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The year is 2011, and a terrible infection has spread across the United States.

The infection was airbourne as well as highly contagious. Symptoms were similar to the flu, including high fevers, vomiting, coughing, as well as a general weakening of the immune system. Due to this epidemic, the US began to collapse. Hospitals were overrun with infected patients, plants and livestock began to perish, which led to the economy's failure. All of the military bases were facing difficulties trying to quarantine the disease, even failing to stop the infection from spreading within their own ranks. There seemed to be no answer, and no cure...

But the worst was yet to come.

It was roughly a week before those who were unfortunate enough to become infected began to show enormous amounts of hostility to family, freinds, and strangers alike. This single infection brought down the entire USA from the inside, as its own citizens were murdering each other out of an unexplained rage.

It's been four weeks since the infection began. Those who were neither killed nor infected have held out and survived in shelters in cities, towns, and rural areas using any means necessary.

Now, follow the story of two survivors as they attempt to survive Hell on Earth.


Latest Blog

Featured! I can die happy now...

I can't believe it! I'm at a loss for words. This has been my dream since joining RMN.

Infection is featured! And on the day after Halloween, it's so perfect. Thank you so much!

To everyone that has made this game possible I'm so grateful. To everyone who has supported, reviewed or left a comment I thank you all very much. My dream has come true and I'm incredibly happy about this. :D

Happy Halloween!

Posts

InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
Thank you for the feedback!

I'd like to make item buying go faster, but it's a custom shop and adding multiples to a "shopping cart" of sorts would be difficult. And not calling you lazy, but it doesn't seem so bad to stay a minute or two getting the goods.

As for the flies, I've lowered their chance to cause disease considerably, but you know what, I'll lower it even more, because I don't exactly want you diseased each time fighting them, especially since they are a random encounter and can't be dodged.
But besides the medical kits there is Antibiotics that remove the "Diseased" condition. For now it's just the kits and those, but you get a good amount of antibiotics from a quest and they can be found in garbage cans in the city and buildings.

The SP amount given is supposed to be low in a way. I wanted you not to be able to regain the HP lost in battles for "survival/horror" reasons and have to resort to scavenging or running away.
But I'll look into it and see where I can give more SP when it feels right.

Thanks again! I'm glad you played it and liked it besides the above comments. :)
I didn't play through the game in its entirety since I was under the impression it's more about game play right now and not so much about a full demo that demonstrates story, but I could be wrong. In any case, I didn't know it would be difficult to include a "multiple item" purchase, so not a big problem if it can't be done.

Anyways, here's a few ideas that I wanted to throw your way, depending on if you are still looking for suggestions.

Considering that the infected area is the "bad side of town", sort of speak, I'd imagine the apartments have considerable amounts of loot left over, assuming that people haven't been brave enough to venture into the infected zone to steal these for themselves, so you could use that to your advantage by adding lots of secret treasures left behind from when people were alive (cash, equipment, medical supplies, etc). This forces the player to explore these dangerous areas more thoroughly, but gets rewarded for their efforts, and that way you wouldn't need to increase SP dropped from enemies.

Next, considering the "safe zone" would want to ensure that people are healthy and not effected, I'd imagine they'd want to employee a doctor of sorts that would heal you and cure you of any ailments every time you revisit the "safe zone". My suggestion is to add in an event so that each time you return to the "safe zone" you are required to pay a small amount of SP, and make it small, say around 15 to 20 SP? Now, you might think that would make the game easier, and perhaps to some degree it does, but the kicker is, you have to pay the SP whenever you return to the "safe zone" regardless if you are healed or not, which is why I suggested a small amount. If the player elects not to pay, or if they don't have enough money, they must stay in the "bad zone" until they have the SP and wish to pay to be healed/cured. This creates a challenge for people who are in need of healing and out of SP, so it forces them to think a little, At the same time, adding such a doctor for this low amount (to heal and cure diseases), is an alternative to people trying to save their money. However, purchasing said items is still required when people want to venture further into the danger zone, and don't wish to continually travel back and forth.

