We always knew Shannon Ehrola’s work was something special — and your amazing response to her first Zombies, Run! comic proved it.
Never wanting to let good feels go to waste, we figured we’d keep the ball rolling this week by showing off the second of Shannon’s three awesome Zombies, Run! comics. So, here it is for your reading pleasure. Make sure you let Shannon know exactly how much you love it!
Season 4 approaches, and with it, a massive update to the game you all know and love. You’ve heard about the reordering of Season 1, the myriad new features, and the brand spanking new design.
Today, we want to look at one more improvement: rebalancing the Base Builder.
First things first: Don’t worry! These changes will not affect your existing base. Anything you’ve built will stay built. Any supplies you’ve gathered will stay safely inside their stores. The following improvements will only affect runs completed after the launch of Season 4 and buildings built after that point.
OK, with those honking great caveats out of the way, here’s how we’re making your base builder so much better with the next update.
Rebalancing resources gained from runs: You’ll now gain three materials the first time you run any story mission, from the start of Season 1 right through Season 4. This should make runs more rewarding for new players, who otherwise had to do a lot of work to grow Abel. We’ll also be fixing a bug which has caused people to gain far too many supplies from some missions.
Result: No more massive surplus of supplies! No more materials drought in Season 1!
Changing building pre-requisites: A lot of people have told us that pre-requisites for buildings can be too complicated and difficult to achieve, especially in the early game.
We’ve taken a long, hard look at how a typical player progresses through the base builder and we’ve rebalanced the costs and pre-requisites to make this all a lot smoother and more intuitive. Taking Abel Township from a small pile of rubble to a thriving post-apocalypse metropolis has never been more fun!
With these changes, we hope you’ll find rebuilding Abel as enjoyable and rewarding as running to save it.
Here at StS HQ, we’re always on the lookout for opportunities to show off fantastic work created by our fans, whether on Twitter, Facebook, or in our regular community round-ups. We’ve taken this even further by commissioning the amazing Shannon Ehrola (who you might remember from this favourite) to create three one-page comics that help explain the glory that is ZR.
We’ll be releasing the others a little bit closer to launch, but we just couldn’t resist sharing the first in the sequence with you right now. Check this out, and don’t forget to share the love with Shannon!
This Spring, we’re planning an Abel Township-sized upgrade to Zombies, Run! Along with adding 40 new missions in Season 4, auto-playing of multiple missions, estimated run durations, and improved Spotify and Google Play Music support, we’ll be redesigning the app to make it easier and more fun to use than ever.
It’s tempting to redesign apps just for the sake of making them look shiny and new. The problem is that redesigns take time that could be used on other features, and they can confuse existing players. But there were a few specific issues we wanted to fix.
Note: These are all real screenshots (not mockups) taken from work-in-progress versions of the app.
For example, when you’re deep into Season 2 or 3, it can be difficult to remember what’s happened in the story without going to the ZombieLink website. By bringing back individual screens for each mission, we can now show longer descriptions of their plot, and you can also reveal a full in-app scene-by-scene synopsis once you’ve completed a mission.
Another issue is that Zombies, Run! can be difficult for new players to understand and navigate. We’ve streamlined navigation in the app so it’s easier to find and change run settings like Music, Tracking, and Zombie Chases, with more tips on how to choose the best settings.
Both new and long-time players will appreciate the changes we’ve made to our News and Help sections. Our redesign means they can now include images and links to useful and fun resources; and we’re adding a ‘Known Issues’ list so you can see which bugs and improvements we’re working on.
Yes, that really is a ‘Continue to Next Mission’ option; as well as a much more flexible way to control the length of your missions and runs. And thanks to popular demand, you’ll be able to turn off our new ‘Previously on’ and ‘Next’ on clips!
This is all aided by the fact that most phone screens have grown considerably larger. The first version of Zombies, Run! was designed for 3.5" screens; these days, a lot of players now have 4", 4.7", and over 5" screens.
We’re using that extra real estate to highlight important run options, and to include gorgeous illustrations for every single mission and running mode; not only do they help signal where you are in the app, but they also make sure the entire app is as atmospheric as our missions.
On Android, the entire app will be updated with a streamlined ‘Material Design’ that should work across Android 4 and 5 devices.
There are plenty more improvements coming to Zombies, Run! that we’re excited to tell you about in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!
Picture the scene, if you will: exactly a week ago, a lovely bar in Midtown Manhattan, and the night closing in as a veritable horde of Runners 5 gathered to trade running stories, compare feels and discuss every possible aspect of everyone’s favourite post-apocalypse running app. It was the first ever official Zombies, Run! New York meet up and it was bloody wonderful.
Sean Palladino and Adrian Hon (Six to Start CEO & ZR co-creator). Image courtesy Sean Palladino – thanks Sean!
This is a post to say thank you to everyone who turned out to say hi to us, and to share a few glowing memories with those of you who couldn’t make it. You are all awesome, and it was unbelievably wonderful to meet so many fans of ZR and to put faces to names!
Swapping running stories. Image courtesy Adrian Hon – thanks, Adrian!
In no particular order, here are some of my best bits:
If you were there, let us know what your favourite part of the night was in the replies!
Zombies, Run! 