Wave 3 is out. 451 more playtest invitations have been sent - if you're in this wave, the invite is waiting in your Steam library. Welcome to the game!
This time we barely touched content. Almost everything went into how the game feels in your hands: the weight of a hit, the cost of a swing, the moment an enemy decides to move. That's where most of your feedback pointed, so we decided to focus there.
What has changed:
Game Feel
Screenshake on combat actions and hitstops on impact - hits land now instead of just registering.
Controller vibration added.
Animation tuning across the board.
Completely new zombie animations - new attacks, new tells, new things to read before you commit.
Stamina & Combat
Stamina is now spent only in combat - outside a fight, you can run, roll, and explore without watching a bar.
Rebalanced stamina costs, plus a new stamina UI.
A batch of stamina-related bugs fixed.
Kick has its own hotkey now - no more fighting the input to get it out.
Better character rotations.
Level Design
The Bureau is easier to navigate - clearer routes, fewer moments of "where am I even supposed to go?"
Systems
Better version of the physics interaction system - objects behave the way you expect when you push, drop, or shoot them.
UI & Quality of Life
Crafting window update.
Completed quests now sort to the bottom of the Journal tab.
Bugfixes
Input lag fixed (we found a root cause, thanks to you!)
Enemies no longer get stuck or fall through the floor.
...and a long tail of smaller fixes.
None of this shows up in a screenshot, and that's fine. We're a small team building this after hours, and we'd rather make the minutes you already play feel right than bolt on new ones that don't. Your reports are what tell us which minutes those are.
Share Your Feedback
If you're playing, please tell us what you find. Every response matters.
Feel the Survey after the Demo: it really helps us collect all the feedback and see it through your eyes.
Comment on Steam: drop your feedback in the discussions here. We will pick it up and take it home
On Discord: post in the playtest #feedback channel. As always, everyone who shares feedback on Discord will receive a special title on our server - our small but genuine way of saying thank you for helping us build this.
And if the new game feel changed anything for you, good or bad, we especially want to hear about that one.
Spread the Word
If you know someone who'd want to play this, send them to the store page and have them request access. The queue is open, and we'll keep running closed waves until the build is ready to go fully open.
We're not naming a date for the next wave yet - we're heads-down on a bigger update, and we'd rather show it when it's actually worth showing. If you want a number, our honest guess is 4 to 8 weeks. You'll hear it here first either way.
P.S. Check out our new key art!
NOVA64
Pressure above. Abyss below. Know the rules. Break the right ones.