Urban Strife News

After a much too short appearance in December, we promised you an improved Prologue Demo, one that embeds most of your feedback and adds more of the economy/survival layer to the mix. The time has come to reveal the new build, so we welcome you to come and try it. Below are a couple of the main features you might want to check out.


The inventory/backpack has been completely redesigned, with a new player equipment and health chart that dynamically shows you the body parts that are bleeding/bandaged, the stats affected by the wounds and the debuffs you might carry. While here you might also notice the item filters present on all inventories, including a nice new SORT button to order those massive loot hauls. And we’ve begun to add new hover windows to items and HUD, showing shortcuts and other useful information. Crafting was overhauled too, but the good stuff there (attachments, armor, throwables, etc) is still in the works.



Exploring the Shelter you should be aware that all the economy NPCs now also have a quest for you to build them a specific base upgrade. Ask them to show you the blueprints and you’ll see what they can build and what the costs in materials are and get to it! And speaking of materials, seek out Mr. Fulton-Vine in the courtyard, he will gladly take any recyclable parts, old guns, tools, spare gas. Then he will kindly stash those into the base meters, from where you can deduct them to build your upgrades (and in the future, other useful stuff, such as bullets, armor, optical kits, etc).



You might also see a couple of references to “scavenger teams”. If you check out the new map you will see that there’s a WIP mode called SCOUT/SUPPLY. These are teams of refugees that you will able to send out to discover new locations for you and, once you’ve cleared them of enemies, basically haul home everything that’s not bolted down. So no more meals for free, everyone’s contributing to the common good soon! Speaking of travel, by building the Garage upgrade, you will be able to salvage certain cars and use them as squad transport, starting with Sheriff Rogers’ old police cruiser. For this to happen you would need to get rid of Lino Cesare and his thugs first though, so no, you won’t (yet) show off your new old car in the demo, but it’s coming.



We’ve given you more leeway with the impending resource crisis, compared to December build, so now you have a bit more time before any real drama happens. But this is for demo purposes only – in the main game you will have to get those refugees to work and start scavenging and building or you will have them hungry, sick and rioting ASAP. Now with all that loot, you can try visiting the traders (Honest Joe in Little Italy or Private Benny in Old Port) and check out their updated interface, showing numerical info about how they smile and rob you in clear daylight. But hey, if you don’t like what’s on offer, you can always pull out a gun and try robbing them back. If you can hold you own against bikers or soldiers armed to the teeth that is…


ENJOY!

We're pleased to announce Urban Strife has been handpicked as one of the featured games at the upcoming Steam NextFest, coming February 6th. To celebrate this, we've taken your feedback and polished even more the Prologue Demo. This time you will be able to enjoy it fully, from day one of the festival and well beyond after NextFest ends.

Because we promised you an early comeback and because being a featured game requires one to have a press demo, tonight we will reactivate our regular build, the one you've seen Zemalf, Splattercat and other content creators play. You can, of course, download and have fun with it, but it is meant to be a demo for journalists and the un-patient ones. Just remember to be back here on February 6th, or you'll miss a lot of things.



If you're curious what exactly there is to miss, here's a tentative list of NextFest Demo features:

• All the industry NPCs have now a quest to build a specific shelter upgrade; spend materials and you'll get to see the shelter change under your eyes
  
• You can now salvage items and weapons at the Recycler Workshop and obtain building materials
  
• There are 4 new facilities you can build: a garden (+food), a jail (+morale), a pharmacy (+health) and a garage
  
• The items now have a trade value and the traders will be openly displaying the cut they take so you can do your trading math correctly
  
• The backpack has been completely redesigned, with carry slots now clearly separated from equipment slots and filters;
  
• Speaking of filters, all containers have item filters now and a SORT button for easier inventory management
  
• Item generation and manipulation has also been redesigned to lower memory use that sometimes lead to crashes
  
• We have added much needed hover information on the main HUD (and we plan to expand this to other parts of the interface)
  
• Targeting cursor has been adjusted to convey extra and more accurate information; loot cursor now is animated for easier detection of interactable objects
  
• The city map has been re-drawn, showing the local attractions, districts and a streamlined road layout
  
• Also on the city map, we have a new sector info chart, with new information about the places you plan to visit
  
• RPG has gone through a new overhaul round, dialogues are now less stuffed; you can still read the lore, but you can do it at will, after you settle in
  
• Finally, there is a whole new intro sequence to the game for more immersive story telling
  

List will continue as we add more features - expect an update closer to the festival.

This is a re-run with the best moments of the awesome Urban Strife #TBF Demo Launch Party we've had over on twitch.tv/Zemalf stream. This new Prologue Demo, prepared for the #TurnBasedFest event, includes a year worth of new features and, while the setting is similar to the demo we've run in 2021, it plays a lot different, with dangerous waves of zombies rising from their spawns, shelter plunged into a real survival crisis and enemies more cunning than ever. And, just as an added bonus, a 4k interface redesign.

Download and play for free from our Store page. Demo will only be available for a limited time, while the festival lasts.

We fixed a hang during the zombie turn in the Old Port area. Game would enter an non-breaking loop when a specific spawn was triggered. Problem was identified with a duplicate spawn waypoint and should be fixed now.

Please update your game, you should get a small 20mb download.

We are launching a new Prologue Demo for Urban Strife live on https://www.twitch.tv/zemalf, thanks for the #TurnBasedFest event. Come join the devs for an ad-hoc Q&A and a chance to win a full game key. The demo is free for all and you should see it on the game Steam page.

For our new players we have prepared a special "cheat sheet" with introductory information about our interface and mechanics. You can open image in full screen with right-click, save it, and keep it at hand for a bit of quick help if you skip through the ingame tutorials too fast.



Enjoy! And do not forget to try other #TurnBasedFest awesome games, too:

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43077188-TurnBasedThursday/sale/turnbasedfest