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Zafehouse 2 feature sneak peek #1: The booze bomb

Here’s the first in what I hope is a series of sneak peeks at the fun, and somewhat corpulent, contents of Zafehouse 2. I wanted something entertaining to kick things off and so, I’m pleased to introduce the booze bomb.

First, a bit of background. In Zafehouse, you had to collect water to keep your survivors hydrated. Water didn’t serve any other purpose, and it’s not surprising that it was a neglected resource. I wanted to change that in Z2.

Now, water has been replaced with alcohol, everyone’s favourite beverage.

Alcohol is collected like ammo, barricades and medicine. You’ll find plenty of bottles in houses and stores, but not so much in police stations or hospitals. Alcohol can be used to make Molotov cocktails, to douse and burn suspicious-looking corpses, to steady the nerves and, if consumed in copious amounts, to uh, waste the undead.

Let me explain. Imagine John finds himself alone without a bullet or weapon to his name. The necrotic, animated remains of his friends and family are bashing down his bedroom door and, it goes without saying, things are looking grimmer than a 24-hour Brady Bunch special. What’s our doomed John going to do?

Quench his thirst for the bottle, of course!

His first taste has a positive effect; he’s feeling more comfortable with his situation. It doesn’t change the fact his internal organs are to shortly become an evening snack.

Ah, that second drink is even better than the first! Why did he spend all his time decapitating the undead when he could have rustled up some superglue and added an ethanol-powered glass appendage to his body! The mind boggles.

*Bernard Black voice* What?!? There are zombies in the Christmas tree? What’s this I’m drinking? Iceblock-flavoured bleach? Get the dragoons to my car so I can smoke my coat in peace!

Zzzzzzz…

It’s not like we didn’t know it wasn’t going to end well. But wait a minute!

Yes, you read that right. If a zombie is unfortunate enough to feast on the body of a drunken survivor, they too will have a BAC well in the thousands. Gameplay effects included reduced biting accuracy and bashing strength. It’s all good, really.

That, my friends, is the booze bomb. Put those useless survivors to work, and tune in next week for another scotch-stuffed update!

~ by Logan on August 19, 2009.

6 Responses to “Zafehouse 2 feature sneak peek #1: The booze bomb”

  1. haha, brilliant. I actually can’t wait for release, nice work.

  2. lol, thats quite a good idea :D you said that you would try and post somemore screenshots, if at all possible could you take some of a typical game?

  3. so let me get this straight, in zafehouse 2 is it only possible to get 6 survivors? and if so if a few of them die is it possible to find some more?

  4. Right now, the maximum is 6 survivors at one time. I haven’t decided on a final number, but it will be in the realms of 4-8, 10 at the very most. The idea is that you start with one, and collect more as you go. One of the biggest complaints I received about Zafehouse was that players didn’t feel very attached to their survivors, as it was not unusual to have 20+ at one time. I wanted to emphasise that losing one of these guys is a big deal, on both a gameplay and emotional level.

    If they do die, you will have the opportunity to collect more. Obviously, like the original Zafehouse, you’ll want to keep your veterans alive as they’ll have the most perks and be worth the more points. The game will know when you have less than the maximum number of survivors, and will provide events to fatten your numbers.

    There are times when you get events that provide new survivors, but will be at the maximum. It’ll be up to you to help them out or… well, let’s just you have the option to eliminate the possibility of them coming back as a zombie. This all feeds into your survivors’ personalities, and will influence how they react under different circumstances.

  5. you know how the perks in zafehouse how you get them after surviving so many hours, in ZH2 is it the same perks and is it still on a time basis that you get the perks?

  6. Z2 has perks like Zafehouse, except there are a lot more to chose from.

    There are two categories of perks – ones you get for surviving a certain number of hours (like in the original) and heroic perks, which you get for surviving certain encounters. An encounter might be defeating 10 or more zombies solo or getting a headshot while drunk.

    A number of heroic perks will be active abilities. For example, you might have one called “Last Stand” which sacrifices the survivor but brings all the barricades in the room they were in up to maximum.