Development Log #4: The Settlement Systems

Woooooo, It’s another Development Log time! This devlog is going to be a big one — today we’re talking about SETTLEMENTS!

Ah, settlements. The staple of any great survival game. You’re running around the wastes, shootin’ and lootin’ all over the place, and just when you start seeing that you’re running out of food, water, or other supplies, you see it. A shimmer in the distance, a faint sound of ‘life’ just ahead of you. You wander in further, and get greeted by other survivors, inviting you to trade for food, offering you lodging, giving you quests and asking you to find their lost grandma or whatever. If only survival in the wasteland was so easy.



Stonedale Camp - the start of your struggle

In Decision: Red Daze, only one settlement is safe. Or, I guess, relatively safe.

Welcome to Stonedale Camp, the first settlement of the game, and the starting point in your journey to rid the Dust Bowl of dangerous monsters and the ever-looming threat of the Red Daze. This is where your mentor, Frank, initially resides, and a tiny safe haven for you to sleep in between exploring, gathering survival supplies and recruiting more survivors to aid you in your cause. There is not much here, besides a bed, a place to stash your loot in for safekeeping, and a lone turret to help you defend against the first-ever hordes of zombies you’ll experience in the Dust Bowl.



Capturing settlements

After Stonedale, every other settlement, camp or city, you’ll want to enter will be taken over by either ravenous zombies, or merciless mutants, and it will be up to you to stock up well, take your best pals and your most powerful skullcrushers or boomsticks, and… uh… make them realise they would be better off somewhere else.

Sometimes though, some of these pests will not want to leave peacefully, and will have a Boss watching their backs. Even though they carry some great loot, they will put up a fight. And they will hurt you. Bad. Some of you may even die. Okay, most of you will probably die, but don’t let that discourage you. You go champ!

Clearing the settlements and turning on the Repeller will allow you to take residence there, bring any survivors you find out in the wastes, set up production facilities and defenses. Speaking of defenses…



Settlement defense

Defending a settlement comes in two ways — boots on the ground with a gun or a melee weapon in your hands, and turrets — powerful defense mechanisms with great firing power and the safety of being above your enemy. As well as helping you fight your enemies directly, the turret also increases your settlements’ defense rating, which is important in order to upgrade other buildings in that particular settlement.

Arming the turrets with the most powerful weapons we can imagine - from machineguns to flamethrowers, we made sure that defending your settlement is as fun and satisfying as possible, while maintaining the action and intensity of struggling to survive against increasingly larger amounts of zombies, mutants, and other enemies we have in store for you.



Production facilities

Supplies in the wasteland are tight, with survivors having to fight monsters way larger than them to get their hands on even on a few days of food. With struggle for supplies as tense as is, a sustainable way to produce food and building materials would be a game-changer, wouldn’t it? ;)

That’s where production facilities come in. Found in several large cities, these buildings will provide you with all the ammunition, medicine and building materials one can dream of. How it works is very simple — out in the wasteland, you’ll come across ‘Loot’ — you’ll find it everywhere — from random boxes out in the street, to corpses of the monsters you kill. When you gather enough, take it to a production facility that builds the supplies you want, and watch the magic unfold!

However, if you find yourself lacking in Loot, try to upgrade a Warehouse in some of the larger cities. With an upgraded Warehouse, you’ll get the ability to send out Rangers out to the wasteland. These squads will gather enough material to bury you, but these expeditions are costly, so you better be prepared to open up your wallet.



Shelter

While at the start of the game you don’t need that many survivors to watch your back and protect your settlement, the mid-game is where things are changed up a bit. Enemies are stronger (duh), and settlements you’ll come across are wayy larger in scope, and will require more manpower to defend. And getting dozens of survivors to come with you to your settlement is no mean feat. That’s where Shelters come in!

You can choose to look at Shelters as a type of production facilities that you can set up, upgrade, and maintain, in order to get as much of a precious resource ( in this case, Survivors ), as possible. You’ll use your gathered materials to send out scouting parties to find, rescue, and bring back the Survivors, and in return, they will help out in your settlement, and even go along with you out in the wasteland and kick some puny zombie ass! Also yes, the survivors you recruit this way are playable the same way any recruits you yourself will stumble across are.



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...Aaand that is it for todays’ Development Log! We hope this piece sheds some light on some burning questions you might have had, but if there’s still some left, don’t hesitate to type them up in the comments section!


Thank you for your support, we have much more content for you, so stay tuned for our upcoming DevLogs ;)