Road to 1.0: Survival & Night of the Living Dead

[COSMIN]

Hello Responders!

Last we spoke about Survival in our Free Weekend Retrospective Blog, we mentioned a setting very familiar to both No More Room in Hell veterans and zombie horror fans alike. Night of the Living Dead returns to No More Room in Hell 2, updated and expanded to fit our goals for this reincarnation of the Survival mode.

Recreating a Classic

While this setting is one that has been adapted in countless ways over the years, it’s especially important to us as one of the core inspirations behind so much of NMRIH. This map offers the ultimate classic zombie experience of holding out against a relentless wave of zombies in a rural home.

The farm house remains the heart of the map, with three distinct floors you’ll need to maintain control over, as zombies pour in from all directions. Traps are plentiful provided you can fuel them and boards allow players to better control the flow of undead’s approach. This space is one of our most claustrophobic, with every hallway and staircase potentially becoming your tomb if not carefully navigated.

Updating the Experience

When approaching this locale for our 1.0 update, it was clear we had to expand the points of interest beyond the main home in order to meet our goals for an updated Survival experience. Players now are tasked to protect the whole farmstead, expanding play to both the guest house as well as the barn.

The guest house offers a more focused defense of a relatively open floorplan with several exterior doors and windows, a garage with tools and supplies, and a cellar that both undead and Responders can take advantage of. Its flatter layout leads to more moments with everyone’s back towards the speaker and fighting as one ragtag unit.

The barn, meanwhile, offers the largest interior space for longer range strategies to shine from either across the floor or above in its lofts above. These strengths are balanced by its relatively simple defenses, with very few options for Responders beyond their own equipment. Outside, you’ll find various methods of farming providing small structures and cover to the approaching horde.

This iteration of Night of the Living Dead is grounded directly in our narrative and world, expanding our growing perspective on the apocalypse within Pennsylvania while offering an ambiance not currently available elsewhere in No More Room in Hell 2. We’re really looking forward to when players get to explore the full farmstead as part of the 1.0 update and create their own cinematic moments!

Planning for the Future

Speaking of Survival, the team was excited to see the level of support the community has shown the mode between Free Weekend and discussion since then. We’ve made a series of adjustments to the mode since then to improve spawning, apply better pressure across difficulties, as well as distribute loot between the map and supply drops more.

1.0 will offer three Survival maps, each featuring 3 points of interest with added variation between them to allow for greater replayability. We’ve kept the 3 wave structure but added a bit more time to the experience, with the goal still to keep it more fast-paced than Objective mode while ensuring it offers the right amount of progression so players can play either and feel rewarded. We’re already discussing plans for post-launch to bring even more variety to the mode and match some of the energy the community has had for it.

No worries, we’ll have plenty more info on what you can expect  in Objective mode and 1.0 next week!

Until then, stay safe out there!

The NMRIH2 Dev Team

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