Infection Free Zone News

[h2]Greetings, Survivors![/h2]

It has been a full year since Infection Free Zone launched in Early Access! The game was released on April 11, 2024, and its popularity has vastly exceeded our expectations. Since then, we have been doing our best to improve Infection Free Zone to the best of our ability. We remain extremely thankful for your support, passion, and engagement with the game. Let's take a quick look at the upcoming Major Update #4 - Part 2 and check some general statistics of our game!

[h2]Major Update #4 - Part 2 Preview[/h2]

Major Update #4 - Part 2 will be smaller than Major Update #4. It will mainly consist of the things that we wanted to add for Major Update #4, but haven't managed to do so in time. While Lairs of the Infected have been moved to Major Update #5, below is the list of the highlights that we plan to bring you sometime in the second part of May 2025:

• Building Split Functionality
  
• Create Squad with Skills
  
• Scrapyard Building
  
• Shooting Range Building
  
• Fisherman Building
  

Other than that, we are still working on improving the performance, reducing the number of crashes, and solving the issues with autosave.

[h3]Building Split Functionality[/h3]



A lot of players have made requests for an option that would allow them to split buildings. It's fully understandable. Some areas consist of huge buildings that can feel underused, especially if we decide to adapt only a small part of them. The building split will allow buildings to be split into two parts. Mind you, it won't be possible to split buildings vertically.

[h3] Create Squad with Skills[/h3]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The squad's skills are another area that we want to make more accessible for the players. We have received reports from the community that some players tend to save/load the game until their Squads have a perfect combination of perks that they like the most. With this new feature, players will be able to choose their desired perks right at the beginning at the cost of longer training time.

[h3]Shooting Range Building[/h3]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Three new buildings will be added in Major Update #4 - Part 2. Shooting Range will allow the existing squads to train their shooting skills. It's going to take some time and use up ammunition, but the squads will end up with useful combat-oriented skills after a few training sessions.

[h3]Scrapyard Building[/h3]

Scrapyard Building will help with the management of the metal resource in the Zone. Using cans, ammo, and metal in general will result in this resource stacking in the Scrapyard building. After unlocking the corresponding research, players will have a chance to recycle the metal to get it back.

[h3]Fisherman Building[/h3]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Fisherman Building will provide another alternative way of gathering food. After the recent addition of the huntable animals, this building will provide yet another source of meat. The limitation? The building has to be built next to a water reservoir of a specific size.

[h2]1-Year Anniversary[/h2]

Let's take a look at some statistics after a full year since the launch!

• Infection Free Zone has been played by over 600,000 players on Steam!
  
• Over 10,000,000 new games have been started!
  
• Players have played on 400,000 different maps!
  
• Over 2,000,000,000 infected have been killed!
  
• Over 10,000 bug reports have been sent by the community!
  
• In 2025, the most popular maps so far were San Francisco, Edinburgh, Beijing, Washington, and Peschiera del Garda!
  
• The following countries have the biggest number of players: China, United States, Germany!
  

Thank you for playing Infection Free Zone!

[h2]New builds on the Open Beta branch[/h2]

If you are interested in testing the newest additions to the game, we encourage you to check the builds that are published on the open_beta branch on a regular basis. All the updates to the open_beta branch are archived in this discussion, so we encourage you to follow the thread.

How to join the open_beta branch:

➡️ Right-click on Infection Free Zone in your library,
➡️ Click on "Properties..." on the list,
➡️ Choose the "Betas" tab,
➡️ Select the "open_beta" branch from the list.
➡️ The newest build should start downloading. Enjoy!

Thank you once again for playing Infection Free Zone! We are grateful for every single person in our community. It's really amazing to see our player base grow, and we haven't even fully released the game yet! This makes us truly optimistic about the Infection Free Zone's future. If you haven't joined our Discord yet, we also recommend doing so, as all the smallest updates, also about the open_beta builds, are being published there first. Stay safe, Survivors!

Best regards,
Jutsu Games Team

[h2]Greetings, Survivors![/h2]

Thank you for playing Infection Free Zone. We have prepared another huge batch of improvements after the recent Major Update #4. This time, we have focused on the optimization, scavenging improvements, fixing vast fields, and several other areas brought to us by the community.

We hope that your experience with the game will improve after this update. If you encounter any bugs, please use the Bug Reporter available in the ESC Menu to let us know about your issue. We will also be happy to read your feedback about the state of the game in the comments. Have fun!

[h2]Changelog[/h2]

• A number of performance updates have been introduced to reduce the possibility of the game crashing during the loading screen, auto-saves, and in other situations.
  
