The Refuge — Development Update
It has been a while since the demo, and I realized that I never actually made a proper Steam news post to show you what has been happening behind the scenes.
Since the end of the demo, The Refuge has changed a lot.
A huge amount of work has gone into improving the game, adding new systems, expanding the world and making the Refuge itself feel more alive.
Here are some of the biggest changes and additions:
The World & Missions
The original mission area has been significantly expanded.
A brand new mission has been added.
New locations and areas have been added and existing ones have been improved.
The Refuge
The Refuge has also received a lot of attention.
New structures and things to build have been added.
A completely new location has been added: the bar, managed by Cletus.
NPCs can now walk around the Refuge, interact with their surroundings, go to the bar or sit around the campfire.
Several areas of the Refuge have been reworked and improved.
Expeditions
One of the bigger new systems is the Expedition system.
You can now send people from the Refuge on expeditions.
Each survivor has their own statistics and characteristics, and sending them out into the world comes with its own risks and decisions.
Combat & Gameplay
New weapons have been added.
You can now perform a stealth execution on a zombie from behind.
A new lockpicking system has been implemented.
Several gameplay systems have been reworked and improved.
The manual turret system has been reworked, along with its 3D model.
NPCs, Quests & Dialogue
All Refuge NPC models have been replaced with improved versions.
The quest system has been reworked.
NPC dialogue systems have been improved.
Merchants now only buy items that are relevant to their role, making trading more logical.
New items have been added.
Animation & Technical Improvements
We have also made a lot of changes behind the scenes.
Most weapons and character movements now use procedural animation systems for things like movement, jumping and shooting.
This helps reduce the number of individual animations needed while also allowing for more variation and flexibility.
And of course, a lot of bugs have been fixed along the way.
These are only some of the changes. There have been many more small additions, improvements, reworks and changes that aren't all listed here.
The Refuge today is already very different from the version you played in the demo, and development is still ongoing.
I also regularly share development progress on the The Refuge Discord, where you can follow the development more closely and take part in it.
I often ask the community for their opinions on upcoming features, run polls and let players vote on different ideas and changes. So if you'd like to have a say in the development of the game, feel free to join us there.
Thank you to everyone who played the demo, left feedback, reported bugs, added the game to their wishlist or simply followed the development.
There's still a lot more to come.