Hey everyone !

I hope you are doing well, today I have some good news for you: Dead Alone is now finally launching on Beta !

Two year ago on March 19, the very first version of Dead Alone was released and what a journey it has been since then ! We are now on the final stretch torward the final release of the game which is currently planned for the end of Q3.

Before that, Dead Alone will recieve several updates to add the final bits missing for the whole package to be complete.

Currently, there are two major updates planned in the next few months, the first one will bring one last new area to the game which will be used for the introduction and initial tutorial. The second major update will include the reworked special weapon system and will be introducing 3 brand new unique weapons to the game !

Other updates are planned along the road with smaller changes, fixes and reworks to the game.

Just for a quick reminder, Dead Alone will also launch on Steam in the next few months, my initial plan was to release the steam page alongside the launch of this first beta update but I underestimated the processing time of Steam to publish the page.

Now that all of this is said, let’s see what’s new in this Beta 1.0.0 release !

Content:

This first Beta update has been focused on bringing the new Survival Gamemode to the game. So, what’s new ?

This new gamemode brings many new gameplay features to play with and the gameplay loop as been totally modified from the linear one present in the Horde Gamemode. The idea with this Survival Gamemode is to give the player the tools to play the game as they wish and survive in this world as you wish while fighting the ennemies you want.

• Map and map menu

This brings us to the first change related to the map: Instead of being splitted into several Sectors with large walls, the map is now fully open and the player can explore the whole map as it want. The sectors are still in place but will now only be reflected by the difficulty of the ennmies encoutered.

The map also received a large polish pass with improved collisions across many objects, fixes to some weird spots and many changes to the layout of some areas to make them more easily navigable.

To help you navigate around this small open world, the player will now be able to access a world map in the survival gamemode. This map will help you see the current progress of the different objectives.

Map System Demo

• Core Gameplay loop

In this Survival Gamemode, the player has the complete freedom of choosing which challenges to tackle. The main goal here is to survive in this world and gather always more powerfull stuff to defeat more challenging ennemies.

To gather this loot the easiest way is to get the control over supply rooms, there are 22 of those on the map. To control these supply rooms, you will need to get a key unlocking the main door. You can only get this key by triggering the unlock of the supply room to one of these buttons

Obviously, it would not be fun if it was so easy, triggering those buttons will attract many ennemies and you will need to clear all the waves of zombies to finally get the key. Each area has it’s own difficulty depending on it’s location and sector.

When all the supply rooms of a sector have been captured, you can now unlock the main vault which include one Legendary weapon (which will be later replaced by Special Weapons) and a lot of loot to improve you gear.

To unlock these main vault you will need to solve a little puzzle first by activating the valves in the correct order, of course you don’t have to guess the order, hints of this are visible on all the unlocked supply rooms and also displayed on the map !

Once all the challenges of the map have been defeated and all the bunkers secured, you will be able to use all the powerful stuff gathered in an endless gamemode putting all your skills and gear to the test against increasingly difficult ennemies.

• Fatigue system

This survival gamemode also bring a new fatigue component to the game. The player will now need to manage his fatigue in order to not be exhausted at the wrong moment against the wrong ennemies. The player will be able to sleep in any supply room or bunker. Sleeping will also give the player some unique buffs !

Sleeping System Demo

• Ground Loot

Ground loot was introduced in the game a while ago but then removed from it, it is now back in this survival gamemode with some brand new changes ! All the ground loot will now spawn in a more coherent way in little bags, boxes, etc instead of just having items lying on the ground. You will be able to fight still loot scatered around the world.

This loot will give you many things like crafting materials, heal items, projectiles, ammos, weapons and upgrades.

• AI

This update also feature a vastly improved AI pathfinding which should reduce to a minimum the instances of zombies stuck in the environment. Further improvements and changes to AIs are planned for the next updates but this should already help having a better experience !

Fixes:

As always, this update also brings a lot of fixes for a ton of bugs.

• (Horde) Fixed an issue causing the Sector 5 to not be unlocked properly
• When dying in the endless horde gamemode, the character is not anymore teleported at the initial world spawn location
• Fixed some issues when picking up weapons
• Fixed an issue that could cause the respawn to be on an incorrect location
• Fixed many issues with the saving system including an issue that caused some save files to not be displayed properly
• Fixed an issue where the waves would not start correctly in the endless mode
• Many unlisted fixes for: UI-related issues, sound issues, core-systems issues (character, weapons, projectiles,etc), saving system, AIs and more