Hello everyone!
Me and my friend have been working on this game since the 1st of January 2025 and we’ve gotten to the point of it being near release.
The point of the game is that you’re stranded in a supermarket/mall with all the supplies in it and waves of enemies storming in every night. Your objective is essentially to survive until rescue (or alternate ending).
Game creation lore
I first got the idea a long time ago when I saw a Food Theory video on something similar which I found really intriguing, and once I started actually thinking about trying to make it (right before New Year) a friend of mine (d00minator) hopped onboard the project.
Before I continue, if you don’t want me to spoil everything, here is the game link
WAIT! Before you play the game, among a few other things, the tutorial isn’t finished yet, so here are the controls:
- WASD to move and Space to jump (duh)
- C to crouch
- Q to open the inventory
- Y to open crafting menu (Shown in tutorial)
- E to hold object (Shown in tutorial)
- F to put held object into inventory (Also shown in tutorial)
- G to consume edible items (Also shown in tutorial)
- R & T to rotate held objects (Seen at the bottom left corner while holding them)
- Backspace to drop items in your hotbar (can’t drop them directly from the inventory yet, sorry working on that)
Features
- You can move stuff around to build custom barricades (or look for ways to cheat the game by finding a broken spot)
- Break down entrances to closed stores to discover new places and items
- Melee and Ranged weapons!
- Ration food and refrigerate it to make it rot slower
- Keep the generator running to keep the lights and refrigerators working
- Buy perks (with in-game money) that alter gameplay a bit
- Gamepasses are also buyable with in-game money since I’ve always hated it when games completely paywall their features
- And more! (also a lot more in the Enemies section below)
Enemies
Zombies come every night in larger and larger hordes & with new enemy variants the longer you survive
Current enemy variants are:
- Civillian
- Military (stronger)
- Tank (even stronger, but slow as hel)
- Speedy (small, yet wayy too fast)
- Gas (has a gas bubble around him that poisons the player and makes food rot faster)
- Spitter (Spits AoE projectiles which should counter skybase strategies)
- Boss
The boss
The boss has a few attacks which are probably gonna be expanded upon. Currently they are the following:
- Slash: With one or the other hand, slashes at you, dealing AoE damage
- Smash: Smashes the ground and creates a temporary crater, dealing AoE damage
- Leap: Leaps at you if you’re too far away and in sight, on impact dealing, you guessed it, AoE damage
- Rock throw: If you’re far enough away and in sight, throws a big rock at you, dealing, once again, AoE damage
- Summon: Summons a few of the other enemies in near him
Here’s a picture of them all lined up
They are (from left to right) the spitter, gas, civillian, military, tank, speedy and boss enemies
PLEASE READ, because this took way too long to implement and debug.
Since roblox’s pathfinding system couldn’t accomplish what we wanted and was really slow, I (the programmer), decided to make an entire waypoints generator and pathfinding system from the ground up!
And what was that for I hear you not asking?
THEY CAN PATHFIND ON WALLS
(There are like 2 or 3 of them there lol)
Here’s another image
And that was done just so that you couldn’t hide yourself by building your base on a wall somewhere.
Do note that pathfinding bugs do still sometimes occur and we are planning to extend it to make the AI even better at taking your base down.
Thumbnail
This is the game’s thumbnail. Both the thumbnail and icon were made solely by us two (like basically everything else), so I’d love feedback on what you think about them!
And the square icon:
Now, if you’ve noticed that we’ve got a 100% like to dislike ratio at the moment, then that’s actually wrong. In fact, we’ve got a 109% like to dislike ratio as seen in the creator hub (or if you do the calculations from the experience page)
And no, this is not a joke. I’ve genuinely got now idea how this happened lol. I think I was just spamming the like and dislike buttons a long time ago, then at some point the dislike counter glitched and went to -1 (it was 0 before) and has never recovered since. Please keep it that way lmao!
Cutscenes
Our game features user (us) driven cutscenes, such as the starting one seen below!
(It took me like 50 tries to get a good run without crashing early or tumbling over, this is the introduction cutscene)
Note that this is the cutscene when recorded from outside the vehicle, in the actual cutscene you are in the vehicle and “driving” it.
What you’re hearing in the video is the car’s radio. And obviously in the end when it crashes in the lamp post, the screen goes black and a few other effects happen, it doesn’t just abruptly stop like that when you’re actually playing the game.
The game supports up to 4 players, which also means 4 animations for when you crash the car!
(First guy is under the car, second guy got launched outside the window and is sliding down the lamp post, third guy isn’t very well visible, he is on the other side crawling out of the window and the fourth guy is the one at the very front waiting for them)
Also a note, ALL animations in this game are made by us (excluding the player’s walk/run/crouch anims)
There is also a cutscene where a military convoy of 4 (our driven) military vehicles show up to pick you up after night 20 (bound to change) and a secret ending which has it’s own cutscene.
The secret ending
Essentially, if you pass (as of when I’m writing this) night 30, a stealth bomber flies over you (also driven by us), drops a nuke on you, and voila
Also on a side note, this is my recreation of the Kurzgezagt “What if We Nuke the Moon?” video nuke (at 4:33)
This is NOT a Dead Rails game!!
Many people have compared the game to Dead Rails, but make no mistake, as that was never our intention nor has it ever been of actual gameplay inspiration. Okay maybe d00minator (my friend who I’m making this game with) got the inital idea for a generator from there, but it isn’t functionally similar to Dead Rails at all other than the fact that you can burn stuff in it (wow).
Also check the dates. Our game was published to our group on the 2nd of January, Dead Rails released on the 1st of January. Unless we made the entire game in a single afternoon and then fell asleep for the next 8 months, we didn’t get the idea from them nor make a slop copy of their game.
(Look at the clickbait red arrow)
Conclusion
The game (as its title suggests) is in a very early state, so expect bugs (and please report them here!)
There is much to still be added.
The game itself can take quite some time to do a full playthrough, as it isn’t meant to be like a 5 or 10 minute game, but rather something longer.
Since there aren’t as many features as we’d want yet, it is possible that the game might get a bit stale if you survive for long enough. That’s one important thing that we need feedback on - when/where does the game get less interesting?
What do you like/dislike about the game?
What are your thoughts on the thumbnail?
Do you have any suggestions that’d make the game better in your opinion?
Current ideas on what else to add
Craftable ammo: Instead of the weapons having infinite ammo like they do right now, you could craft different kinds of ammo from different materials, such as wood and metal.
Metal would make stronger bullets, but is also more precious for barricades, whereas wood is almost abundant, but wood bullets would be weaker.
Cutting down trees: This would be combined with more crafting recipes. Essentially, cutting down a tree would just give you access to a lot more wood.
Cooking: Being able to combine food found in the supermarket to make better quality, longer lasting food from worse ones. And this’d include more than just changes to the crafting menu, such as adding a campfire on which you can cook (and burn) food.
More enemy variants: Since right now the selection is great for the amount of days
Second boss: At the moment there is only a single boss who comes on night 20, but I think it’d be awesome if an easier boss came on night 10 as well for example.
Extended enemy AI: Right now the enemies are kind of helpless if you bridge yourself in the air above the ground, since they just kinda group near below you or on the wall as they can’t reach you. My plan is to make them target the objects that you’re standing on if they can’t reach you directly.
Random events: For example, an event might include another NPC survivor or trader or smth stumbling onto your supermarket during the day and offering to trade/help. Could even make the survivor literally join your team.
I’d love to hear your feedback on our game, as we’ve spent a long time pouring blood, sweat and tears into this!