October 9

Alpha 9 on beta branch

Hello Survivors,

We're happy to announce that alpha 9 is now available in the beta branch! This month has been a bit shorter and tougher than usual. We had some personal vacations, some technical challenges, and some painstaking work that had to be done to enable localization. More on all that in the update below.

A lot of the additions in this update came directly from requests and recommendations of our Early Access players. We value the community's feedback and are always listening and asking for more. Please keep letting us know what you think, how we can improve, and coming up with cool ideas. We can't do this without you!



We’d like to thank you all for your support and your patience, and we hope this update will add to your game experience. Without further delay, here are the main changes in alpha 9. The full list of changes can be found as usual in the end of this post.

Reminder: To play on the beta branch, right click the game in the steam client, select properties, and then select "beta" from the betas tab.

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Players were complaining that these two were missing from day 1. There were some technical difficulties in implementing these features, since we didn't plan for them ahead of time (yes, beginner's mistake...). Well, we managed to overcome these difficulties, and it's now possible to rotate many of the objects you can build. This is mostly functional and not aesthetic, so most square objects can't be rotated, and others only have two directions (horizontal or vertical).

Let us know what you think of these limitations, since the objects are 2D we need to work on every additional direction separately and mostly prefer to add new stuff.

In addition, it's now possible to move some objects, mainly workstations that are built inside the cabins. Moving an object doesn't require any resources, but it does take time to build it again in the new position.


While keeping survivors fed felt a bit of a challenge in the first or second playthrough, it quickly became trivial, and was just an annoying thing that needed to be done without much challenge or benefit.

Our goal is to change this, and make food a more important and interesting part of the game. This rehaul of the food system is a first step, we are still considering ways to make starvation a risk in the mid/late game, and not just in the beginning. Your thoughts on the matter are appreciated.

In the new system, every food item belongs to a food category, and each food category provides survivors that eat it with a bonus. Every time survivors go to eat, they only need one food item to fully replenish their nutrition, but they will eat one of each food category that is available, in order to gain more bonuses. If no food of any category can be found, survivors will starve as before.


There is now real night in Judgment! At this point, the change is only visual, we are still considering if/what mechanics can be added around this. Ideas are always welcome.




A new demon - Caorthannach, the fire spitting demon was added.

There are 4 new random events providing new challenges and rewards.

Existing random events now provide more rewards when solved.

7 new items and 2 new survivor traits were added as well.

Note that while we add a little content every update to keep things interesting, we are focusing more on mechanics and polish during the Early Access. Our plan is to add the bulk of the content in the finished version of the game, including the main story. This way even those players that played in the early access will enjoy a whole new world of content in the finished version.


In some situations, the survivor AI that assigned tasks was acting sub-par. It already contained many very specific conditions to prioritize specific tasks, and was starting to feel like patchwork. In order to improve it, we decided we had to rewrite the whole thing from scratch, using a more simplified utility-based AI architecture. While the changes appear to be minor, it took almost a week to rewrite and re-test the AI while maintaining (most of) the original behaviour.

The new AI is much simpler, we solved some issues in which survivors didn’t behave as a player would expect them to, and it’s now much easier for us to add or modify the AI as needed.

It pains us to spend so much time of an update on a feature that seems to have little impact on the game, but it was necessary and is now behind us.


Definitely a beginner’s mistake - large parts of the game’s text were not in a separate language file. Texts were spread all around our configuration files, and worse, some of them were hard coded. We spent a very large portion of this update in locating and moving all the texts into dedicated language files, and it is now possible for us to support additional languages!

While the infrastructure is there, official support for additional languages will not be added before we exit from Early Access, since there are too many and too frequent changes to justify the extra work in translating and testing every build we release. But there is a bright side, since we now have all the texts in a separate language file, community translation mods are now a possibility! More on this in the mods section.


Step 1 in modding support is rather basic, but it’s a first step. Members of the community can now modify the items file, to add new items or modify existing ones. It’s also possible to add new icons to be used by the new items.

In addition, community members can now create translation mods by modifying the texts in the original language files. This is limited to languages that our fonts support, at the moment (latin alphabet).

We’ll be adding more elaborate modding documentation real soon, in the meantime if you’d like to create a mod or a translation, feel free to contact us at contact@suncrash.com, we’ll gladly cooperate.

Plans for the future include Steam Workshop support to share your mods, and in-game UI that allows you to enable/disable mods.

• Mechanics: It is now possible to move some objects, mainly workstations built indoors.
  
• Mechanics: It is now possible to rotate many objects when building.
  
• Mechanics: The survivor AI has been re-written. The new system is more robust and solves several behaviour issues.
  
• Mechanics: New food system & food balancing. Food are now divided to categories, and each category provides bonuses to survivors that it it.
  
