That is until now.

In the original game, medicines had one function – to heal injured survivors. For the sequel I decided to expand on medicine’s role, and it was posts from curious players that helped inspire its more involved place. Said posts would ask “What do antibiotics do, and how can I use them?”, referring to the text that appears sometimes after you raid a building. Sadly, this text was simply flavour, and those “antibiotics” just went to your medicine pool.

Things have changed in Z2.

Players have a number of priorities in the game: gathering supplies, finding survivors and keeping the zombie count at manageable levels. The biggest two however are the physical and mental health of your survivors. You’ll have to monitor stamina, tenacity and injuries and make sure no one falls unconscious, goes insane or dies. Currently, if a survivor drops below 50% of their maximum in any health-related statistic, they run the risk of copping a serious disability, which will trouble them for the rest of the game (or their life, whichever ends first).

Painkillers, sedatives and stimulants can ward off and, when the inevitable happens, minimise the effects of permanent disabilities. Bandages are technically a “drug” as far as the game is concerned, but their functionality is limited to healing a single level of wounds. Drugs, on the other hand, have multiple uses… and drawbacks.

For instance, if a survivor becomes crippled, their movement speed outside is reduced, and their aim is affected. You can temporarily nullify these cons by taking painkillers. Painkillers can also be taken by a non-crippled survivor, where they provide a temporary health boost that reduces the survivor to a near-death state once they wear off. Crippled survivors cannot benefit from this special bonus – the painkillers already have their job cut out for them.

Drugs sound great, right? Not so much if used in excess. All drugs have a cooldown, so you can’t just stuff your face with stimulants when its raining zombies during the longest night of your survivor’s life. All drugs impose temporary cons when their cooldown is up. Finally, the game keeps track of how often you take each drugs and, if you tempt fate long enough, you’ll develop an addiction or worse, suffer an overdose.

I’m talking about drugs in Z2 right now because that’s what I’m working on in the game. Next, I plan to flesh out some of the survivor events, which will involve work on the newly coded “Situation Tracker”. It’s kind of like L4D AI Director, though I wouldn’t start comparing the two games. :P

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