appear with 100% chance the next time you open the same interface. For all you challenge and achievement hunters out there, there’s also a (yet another) “Skip” button that lets you skip any choice altogether. Don’t worry, you won’t accidentally press it, as you’ll have to hold it down for a few seconds to activate it. Oh, and there are now additional icons under the selection cards to indicate which upgrades are considered weapons and which are considered abilities.

As discussed in the previous development update, we continue to tweak and balance the Endless mode to keep it fun and challenging for all types of players. We’re making the experience smoother with looser Horde scaling and some per-enemy balance tweaks across all modes, but we’re also introducing a reason to keep growing and being aware of your surroundings by removing a state where the player could not be defeated at all.

With the introduction of a new debuff/mechanic called “Fatigue”, which will appear in the late stages of Endless and Boss Rush modes, you will no longer be able to stay AFK in one place for hours without being defeated. Fatigue only affects one thing: your maximum damage buffer, which increases every second from a default base of 1000. In a game that’s all about getting stronger and pushing the limits, we obviously don’t want to nerf any player’s strength and power with a debuff like that, so the Fatigue doesn’t affect anything else at all.

Casual Endless enjoyers – don’t worry! This debuff will start to accumulate after the victory mark minute, so it will have little to no effect on players who aren’t looking for a tougher challenge. We believe that this change will ensure that the challenge remains as such, and that the game remains… well… a game – with both the winning and losing conditions working for the sake of an enjoyable experience.

These are just some of the many changes we are introducing in this update. We hope you’ll enjoy version 0.4.0, explore new tactics that make the most of each Survivor’s arsenal, and look forward to seeing what else we have in store for the future. Have fun!

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• New Game Mode – Boss Rush (accessible after completing Hardcore on set map).
• New Game Mode – One Hit (accessible after completing Boss Rush on set map).
• 10 new achievements (empty reward slots are by design – we can always fill them in later versions).
• 4 level-up choices when playing as a full team of Survivors (instead of always 3).
• Old “Skip” function rebuilt into “Lockdown” – you can lock an upgrade to appear 100% next time.
• New hold-down “Skip” button added, which lets player forfeit the level-up/chest/SOS selection.
• “Reroll” function now ensures that the rerolled options will be different than the current ones (when possible).
• “Fatigue” debuff added for game modes without a time limit. Reduces the maximum damage taken buffer after the victory state minute mark (20m/10m on Endless/Boss Rush). The calculation is: dmgcap = 1000 + 2% per minute, up to 5000 at 100%. This debuff doesn’t affect player combat power or stats in any way.

• “Indicators position” option added, allowing to customize on how are the arrows, magnet & health drop indicators displayed.
• Weapons and abilities now have icons on the level-up screen to help differentiate between the two types of upgrades.
• Small freeze-frame added when the selection interfaces are being closed, to better see the gameplay area before unpausing.
• Stats now have popup descriptions on mouse-over on multiple different interface screens.
• If the game detects a possibility of the save file being corrupted, it will show a message in main menu on how to restore a backup.
• The feedback form (on the F8 key) now also sends the save and backup files, so that we can better assist in cases of lost progress.
• Achievements in the achievement panel are now sorted more naturally.
• Achievement tracking added to challenges that require reaching a certain number across multiple playthroughs.
• Achievement “It’s Dangerous To Go Alone” can now be completed while taking multiple stacks of the same one item.
• “Reset points” option in skill-tree interface was made to be more visually noticable.
• Alt-tabbing/switching window focus now mutes the game audio.

• Fixes for “Armor” stat not working properly in some cases.
• Abilities from previous runs should no longer trigger when starting a new game.
• Enemy: “Boomer” no longer deals AoE damage before exploding.
• Item: “Stretcher” fixed to no longer decrease the Health Regeneration stat in some cases.
• Item: “Healing Potion” once again heal for the correct amount.
• Yet another yet another potential fix for boss health bars being displayed for no reason.
• Fix for the “Minigun” weapon not being able to deal critical hits.
• Fix for visual glitches on the “Energy Shield” ability.
• Fix for controller losing focus after banishing a choice.
• Fix for new weapons and abilities not being marked as “NEW” in the level-up interface.
• Minor language/translation fixes and wording improvements.
• Other fixes and improvements.

• Base yellow XP gems value increased from 9 to 10 (blue gems scale 5x of this value).
• Red XP gems buffed to give 35x the value of a yellow one (from 15x).
• Enemy damage tweaked: Scarabs, Boomers, Spitters & Flies damage scale slower over time.
• “Spitter” class enemies projectile speed reduced (6 -> 5).
• “Desert Spitter” enemy HP reduced to 250 (from 400).
• “Scarab” enemy base damage reducted to 250 (from 300).
• “Scarab” enemy now has higher priority of being targetted by the aiming AI.
• Endless: Enemy HP and speed stats scale slower (HP: 1.08 -> 1.065, Speed: 0.02 -> 0.0175).
• “Iron Skin” powerup now applies +10000 armor (from +1000).
• Tank: “Sawblade Drone” ability now has an attack speed scaling (+50% * Ability Cooldown).
• Ghost: Weapons area of effect attacks now target more enemies.
• Ghost: “Windcutter” weapon has had its base fire rate increased do 1.25 (from 0.75).
• Ghost: “Thousand Cuts” weapon improved to properly target fast-moving enemies and summons.
• Ghost: Base damage of “Katana Splash” & “Thousand Cuts” reduced to 100 & 150 (from 150 & 200).
• “It’s Over 9000!” achievement time requirement reduced to 1 second (from 2 seconds).
• Other minor gameplay balance changes & tweaks.

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As you may know from looking at our roadmap and following our discussions with the awesome community (that’s you!), there’s a lot of things we’d like to add and improve. At the current moment, there are some things we’d like to and are preparing to implement for the next update.

First of all, we’d like to add a new character/Survivor to spice things up (if it goes as planned, it’ll be quite a hot addition!), and we’re planning a lot of rework/improvements to stats & itemisation. We’ll be looking at ways to make weapons and abilities more interesting by exploring their progression, paths and synergies.

The different systems are still evolving in our minds, but we want to continue to explore the synergies between the mechanics of the game, giving more room to the passionate players who want to experiment with what works well with what, while continuing to make the game enjoyable for the casual player.

Most of the upcoming changes are still undetermined, but feel free to check our roadmap from time to time to see what’s currently planned: https://trello.com/b/Ipc33X20/yet-another-zombie-survivors-roadmap

It goes without saying, but we’ll say it again: we’re glad you’re with us on this journey to make a great game, and we hope you’ll continue to support us by playing, giving us feedback, reporting issues, and leaving us reviews on Steam. Thank you so much!

As always, we’re super open to feedback, so keep sending it in – we read and consider every post, every thread, every comment, and every F8 form you send (thanks for your words of encouragement ːheart_meː).

If you’d like to, be sure to hop on any of our social media profiles and/or our Discord server:

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ㅤ  @AwesomeGamesStudio
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Thank you everyone! Have fun!

ㅤStay awesome,
ㅤㅤAwesome Games Studio

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