Finally, have you thought of any story ideas? My thought on this is that you spend part of the game helping out the people in the "safe zone" but maybe at some point you get an incurable disease (not one that necessarily effects your stats, but maybe one that will slowly turn you into the undead), and you are then cast completely out of the safe zone. In order to stay alive, you must fight through the infected area looking for a cure, one that may also turn the tide against the fight against the undead.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
No worries about searching apartments and buildings and such, I've already planned to add a lot of goodies inside of explorable areas, I have stuff in most areas to grab but I'm planning on more clothing and weapons and of course food and medicine .

I'll consider the doctor idea for a later part of the game, which actually brings me to my next point...

The story, this demo of Infection starts after the "introduction/beginning" sequence of the game which is going to be a playable starting area where you(Kessler) is going to be with his wife, and you two are holding out in a house. Generally searching for food, keeping your house and surrounding area safe and etc.
But at some point things go wrong, I won't say much because I don't want to spoil gameplay/story but things happen.
i.e Kessler is alone at the safe zone, hint hint.

So that'll be the beginning of the story and I plan to change dialogue and character interaction at the Safe Zone once I complete the beginning of the game.

As for the rest of the story after/during the Safe Zone portion of the game, (won't try to give too much away) but you'll receive a radio transmission from a large group of survivors that plan to take back a large portion of the city to live in. A militia type army consisting of fighters who wish to take back New York from the infected.
So at some point you'll join up with them and that will be the "3rd arc" of the game and a completely new area, people, and missions.
From there, well you'll have to see down the road! :)
aand this being the first "installment" of the Infection story, you probably won't see a cure to the infection annny time soon, but there will be other peoples stories down the road!
But there are no happy endings in Infection...one story will end and another begin.
chana
(Socrates would certainly not contadict me!)
1584
Good luck with your game,waiting for the story...!
(Hey, amervicius, you've got quite a game planned out there!)
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
Thanks for the support chana! :D
This is looking great, bro. Any patch notes on your new version or anything?
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
author=drakiyth
This is looking great, bro. Any patch notes on your new version or anything?

Thanks! :)

I was going to make of list of changed things, but got lazy.
But I usually like to keep the available demo fresh with whatever I've been changing working on.
So basically it's been a lot of small things recently, fixing dialogue, enemy stats, been adding new enemies or items to have more diversity, as well as some bigger things like trying to expand on the areas and adding new locations which we be more important in the future when story is involved.
I also darkened all the charsets recently to better blend in with the environment!

But yeah, next time when I make much larger updates I'll be sure to mention them somewhere in the comments or the installer.

:)
The gameplay reminded me of Diablo a little bit (or any other dungeon hack n' slash). I finished the demo (well, I think I did because there were no message telling me so) and it was pretty good. I found it enjoyable in the short-term. After a while my interest got smaller because of the redundant battles and the lack of a more puzzle-and-adventure-oriented gameplay. And I know you're working on the story so that will also definitely help stimulate interest in the game.

I think the best feature of the game is that I was always short on HP and had to evaluate how many battles I can fight until I return to the safe zone to stock up. It really made me feel concerned about survival, which I think is an important, if not mandatory, experience for players of such games to have. Add to that the fact that you're always anxious about finding cheap or rotten food or having enough SP to buy med kits, and the survival concern is amplified (by the way couldn't we just smash the vending machine open and take the loot? ^^). Maybe you could make the experience even better by adding more explorable houses/buildings and improving the scavenging feature (add some more equipment, skills, items you can sell for SP). Adding more enemy types and some optional stronger foes sooner would be nice too (t'would offer some more challenge and variety).

Subquests are perfect in length and amount. It's good to have 2 or 3 available at the same time and for NPCs to give a new quest right when the previous one is completed. Keep it up.

There are a small mapping and event mistakes on the second screen of the southern park: there are no teleports on ground level and the walls on each side of the building were not in the previous screen.

So I enjoyed most of it though it was quite short. I'm looking forward to improved versions. An action-rpg style of gameplay would be fine with it too. Keep up the good work ;)
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
Thanks Avee, I really appreciate the in depth feedback! :D
So I'll address some of the points you've brought up for you and anyone else reading:
I've actually been thinking of ways to make battles more interesting with some kind of "gimmick" that would keep each battle interesting, but overall I think for the most part the battles will get redundant at some point. Doesn't mean I won't try though! :p
As well with battles I've been wanting to make more puzzles, so I will try to think up some good ones and implement them!

