Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Indie, Card & Board Game
Death Drive
Devlog #7 - Massive Update!
Hey there, fellow Death Drive passengers!
You might have seen some sneak peeks on our social media pages, but here's long overdue devlog update we've been too eager to share with you.
We've been working truly hard on Death Drive. (hint: almost 24/7 😉) And luckily that massive amount of work was not all about fixing those nasty bugs, but resulted in huge progress as well. So, welcome back to our devlog, survivors! 💪
Taverns!
There is a new place in settlements to relax a bit and free up your mind from all things survival, taverns! Possibly one of the best place still standing post apocalypse. Get drunk, fill up your stomach and listen in on all the latest rumors.
And that's not all, we also plan to include several minigames scattered around places like these... what's a tavern without card games and some wagering to keep it spicy?!
Town Hall
Quite often some of the more populated areas you find on your journey will have a special building dedicated to town's issues - a town hall.
While we're still working on some other concepts to add to town halls, we can still share more about 2 complete features for now - investing in settlements and announcement boards.
Investing In Settlements
Investing in settlements is one of the best options if you're looking for stability. With each month, you'll earn your share of revenue, a percentage of your total deposit. The percentage varies from one settlement to another and could also depend on various factors.
Announcement Board
Looking for a job? or perhaps some interesting stories surrounding the settlement. Announcement board contains all the important posts and job listings. Posts get updated monthly with both scripted and procedurally generated jobs and contracts.
You'll have to pay attention to the difficulty level before accepting new jobs, some jobs might cost you more than the reward offered. Besides job posts, you'll also find different notes from other survivors, some of which could be informational and useful, while others straight up insane coming from those who've had too much.
Contracts & Jobs
We've briefly mentioned about jobs and contracts previously and now with the announcement board ready, it's all finished from the ground up! We've also made it super easy to set up for the scripted jobs for that one time special rewards, and for procedural generation you can expect unlimited amount of jobs and contracts with different objectives. Everything from transporting goods between settlements to neutralizing bandit leaders.
Chained Enemies
Enemies that are chained together will trigger an encounter if one of them manages to get close to you and at the same time you'll be fighting the whole group. Likewise once you kill the whole group, all of the chained enemies will disappear in world view.
We wanted to portray that feeling of dread that surrounds zombie hordes in the game without triggering single encounters for each one of them and we think this was the best fitting option!
Weather System
Survival is the key element in Death Drive and we go even deeper with the new weather system. From clear skies to fog and heavy storms it's all unpredictable and affects your travel conditions accordingly.
During heavy storms you'll get a weather alert and unless you're already camping near the settlement you won't be able to set up the camp anywhere else. Just picture you're transporting goods to your destination, barely surviving and suddenly you end up in the middle of the horde and you hear that thunder. With the heavy storm adding up to that, your caravan breaks down!
Lucky for you, we've also added emergency repair kits that allows you to repair your caravan without setting up the camp and in much less time, so make sure you always have a few of them before embarking on long journeys.
Cooking Finalized
There are a total of 51 unique recipes to unlock and cook now! From home made energy drinks and spaghetti to Poor Man's Sushi and Ojakhuri. Each granting different character bonuses.
With over 89 new ingredients added, we've now completed all the planned content for your cooking needs.
More Progress!
We've finally managed to recreate all of our existing art assets with the new style, including human enemies and camp, so expect to see some fresh content from now on.
We've also added long format time tracking spanning to weeks and months as some of the content will have dependency on time.
And finally, we've created more variations of random NPCs that can be found in settlements and added over 20 different interactive and obstacle tiles!
Share Your Feedback And Ideas!
We'd really love to hear what you think ❤
Got any crazy good ideas that you'd want to see in Death Drive? Let us know!
Stay tuned for more!
We're trying to share smaller updates more frequently on our Twitter account, so make sure you follow us! And also, you're more than welcome to join our 👉 community on Discord 👈 and let us know what you think about Death Drive.
Hey there survivors, we're back with another devlog! 💪
Busier than ever, this month we've completely overhauled combat design, started merging the whole storyline with the intro quests, included cutscenes and Death Drive is looking better than ever!
Story & Cutscenes
Cutscenes
We want to tell a great story and make sure our new cutscene system does the job well and sets the mood for the game. We implemented 2 different options. First, a full screen animated mode that gives you control over the pace allowing you to move on to the next scene as soon as you're done reading. And the second one, a quick scene mode to better merge with the gameplay for when the duration of the cutscene is shorter.