• Mechanics: Added Day/Night cycle. At the moment the mechanic is visual only, we are still considering if/what kind of gameplay effects it should have.
  
• Usability: When trying to build something but not enough resources, it now appears red.
  
• Usability: When equiping survivors, if no items available for that slot, it will now show appropriate text instead of an empty window.
  
• Usability: Show tutorials is now checked by default only in the first game (user can still enable it when starting additional games from the new game window)
  
• Usability: The rituals tutorial window will now pop automatically when researching rituals, if tutorials are enabled.
  
• Usability: Changed the layout of the research information window so things appear clearer and text is not cut out.
  
• Usability: Selecting a single survivor and right clicking an object will now show an option to create task + assign (previously needed to create task first, and then right click to assign).
  
• Usability: Changed display in resource bar to be more consistent. Food & Water now show amount of resources instead of hours remaining.
  
• Usability: Pause button now blinks in red when game is paused, so players can notice it more easily.
  
• Usability: Error messages are now displayed in the center of the screen for a short time, and an error sound is played.
  
• Content: New demon - Caorthannach, the fire spitting demon.
  
• Content: Added 4 new random events: Blackbox, Desperate Times, Eureka & Dark Curse.
  
• Content: Added new items: Werewolf Pendant, Quarterstaff, Sledgehammer, Wooden Shield, Metal Shield, Ginger Extract & Sandalwood Bracelet.
  
• Content: Added new traits: Adventurous, Clever
  
• Modding: Language file can now be modified so community translations are possible. The Wiki will be updated to provide instructions soon.
  
• Modding: Users can now create and use mods that add/modify items. The Wiki will be updated to provide instructions soon.
  
• Visual: Added a subtle animation when opening/closing windows.
  
• Visual: Survivors are less likely to start with hats now (players can still add them in the survivor customization window).
  
• Visual: Changed some hat colors so they are not all gray/blue.
  
• Visual: Added shadows to some objects that were missing them.
  
• Visual: When finishing the last mission of the Early Access version, there is now a visual ending and not just textual.
  
• Visual: Added more pant options.
  
• Visual: Mission summary now only shows the "Other" section if there is anything to report.
  
• Visual: Replaced the search animation (survivors now crouch while searching debris)
  
• Visual: Healing ability now has a short effect when used.
  
• Audio: Added error sound, new sound for enemy attacks and healing abilities.
  
• Balancing: Sheep farm now costs wheat (which is also needed to feed the sheep).
  
• Balancing: Removed stone cost from Water Conservation research, and added it to Rainwater Collection.
  
• Balancing: Hex Scroll duration reduced to 10 seconds.
  
• Balancing: Rain dance ritual now boosts farm growth rate in addition to not needing tending. It also no longer costs food to perform, so it is a viable way to speed up food production.
  
• Balancing: Increased duration of Soul Harness and Demon Stamina rituals.
  
• Balancing: Reduced demonite costs of Mutate ritual.
  
• Balancing: Reduced metals cost of Divine Inspiration ritual.
  
• Balancing: Industrial areas are now a bit more likely to have metals for scavenge.
  
• Balancing: Some random events can only happen once now.
  
• Balancing: Night Howls and Bad Omens now earn a reward when completed.
  
• Performance: Opening the research window is now much faster.
  
• Performance: When multi-building (with shift), or attempting to build in an invalid position, the build UI will reopen, but continue smoothly.
  
• Fixed Bug: Unexpected errors when survivor had no hat.
  
• Fixed Bug: When selecting an object for the first time, it always showed a tree image instead of the selected object.
  
• Fixed Bug: When selecting a construction object it now shows the name of what is being built instead of "Construction"
  
• Fixed Bug: Legion creature was missing a description.
  
• Fixed Bug: Projectile animations were animating incorrectly in 2x speed.
  
• Fixed Bug: Survivors would automatically shoot at enemies in fog of war if they were in their range (sniper rifles), and the enemies would not react.
  
• Fixed Bug: When an enemy attacked a survivor and then disappeared in the fog of war it would cause him to become stuck.
  
• Fixed Bug: When training, survivors would shoot at a nearby dead enemy (right after combat) instead of the training dummies.
  
• Fixed Bug: Ending combat with a survivor moving would mess up their animations and make them uncontrollable when they got back to base.
  
• Fixed Bug: Sometimes female characters were referred to as "He" in random event texts.

August 29

Alpha 8 available on main branch

It's been a very busy month, working on alpha 8 and participating in Gamescom. Finally, alpha 8 is here, available in the main branch, and we are very happy with this new build.

This build is varied, with new content, new mechanics, usability fixes and even some cool new customization options. A new combat biome and several visual effect improvemenets have been introduced.