• The Terrain Elevation checkbox in the Game Customization panel is now enabled by default.
  
• The Vaccine's Research has been updated to inform the players more clearly when new research is available.
  
• The "meat" icons on wild animals have been replaced with their own corresponding icons.
  
• The amount of meat dropped by the animals has been increased to 3.
  
• The squad's path indicator has been updated to display an outline during the winter.
  
• Destroyed buildings in the middle of the adaptation will now go back to their default state. This will solve the issue with buildings being cheaper to adapt when destroyed by enemies during adaptation.
  
• An option to completely disable auto-saves has been added in the Settings.
  
• The density of the infected, raider, and immigrant spawning on the map has been updated to occur more evenly throughout the whole area. There should be fewer "clusters" of units on the map now.
  
• The amount of horde, raider, and immigrant spawning has been slightly reduced. This won't impact the number of hordes attacking the Zone during the swarm attack.
  
• The distance between the trees planted by the Forester has been increased.
  
• Input tips have been redesigned to display in two rows. The text trimming has been removed.
  
• New Credits animations have been added.
  
• The Map Search Engine has been updated to suggest the recommended maps when searching for the map from the recommended list.
  
• New pop-up warnings have been added when the player is starting/loading/saving a game with insufficient RAM.
  
• A new pop-up warning has been added when the player is trying to load a game with a corrupted save.
  
• An issue with some works duplicating and causing the save files to grow exponentially has been fixed. Loading up a huge save file and saving again will resize the save back to the correct size. But "unloadable" saves will remain unplayable.
  
• An issue with the "Kill them" option when encountering immigrants not working has been fixed.
  
• An issue with clicking the ESC button while saving causing errors has been fixed.
  
• An issue with the "Farming" research not increasing the crop yield has been fixed. This could have resulted in farms providing 25% fewer grains than what was declared in the structure panel.
  
• An issue with workers sometimes not getting back with the resources from the Vast Field has been fixed.
  
• An issue with squads attacking buried hordes on expeditions has been fixed.
  
• An issue with repairmen's work not being properly saved when repairing ruined structures has been fixed.
  
• An issue with Custom Buildings made with "Bricks" having too high resource cost has been fixed.
  
• An issue with hordes having a chance of getting through the walls placed on terrain elevation has been fixed.
  
• An issue with Satellite Images causing memory leak has been fixed.
  
• An issue with one of the merchant's dialogue options causing the game to freeze has been fixed.
  
• An issue with immigrants killing ransom bandits causing the storyline lock has been fixed.
  
• An issue with the squad creation timer resetting after save/load has been fixed.
  
• An issue with some bridges and roads displaying under water with the terrain elevation turned off has been fixed.
  
• An issue with the Supermoon event oftentimes occurring exactly on the 3rd day has been fixed.
  
• An issue with the Squad sometimes not entering the correct building when clicking on the side of the building has been fixed.
  
• An issue with Barbed Wire being stackable, allowing to place one on top of another, has been fixed.
  
• An issue with resources being blurry on zoom-out has been fixed.
  
• An issue with some infected not hiding properly during low FPS gameplay has been fixed.
  
• An issue with squads getting stuck in buildings during scavenging has been fixed.
  
• An issue with some markers on expeditions being unreachable has been fixed.
  
• An issue with squads sometimes setting the path to the bottom left corner of the map has been fixed.
  
• An issue with the oversized icons displaying when placing the gates directly on the walls has been fixed.
  
• An issue with children staying in deconstructed HQs has been fixed.
  
• An issue that prevented the events with trains, graveyard and airport from happening has been fixed.
  
• An issue with the bug reporter launching when using some console commands has been fixed.
  
• An issue with the research bar on the icon not updating correctly after save/load has been fixed.
  
• An issue with the walls being hard to link together after save/load has been fixed.
  

Best regards,
Jutsu Games Team

[h2]Greetings, Survivors![/h2]

Thank you for your recent bug reports and feedback. We are doing our best to solve all the major issues. The Bugfix Update #17 should solve a lot of them, but we keep on investigating the problems that you bring to us.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]

• Squads' vertical shooting ability has been improved.
  
• Resource icons have been added on the animals that can provide meat.
  
• Medieval walls have been updated. They can now end up in the "ruined" state, which also means that it's possible to repair them.
  
• Railroad bridges have been added to spawn on the map.
  
• Infected animals have been balanced to spawn on their corresponding biomes. This can result in lower numbers of infected animals in some locations.
  
