Soldak Planning Zombasite Expansion And New Game

Soldak make interesting games, such as Din's Curse, Depths of Peril and Zombasite [official site]. These are action-RPGs that are doing more than hack and slash - Zombasite, the most recent, is set in a world gradually being consumed by a zombie virus, in which your decisions can affect the spread of the undead threat. It launched back in August and now developer Steven Peeler has written a blog update to say he's working on an expansion and an entirely new game.

Peeler writes:

"While Zombasite isn't doing as well as I would like (hopefully launching on GOG will change that some), I think it deserves an expansion. So that's one of the 2 projects we will be working on. I'm not positive what the focus of this expansion will be, but some possibilities are more classes, lots more quests, more monsters, etc. The nice side benefit of working on an expansion is that it allows me to actively work on Zombasite, so that will mean fixes, balancing, and probably even some new features here and there will sneak into the base game. If you all have things you would like to see in an expansion, please speak up!"

It's a shame that it's not doing so well, though when Alec played it in early access just a month before it's final release, he wasn't wholly impressed. "To me, as someone who hasn’t played those, the zombie stuff does just feel like extra layers of fiddle on top of a relatively solid core," he concluded. "It hasn’t much motivated me and it doesn’t feel much like a thing that is actually happening to my world, and to be honest I’d much rather just be getting on with doomed adventuring."

Soldak make interesting games, even though they aren't always polished or don't fully come together. Their best is probably space ARPG Drox Operative, which Adam reviewed and loved in 2012.

As for the new game, Peeler offers a few details:

"The other project is going to be a separate game that is focused around the ideas of hardcore characters with random skills and traits, the next generation of character is evolved from his/her parents, and each world has a random setup and win conditions. The general idea is each individual character life will be fairly quick, but some amount of the character's power growth will pass on to the next generation. Also which characters you evolve from will greatly control what mix of skills the new character has. Ever want a character that could stealth, use healing spells, and shoot arrows? You should be able to do that, but it will take some time improving and evolving from the right characters. I know this is relatively vague still, but if you have any ideas or games that you would like me to look at, again please speak up!"

Which sounds like a very Soldak kind of idea. He ends the post by noting that he may change his mind about both of these projects, but I hope, at least, that he continues to improve Zombasite.