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Here are the main changes (including changes from alpha 7.2 which never made it to the main branch). Full list of changes can be found at the bottom.

Note: Unfortunately with all these major changes we were unable to support saved games from previous alpha versions. You will have to start a new game



From now you can customize survivor appearance at any time. Don't just rename survivors as friends & family, customize their appearance so they actually resemble them. Beware though, friendships have been ruined in the past when survivors representing friends die horribly.

In addition, survivors now have hats! Hats are randomly generated and can be manually selected from the survivor customization window.

By right clicking any item, object or tech, you can see detailed information about this item. From the information window you can access the required research or raw materials, allowing you to navigate through the items until you figure out exactly what you need to craft that cool new 50 caliber sniper rifle.

No more micro-managing multi-clicking food production. Right click and craftable item and from the information window, set up automatic crafting. You can define minimum and maximum values and make sure you always have a sufficient supply of boards, scraps or any other resource.

Survivors can now be grouped together by clicking CTRL + a number key, just like RTS games. This allows easier control during combat, separate ranged groups from melee and control them all at once.

New random events infrastructure allows us to create complex, ongoing, branching, multi-step random events. 5 new random events have been added to make the game more interesting, and many more will follow in our next few updates.

Legion is a huge hulk of a demon, very slow but very durable with strong armor. Weaker weapons can barely penetrate its hide, so use high damage weapons from afar if you want to survive this one.

A new biome for missions has been added - the suburbs. These once peaceful surroundings have been devastated by demonkind as much as any other place, but some can still sense how peaceful this are used to be, before the rubble and dead bodies.

New early game consumables, mid-game and late-game ranged weapons have been added, and all weapons in game have been re-balanced so that the difference between different weapon tiers is more notable. Some weapons are clearly better suited against stronger, armored enemies while others are better at picking off several weaker creatures.

In addition several new research subjects were added, coming soon subjects were implemented, and new objects such as a passive water collector have been introduced.

• Mechanics: Can now customize survivors appearance.
  
• Mechanics: Can now set up items to be crafted automatically within a customizable minimum-maximum range.
  
• Usability: Added an in-game encyclopedia that can be accessed by right clicking any item, object or tech.
  
• Usability: Can now define survivor groups and select them, similar to RTS games.
  
• Usability: Weapons now show their DPS and DPS vs enemies with armor rating of 5. This doesn't take accuracy into account.
  
• Usability: Objective part in story now colored blue so it stands out more.
  
• Usability: Resources are now always displayed, not just in base.
  
• Usability: Occult research is now performed in a dedicated workshop - the Occult Library. Rituals can now be performed in the magic circle without having to cancel the research task.
  
• Content: Created a new random event infrastructure and added 5 new random events.
  
• Content: New mid-game weapons made of iron.
  
• Content: New late game firearms.
  
• Content: New Creature: Legion.
  
• Content: New research technologies and "Coming Soon" techs implemented.
  
• Content: Added Rainwater collectors that gather water at a slower pace without survivor interaction.
  
• Content: New combat biome - random encounters can now happen in the suburbs, with all new art assets and atmosphere.
  
• Content: Added some early-game consumable items to add some more combat options earlier in the game.
  
• Visual: Random event notifications now have images that describe them.
  
• Visual: Changed stone house appearances.
  
• Visual: Survivors have more shirt & pant options.
  
• Visual: Survivors can have hats.
  
• Visuals: Tweaked the environment to provide a darker feel to the game.
  
• Visuals: Tweaked the survivor path indicator.
  
• Visuals: Replaced reaper and ghost attacks.
  
• Visuals: Replaced performing ritual effect.
  
• Balancing: When metals or minerals are running out in the map, there is a chance to discover new deposits.
  
• Balancing: Rebalanced all weapons so the increments between weapon tiers are more notable.
  
• Balancing: Enemy groups are now less likely to be nearby, so engaging one group at a time is more feasible.
  
• Balancing: Made some enemies a bit stronger, but less of them will appear.
  
• Balancing: Almost all building projects now take longer.
  
• Balancing: Mining iron is a bit slower now.
  
• Balancing: Mining minerals is much slower.
  
• AI: Tweaked melee AI a bit so they don't just run around survivors trying to attack from the back.
  
• AI: Melee enemies will now move towards their targets even if there is no free spot next to the target from which they can attack.
  
• Performance: Improved performance in large base attacks.
• Fixed Issue: Sometimes rituals that should create trees, rocks or clay would create too little or none at all.
  
• Fixed Issue: Grass and other decorations will no longer appear outside of map area.
  
• Fixed Issue: Added option to disable environment effects so that the game runs smoothly with intel HD graphics.