Welcome to our third weekly update! Today we will go deeper into the survival mechanisms of the game, detailing exactly how you will have to deal with hunger, thirst and fatigue.

Choose wisely

Contrary to most survivals where your gauges go down over time, we decided they should rather depend on the actions you choose to perform. This both gives you more time to discuss with your teammates about elaborate strategies, and it lets you have the control over your gauges a lot more. So, how do they go down exactly? Each time you open a container, you will be prompted with a window that shows how much picking an item will cost you.
In this example, the item Painkillers will cost me 12 thirst points and 12 fatigue points to pick it up. Pretty costly, but this could be very useful later.

Special containers

In some places, you will find containers that are sealed in a particular way, and need an action to reveal their content.
This safe could be opened easily, if only I had a crowbar. I don't, and I don't want to take my time to try to pick the lock carefully (there are infected around!), so I try my chance at the brute force way. Unfortunately that didn't work out for me, and now I just lost 10 fatigue points for nothing.

Fishing!

Sometimes, when exploring the world, you can see some fishing spots in areas with water ponds or lakes. They work the same as the special containers: you can easily catch some fish with a fishing rod, or you can choose to take some time and energy to craft a rudimentary spike, or you can just... try to catch them with your bare hands.
Here, I succeeded! But, spoiler alert, it doesn't always go right, and diving your unprotected hands in the water in an apocalypse context might not be the most sound choice.

Time to rest

Now that we listed the numerous ways your gauges are going down, let's cover how to get them back up. Once you explored the world enough, you can either craft a campfire to rest by its side, or head to an existing permanent campfire, spread out all through the maps. By clicking on it, you will sit down by the fire, and that's where you will be able to use the various items you gathered to feed yourself.
As you can see, other players can sit by the campfire, and they are able to see your thirst, hunger, fatigue and different afflictions, and choose to help you. You can help them too, if you happen to have an item they need, granting you a small XP bonus (and hopefully, a new friend!). The longer you play without resting at a campfire, the more XP and loot you will be granted: we call that system the Threat Level. But that will be explained in another news post! http://store.steampowered.com/app/667890/Dead_Maze/

[ 2017-09-01 15:15:35 CET ] [ Original post ]