Survive Another Night Patch Notes

I finally made time to do a post-game jam update of Survive Another Night. It was nice to come back to it and I was still pretty happy with how the game turned out in the jam. The update adds polish that I couldn't fit into the time constraints as well as a bit of balancing, bug fixes and I also added a hard mode, which is pretty brutal. I’ve not been able to survive with both members of my family still alive!

I kept the original game jam entry available to download/play in case you want to see how it looked when I handed it in!

Here is a breakdown of all the changes:

DESIGN/BALANCING

• Added a hard mode to the game which reduces initial build time, increases the amount of time you have to survive, the number of zombies that spawn as well as the number of resources required to craft items
• Balanced the number of items you need to craft items in general
• Made it so only ai can get through from outside to restrict the player to be only within the compound
• Made it so you can walk through your family to stop you getting blocking into a corner by them (the ai still get blocked by them though)
• Increased the ai chance of attacking family members slightly
• Made a few more windows start off damaged by default
• Gave weapons a bit more durability

POLISH

• Lights that turn on now have an emissive effect on them when activated
• Made it more obvious that the escape truck has arrived: Honk car/screeching tires and an animation of the van smashing through the gates
• Changed the look of the guy in the escape truck (so he isn't the same as the player) and animated his arm waving for the player to hurry up
• Updated the art on the exit gate where the escape truck appears so it’s not an open space that looks like you can walkthrough
• Added player interaction animation when interacting with barricades
• Polish to the UI timer at the top to make it a prettier format as well as having animations and sounds at key moments
• Added a follow me/stay voice when you tell your family what to do
• Polished the resources on the UI to make them easier to read the name and amount
• Added a ticking sound to the last 5 seconds of fight mode and build mode to draw attention to the fact the timer is about to run out
• Added trees around the compound to hide the spawning of the zombies
• Made it so when you enter combat mode (holding right trigger) the cursor colour changes to help better represent combat mode
• Added an error sound and UI animation when you try and use the crafting bench without the power being on
• If you don’t have enough resources, the one you are missing now shakes in the UI
• Made the crafting table a different colour/material to help make it stand out as important
• Added swish through air noise to punching and weapon swings
• Added a power sign next to the generator to make it a bit more obvious that it is where to turn the power on
• Added blood splatters to the walls and floor around the level
• Added small camera shakes anytime ai break through a window/door
• Added a VFX to weapons when they break in your hand
• On successfully crafting an item play a sound and VFX
• Added a VFX and an ambient sound for when you activate the generator on and turn the power back on
• Tidied up misc art around the level
• Tidied up misc UI layout and art
• Made separate hit sounds based on punching or using a weapon

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a really bad/big hitch that you would get after the first time you kill the Ai that starts in the compound
• Fixed a bug where dead ai would still take durability damage off your weapon when you hit them
• Fixed random capital letter in the intro text
• Fixed misc log errors
• Deleted out the white placeholder blockout walls that I forgot to delete in the jam
• Fixed a bug that caused end screen dead family names to be a random blue colour
• Fixed some z clipping on some of the walls
• Raised some lights so that they were not so close to the players head causing a blow out of brightness
• Fixed a bug that caused a family members health bar UI to still have some health even though they had died
• Fixed a lootable table that was facing the wrong way making it impossible to loot
• Fixed UI events covering over the player's health bar making it hard to read your health
• Fixed a bug which when you got near a fixed window the UI would say still say use (when it should say nothing)
• Fixed a bug that caused your family names not to fill in, in the end win/lose screens 
• Fixed a bug where the ai could still kill you in the end screen if you had won
• Fixed a bug where you couldn’t pick up pickups if they landed on a window/door interaction area 
• Fixed some map errors about empty static mesh objects
• Fixed a bug causing family members to still play animations after they had been killed
• Fixed misc Nav mesh problems
• Stopped the mouse decal being drawn on the player
• Fixed cloth pickup saying fuel
• Fixed being able to see zombies spawn
• Fixed a bug where if you told the family to stay as soon as the game started it would double trigger the start game causing misc problems
• Fixed a bug where the ai would make a damaged door/window sound even if it was already fully broken
• Fixed a door that couldn’t be interacted with when repaired
• Fixed a missing sound effect when you open/close the large metal gate
• Fixed a collision issue where you could sometimes walk over barricades
• Fixed when ai kill a family member they will now pick a new target instead of just getting stuck attacking the dead body
• Fixed a bug that caused the barricade UI/interaction effects when it should have been off by default

Have Fun Playing!