• Forrester's planting density has been reduced.
  
• The create squad button has been removed from the squad tab.
  
• No Tutorial Mode has been updated to provide the player with 3 squads at the beginning of the game.
  
• No Tutorial Mode has been updated to provide the player with 12 pistols at the beginning of the game (previously 10).
  
• Satellite Images optional setting has been optimized to reduce the time needed to download the map images.
  
• An issue that prevented the Squad from scavenging the buildings with tunnels has been fixed.
  
• An issue with Vast Farms not having enough capacity has been fixed. We are still observing if the Vast Farms are working as intended.
  
• An issue with the Sports Car production resulting in Sedan production has been fixed.
  
• An issue with the upgrades not working when creating a new vehicle has been fixed.
  
• An issue with deconstruction profit being higher than construction cost for some structures has been fixed.
  
• An issue with the discards not working unless providing a negative number of resources has been fixed.
  
• An issue with hordes having almost no attack range on expeditions has been fixed.
  
• An issue with missing transmission translations in the Italian language has been fixed.
  
• An issue with new immigrant transmissions not having full voiceovers has been fixed.
  
• Some issues with the vaccine research cycles have been fixed. We are still observing if the vaccine is working as intended.
  
• A number of other errors and exceptions have been fixed.
  

[h2]Known issues[/h2]

• We are investigating the problems with the vaccine research not being available once 1 cycle has been completed.
  
• We are investigating the problems with some hordes moving past the defenses near the terrain elevation.
  

Best regards,
Jutsu Games Team

[h2]Greetings, Survivors![/h2]

The time has come! A new update for Infection Free Zone is now available on Steam and we cannot wait to see your feedback! We are introducing some huge, new features, and one that was probably the hardest to implement in the history of Infection Free Zone so far - the terrain elevation. We have also been constantly verifying your feedback. That's why some significant balance changes are present in this update too. As you may notice, we haven't been able to introduce the Lairs yet. This feature is planned for release during the next update. Let's check all the changes in the newest version!

[h2]Highlights[/h2]

• Terrain Elevation and 3D Roads have been added (enable it via checkbox in Game Customization).
  
• Edinburgh and San Francisco have been added as built-in maps. Those maps are recommended to try the Terrain Elevation.
  
• Merchant and Trading Events have been added.
  
• A Car Workshop building (with Car Construction/Modification/Deconstruction) has been added.
  
• Tree Planting area work has been added,
  
• Forrester Hut building has been added. Workers assigned to this building will plant trees nearby automatically.
  
• Sawmill building has been added. Workers assigned to this building will cut down the nearby trees automatically.
  
• Huntable Animals - Boars and Deer have been added. Huntable animals drop Raw Meat for further processing in the Cookhouse
  
• Infected Animals - Cattle, Moose, and Bears have been added as a serious threat. Check if your chosen map can spawn them, as they do not appear in every location.
  
• Story Alteration (different storylines can occur first) has been added.
  

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• The amount of ammunition that can be stored in Pistol, Shotgun, and Sniper Rifle weapons has been increased to 200.
  
• The amount of ammunition in 1 crate has been increased from 100 to 200 ammo.
  
• The amount of ammunition crates that can be found during scavenging has been decreased accordingly.
  
• Building Fortification has been rebalanced and is now 3 times longer when increasing the Building's HP. The Building HP acquired from Fortification has been increased from +30% to +50%.
  
• The Sniper Rifle has been rebalanced and now requires 2 ammo per shot. The cooldown between the shots has been increased from 3.3s to 3.66s.
  
• Squad members' skill acquisition has been rebalanced. The squads now get x2 more exp for fighting skills from killing infected enemies and x1.3 more exp for driving skills from driving. They also get x4 less exp for scavenging skills from scavenging. This should help avoid a situation where most squads have scavenging-related skills.
  
• The HP for all Wall types has been increased by 50%.
  
• The Mood drop time has been increased to avoid the situations where players have instant issues when trying to repair shelters or other important social buildings.
  
• The amount of gatherable metal from different objects on the map has been increased by 12%-50%, depending on the object.
  
• The amount of secondary resources obtainable from deconstruction has been increased. In most cases, this will result in fewer bricks and more metal and wood from deconstruction.
  
• Vehicle wreck spawning has been updated and there should be more of them next to the roads.
  

Overall, we believe that the issues with the insufficient amounts of wood should be fully fixed now. The amount of metal resource should also be significantly higher in this build. We will keep on tracking the data and feedback from the players to decide on the next changes in regards to metal acquisition.