I'm really glad everyone is enjoying the "low HP, survival test of wits" which I've worked hard on to get just right. I'm happy no one finds it extremely difficult, but they find it challenging.
(I'm surprised you aren't concerned as to why Uzi clips are in vending machines. ;P)
Recently actually, I added three houses to search where before they were blocked off, so I'm going to be working on making a lot of the buildings searchable!
And I've been adding more items, weapons and items alike all the time! But i'll make sure to have a large variety available to the player. (I also hope to one day implement some kind of plating/harvesting type thing where you can grow crops, wait, then pick them. this will probably be awhile, if I decide to do it ^^)
Oooh enemies, I'm going to add harder enemies for sure, as well as different ones, I just want them to fit well with the atmosphere and not be too "unrealistic"

I assure everyone that almost any given time you will have some sort of sidequest, mission, fetch quest going on to do. :)
Thank you for pointing out the mapping errors I'll get on them right away!

I'm glad you enjoyed it and thank you again for the feedback and support! <3
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
An updated version of Infection is now available featuring many new additions that the previous installments lacked.
Including:
-Lockpick system fully implemented
-NPCs now offer a buying and selling feature
-Stats tweaked for enemies and character stats
-More items added
-Fixed minor mapping errors, dialogue, typos, etc. the usual little things
-Overall difficulty is harder starting out, more survival aspects(I hope to add more soon)
-Tried to clean up maps and such to reduce lag if there is any or before it gets to that point
-Fixed Blowfly Swarm errors
-Fixed some problems with the Stand-Alone version, added missing files

As always a lot of small stuff besides the Lockpicking system and the NPC Sellers/Buyers, which I am both extremely happy about.
I'll be keeping this game updated as much as possible, thanks everyone for their support and feedback so far!
I'd love to hear any errors/bugs I may have missed on the Lockpicking system, I ironed most of them out last night, so I think it's okay, but you never know!
Great game the setup, graphics and missions are very interesting. However, I couldn't seem to get enough SP stay alive. Besides killing zombies what alternative way can help earn those? Another thing, I bought some Uzi Rounds and I'm not sure if you have to equip it or something but they didn't work so I was a bit confused.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
Thanks Epicshdrew! Glad you liked it.
As for the SP, you gain them by completing missions, killing infected(which isn't the best way) and by selling items.
The main source is missions, but in the future I plan on having very valuable items that can sell for SP, just haven't gotten around to a lot of those yet!
As for the Uzi rounds, they should work, hmm. :|
They always have for me in testing, you don't have to equip it, but they are a useable items like any of the medicine and etc. they work the same.
Haven't heard this problem, but I'll let you know if I find anything weird.
Thanks for your feedback!
author=Pokemaniac

Thank you for thanking me for thanking you

NOW WHO'S THE CHAMP
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
author=SegNin
author=Pokemaniac
Thank you for thanking me for thanking you

NOW WHO'S THE CHAMP


Lol...that was so long ago.
Still makes me laugh when I look at it, also reminds me that mrstinkyfeet got banned alittle while later(for something kinda silly imo), miss that guy.

As for a small progress report, I've been going over some things in Infection recently and decided to make the game generally harder than it currently is.
Since it's going to be a shorter game than most I figure I'd rather it prove a challenge survival wise instead of being too easy.
Not sure how many of you think it's like REALLY hard already or if it is in fact too easy, although I don't think too many would agree with the latter, judging from feedback.

Anyways, the future of this game is looking good and I hope it can entertain at least a few people.
Hey, what do you have in mind for the next update?
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
author=Avee
Hey, what do you have in mind for the next update?
Hello, and sorry, there won't be an update anytime soon. :(
But if I do have time to actually sit down and work on it, I'll try to add a few more quest lines as well as a stopping point right before the main storyline is introduced. (just so the demo ends making sense with direction)
Thank you for your interest. :)

EDIT: I'm uploading the last version of what I was working on, with a few things added.
That will probably be the last update for awhile.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
Thanks X-Tech, the more people say "I will play this" the faster and harder I will work at its completion! :D
For some reason, I can't move 'South' from the first city block.

It keeps suggesting I search the Storage Depot first - which I have done. All the shutters are open and all rooms have been searched! Searching again just comes up with a dialogue saying they're empty.

HELP!
Hopefully this will not be a dissapointment like all the other zombie games on this site, project viral was okay but, it just wasn't my type, this looks more like my type... a turn based RPG...