Hello survivors,
Today is a big milestone for Dreadzone.
First, we want to thank every single one of you who continues to support the game, share feedback, report issues, and stick with us throughout development. To the kind-hearted members of our community on Steam and Discord, and to everyone playing Dreadzone — thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
We’ve been working incredibly hard behind the scenes on this update, and we're very happy to finally bring it to you.
Dreadzone has officially been upgraded from Unreal Engine 5.3 to Unreal Engine 5.7.4.
This is one of the largest technical overhauls in the development of Dreadzone so far.
Moving across several major Unreal Engine versions required a huge amount of work, but it gives us a much stronger foundation for the future of the game.
The upgrade brings major improvements and newer technology across rendering, lighting, graphics, optimization, world systems, and many of the underlying systems powering Dreadzone.
Alongside the engine upgrade, we have updated our upscaling technology to:
NVIDIA DLSS 4.5
AMD FSR 4.1
These upgrades bring sharper image clarity, more stable rendering, improved lighting, and a significant reduction in some of the blurriness players could experience in previous versions.
Overall, Dreadzone should now look noticeably sharper, cleaner, and more visually refined.
We've also implemented a new system that can automatically select the appropriate upscaling technology between DLSS and FSR based on your GPU compatibility, helping ensure the best supported option is used for your hardware.
We want to be open with everyone — this update was an enormous undertaking.
Going from Unreal Engine 5.3 all the way to Unreal Engine 5.7.4 isn't a routine engine update. It was a massive technical leap, and there were points during development where getting everything migrated and working again genuinely felt close to impossible.
We're proud that we got through it, and we're incredibly happy to say that it's finally done.
More importantly, completing this upgrade gives us a much stronger technical foundation moving forward.
With this enormous piece of engine work behind us, we can shift more of our attention toward what comes next:
New content. New systems. Redesigns. Improvements. And further expansion of the world of Dreadzone.
While the engine upgrade was the main focus of v1.6, we also had some time to bring additional polish, bug fixes, tweaks, and improvements to the game.
Fixed and improved Axe animations
Fixed and improved Pickaxe animations
Fixed and improved Knife animations
Tweaked animations for several other melee weapons
Fixed various animation bugs
Tweaked and updated certain SFX
Tweaked environmental effects and particles
Fixed an issue related to Random Events
Fixed issues related to Gameplay Settings
Fixed issues related to Graphics Settings
Fixed certain issues related to upscaling settings
Tweaked and changed certain AI behaviors
Improvements and changes to the Weather System
With such a significant engine upgrade, we understand that some players may encounter technical issues specific to their hardware or setup.
For this reason, the Last_Stable Beta Branch is available. Switching to this branch will revert Dreadzone to the previous version of the game if you experience issues with the current build or simply need access to the previous build.
To switch to Last_Stable:
Right-click Dreadzone in your Steam Library
Select Properties
Open the Betas tab
Under Beta Participation, select Last_Stable
Steam will begin downloading the previous version
To return to the newest version, follow the same steps and change Beta Participation back to None.
Please note: Players running different versions/branches of Dreadzone will not be able to play together in multiplayer.
We’re also happy to share that Dreadzone will be participating in the upcoming Steam PvE Survival Crafting Fest!
The event begins August 31, and Dreadzone will be on sale during the event.
So, if you’ve been following Dreadzone but haven’t picked up the game yet, the upcoming Survival Crafting Fest will be a great time to jump in and experience the game with the new v1.6 engine upgrade.
To everyone who stuck with Dreadzone throughout this process — thank you.
Dreadzone v1.6 represents another major step forward — and now, onward from here.
As we head into the weekend, we want to wish every one of you a wonderful weekend ahead, filled with peace, good times, plenty of rest, and some great gaming.
Take some time to relax, enjoy yourselves, and have a happy, calm, and chill weekend wherever you are.
Happy gaming, survivors!
— The Dreadzone Team