Which I guess are technically drugs as well, but the good kind! :P

The first iteration of the custom scenario mode will probably just feature settings like number of buildings, building types, zombie difficulty, etc – in essence, the high-level stuff. Once the game is out, I’ll definitely expand on what you can tweak, likely in the form of an Advanced tab. Replayability has always been high on my list of priorities.

@murray: I would love nothing more than to give you solid dates for the release of demos, betas, etc, but the amount of time I can spend on ZH2 is completely at the mercy of my day job. Some days I can get a few hours in a day, or spend an entire weekend adding whole sections (like combat a couple of months back). Other times the game can go a week without attention. I have to maintain a careful balance of game developing at home and game developing at work, otherwise I can see myself burning out.

But I hear you, don’t worry about that. :)

Don’t forget that in sandbox mode would be great to modify somehow the effects of drugs and alcohol- make them more or less important.

As for the side-effects/trade-offs. Drugs can only be taken when their cooldown has expired, and the cooldown is accompanied by drawbacks – as mentioned in the post. I’ll use the same example I used there – painkillers will leave you with almost no health when their effects end.

As the development progresses, I’m sure more complex interactions will present themselves.