[h2]Other Changes[/h2]

• New events about people wanting to join our Zone have been added. Different groups of immigrants will now appear, each with their own characteristics.
  
• New animal-related events have been added.
  
• Squad Creation has been reworked and now takes 3 in-game hours. Remember about recruiting squads in advance!
  
• The Building roof type algorithm has been updated. There should be fewer buildings with flat roofs overall.
  
• The New Recommended Cities are now visible at the top of the list. The "Downloaded" section will adjust its size depending on the number of downloaded cities.
  
• An option to download the Google Maps' satellite images for the map background has been added in the Settings.
  
• New research has been added to the Technology Tree.
  
• The research cost of some technologies in the Infection tree has been decreased.
  
• The "Symptomatic Treatment" research has been updated to include the information about the number of days required to treat the citizen.
  
• The number of workers required to adapt the Kindergarten building has been decreased.
  
• The Map Info Panel has been updated with more data about the specifications of the selected location.
  
• A new "Unsupported Save" pop-up has been added. While your old saves should still be playable, we recommend starting a new game on this build.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• An issue that allowed duplicating items by dropping them in the buildings has been fixed.
  
• An issue with grass overgrowing roads too much has been fixed.
  
• An issue with Infected being capable of dealing damage to squads in vehicles has been fixed.
  
• An issue with custom buildings being hard to place due to the "lines cannot intersect" error has been fixed.
  
• An issue that Custom Building entrances changing location after save/load has been fixed.
  
• An issue that allowed placing walls inside buildings has been fixed.
  
• An issue with Squads not scavenging buildings when clicking on the POI icon has been fixed.
  
• An issue with squads sometimes getting stuck at the building's entrance has been fixed.
  
• An issue with infected leaving buildings for a brief moment when spawned has been fixed.
  
• An issue with vaccine research resetting overnight has been fixed.
  
• An issue with deconstructed/destroyed medieval walls reappearing after save/load has been fixed.
  
• An issue with the game becoming unresponsive when trying to discard less than 1 resource has been fixed.
  
• An issue with ESC button not opening the ESC Menu when more than one squad was selected has been fixed.
  
• An issue with missing Vehicles on expeditions has been fixed.
  
• Performance and stability improvements have been introduced to increase your FPS and reduce the amount of crashes.
  

Let us know how you feel about all the recent changes! If you encounter any issues, please report them via in-game Bug Reporter, available under the ESC Menu. This will provide us with necessary logs which make solving the reported issues way easier. Thank you for playing Infection Free Zone! We hope that you will have a great time with Major Update 4!

Best regards,
Jutsu Games Team

[h2]Greetings, Survivors![/h2]

Our work on the next Major Update continues. There's still a lot to be done, and many systems are as complicated to tackle as we expected. But we are doing our best to bring you the new content and functionalities your way. In the previous update, we mentioned that land elevation, planting trees, car workshops, and lairs are in the works. Now we want to showcase a few more things coming in Major Update #4. Have fun!

[h2]Merchant[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We have seen several players mentioning that they lack resource X on their map but they have a lot of resource Y. And the opposite, on some other map another player reports that they have too much Y, but they want to get rid of X. This kind of balance might be tricky, especially when players choose all kinds of locations across the world. That's why we are working on adding a Merchant, who can visit the Zone from time to time and exchange the resources (including valuable things like armor and weapons) with the player.

[h2]New Roads and Bridges[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Together with Land Elevation, we are redoing the whole system behind road generation. It will be more realistic and accurate to the data and allow us to generate way better bridges than the flat surfaces we had before. Mind you, the video above doesn't depict a final version of this feature and there are still a lot of tweaks to be done. The final result should not only make the game look better but also impact the gameplay in a significant way. A scenario where you shoot from the bridge at the Infected located below is now an option.

[h2]Animals[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Animals are the last new feature that we want to showcase today. We want to add them not only as a decoration but also as an additional source of food throughout the early game. For now, we want to add Deer and Boars that the player can chase, hunt, and obtain the meat from. But we're also thinking of adding Infected Animals. Is that an enemy that you would like to encounter? What infected animals could pose a threat to the player?

When is the Major Update #4 coming your way? It's really hard for us to estimate. We would like to share the first builds on the open_branch with you somewhere in February. Then we will analyze all your feedback and bug reports to decide on the default launch. Pushing this Update on default in a timely manner is important for us, but it's even more important that we can provide you with a stable experience when that happens. Thank you for playing Infection Free Zone!

Best regards,
Jutsu Games Team