Story
We spent quite some time refining our story and after a few tries, we got a perfect prologue complete along with the first few quests. With some new characters, settlements and rest of the content it's now starting to look like the Death Drive we imagined.
This is how the journey starts. No one saw the Zombie outbreak coming; it just hit, like an untamable wave all over the world, leaving everyone wondering and terrified. Angel already struggling with his mental health pretty much thought he was losing his mind as he watched the news and immediately goes looking for a pill to stop the madness attack he thinks he's having.
It's been 2 years since the apocalypse started and the outside world looks nothing like before. Angel together with a kitten he sheltered during the outbreak decide to leave the old place in search of supplies.
Without spoiling much, let's move on to our next feature.
Our in-house tool for creating quests and dialogues is now fully functional and makes organizing the whole storyline a much easier task. Here's a peek at our very own Dialogue Editor.
Combat design overhaul
This is the biggest change we've done since the announcement of Death Drive so far and it took a lot of effort to get it right, but we couldn't be happier with the final result! It was definitely worth it and I want to thank each one of you who participated in discussions and feedback.
Here's our final result!
With the new style complete now, we're doing some final revisions to make sure each section of the game merges together well and also recreating existing combat animations.
Finally, as we're leaving the pre-alpha stage we're looking forward to updating our page with some fresh new screenshots and gameplay footage!
Share your feedback!
Let us know what you think. We'd really love to hear your feedback. ❤
Stay tuned for more!
We're trying to share smaller updates more frequently on our Twitter account, so make sure you follow us! And also, you're more than welcome to join our 👉 community on Discord 👈 and let us know what you think about Death Drive.
Stay safe!
Devlog #5 - Journal, Quests & More!
Hey all, welcome back to our devlog! ❤️
It's been busy few weeks here at Shotx - working on new features and concepts, getting started on the story content and brainstorming some new ideas. We are already in love with Death Drive and seeing how eagerly our fans are waiting for its release is boosting that much needed motivation and enthusiasm!
Journal, quest system and objective tracking
Journal - keeping track of quests, jobs & contracts, reputation, statistics and catalogue.
One of the more important features remaining on our to-do list was a complete quest system and journal to keep track of all progress and objectives. With tons of both, main and side quests planned, as well as procedurally generated jobs and contracts, it was a real challenge to come up with a system, that would automatically track all these objectives in real-time and guide the player in the best way possible. Though, after some careful planning we managed to get everything working perfectly!
The journal also lists your current reputation with different factions and trading points, some useful statistics and a catalogue of many helpful tips. All of these elements are now complete and we're finally ready to move on with the story content.
Training grounds and card progression
Training grounds in Sunny Village.
We've been working on the player progression with the combat cards and the way new cards are acquired. Some of the locations and settlements will contain a new interactive tile called Training Grounds that allows you to buy different cards. Each location will have their own unique cards to choose from, so if you're planning to become a collector you'll have to travel a lot.
Book of wisdom
Another way to acquire new cards is by getting your hands on a book of wisdom. These books can be found by searching and looting different places. The rarity of these books also vary, and the less common the tome is, the higher the chance of getting more epic or even legendary cards!
Sneak peek at some new content
New ground tiles.
We've also been busy creating new content and the time has come to finally share some sneak peeks! 😉
New door types.
Main menu - work in progress
We know you'll love him!
Share your feedback!
And finally, let us know what you think. We'd really love to hear your feedback, especially since we're experimenting with a new art style for our combat scenes. Do you prefer the previous style or the new more realistic one?
New art style concept.
Stay tuned for more!
We're trying to share smaller updates more frequently on our Twitter account, so make sure you follow us! And also, you're more than welcome to join our 👉 community on Discord 👈 and let us know what you think about Death Drive.
Stay safe!
Publisher Announcement!
Hey there survivors and supporters! We are proud to announce that Death Drive is now being published by Freedom Games. For those of you who may not know, a game publisher can take care of a lot of the business and marketing side of releasing a game. That includes managing our store pages, marketing and advertising the game, helping showcase the game at both digital and live events, PR, and a lot more. Really it lets us totally focus on working to make the game the best it can be, and provides us with the resources to do so.
Together with Freedom Games, we're making sure that Death Drive will be an immersive, fresh take on a RPG genre that you all have been waiting for. As for the development side, we can't wait to share more of the exciting new features that we've been working on!
Thank you all so much for your support throughout development so far! We couldn’t have gotten to this point without all of you. We can’t wait to show you all the awesome stuff we have coming. If you want to stay in the loop, follow us on Twitter and you’re more than welcome to join our community on Discord!
