The Zone: Stalker Stories News

A new version is now up after much work and many errors dealt with!

Highlights include a complete overhaul of cards and mechanics, complete overhaul of buffs and passive effects, complete overhaul of map travel, and a new system for fully persistent dropped items.

As always, please report any problems and I will fix them.

Today marks the release of demo version 0.6, which is a big jump from the previous.

What's new, you ask? Many things. So many that I've lost track of them all.

Some of the highlights:

• Simplified main menu
  
• A totally redesigned side quest system
  
• Many key fixes and stability improvements
  
• New cards and items
  

As for what comes next... Content. We have all the major systems in place; what we want to focus on now is more levels, more enemies, more items, more cards -- and most importantly, continuing the story, as well as more unique side quests.

Stay tuned!

It's been tough smashing persistent bugs since we're lacking testers, but with this new public update comes another huge swathe of fixes, as well as some new quality of life features that make the game a little more comfortable and more visually pleasing.

What you won't see in the demo is all the big new features we've been working on, including advancing the main quest, and more creative side quests to enjoy. Such wonders can only be found in the full version once it comes out.

0.5.8.2 Changelog:

• Fixed another soft crash at combat start -- combat should now work properly
  
• Many smaller fixes
  
• Proper animation for voided cards
  
• New cards, new items, new anomalies, new animations
  
• Tweaked card graphics and how card cost is displayed
  
• Rebalanced some enemies
  
• Optimised some animations
  

Many things have been going on in Zone's development. New features abound, but more importantly, we've (hopefully) fixed a number of major bugs that were making the game almost totally unplayable.

This is all thanks to the people who actually reported these bugs -- and why reports are so important, because these bugs were only showing up in builds. Everything worked perfectly in my editor, so I had no idea anything was wrong!

Godot is supposed to export 1:1, so this was an unpleasant surprise, and a lesson to be more careful about testing in a real play environment.

0.5.8 Changelog:

• Fixed soft crash when playing cards
  
• Fixed (completely rewrote) melee card targeting
  
• Many smaller fixes
  
• New cards, new items
  
• New NPCs
  
• Our first story-based side quest -- a tale of intrigue accessible from the job board!
  

Access the build by going to the Properties>Betas tab and selecting the Testing branch from the dropdown menu. This will work on both the regular and demo versions of the game.

Some highlights:

• Total overhaul of the inventory system
  
• Total overhaul of status effects
  
• Total overhaul of the hub shop
  
• Fixed Jobs
  
• Exploration fixes (numerous)
  
• Combat fixes (numerous)
  
• New cards & card art
  
• New abilities
  
• Extra tooltips & tutorial info
  

If you run into any issues, let us know on the discussion board!