Fourth topic on this game. Too bad there's a point where a topic is too old to bump...
http://www.roguesurvivor.blogspot.com/The dev blog, with a download link.
Anyway, Rogue Survivor is a post-apocalyptic zombie survival roguelike in an urban sprawl setting. You're stuck here, might as well fight for your life!
THE GAME, IN A NUTSHELL
As soon as you press "new game," you're met with 3 lines. These are your gamemodes. You can choose "standard," all zombie types available, being killed by a zombie instantly turns the person, and zombies can evolve. C&I is the same as standard, but there's an "infection" bar that increases as you get bit. When someone dies, they fall to the ground as a corpse that can be eaten by zombies, butchered or cannibalized by humans or pulled by both. If they have even 1 point in infection, they'll rise as a zombie eventually. My favorite mode. Then there's "vintage." Only zombified men and women (fresh zombies), no evolutions, and the same corpse rules as C&I.
If you chose to start as a human, you choose your gender and a single skill to start the game with. This could be anything from Tough, which adds HP, to Hauler, which adds 1 inventory slot, to Unsuspicious, which makes cops and gangs less likely to bother you. Then you're dumped in the game, with a few different possible spawn locations, like in a bed in a home or on a bench in the subway station with a cop nearby. From this point, you gather important supplies - food, medicine, weapons, things like that - fortify a building or other area to have a safe place to sleep at night and keep your resources away from civilians who are just like you, trying to survive, or hostile gangs pillaging whatever they find, then just try to avoid being stabbed, battered, shot, eaten, blown to pieces, or collapsing in a heap from starvation.
You're not alone in this quest, though. There are other civilians doing the same thing, or trying to at least. In the first couple days most starting civilians will die, but every night a wave of refugees will arrive. You must beat these people to the supplies, then find a place to store your goodies. There's going to be zombies all over from the start, so you need to move quickly and cover your tracks, preferably with stench killer or a handy crippled survivor. If not, you could soon find a nice horde pouring out of what used to be your barricaded door. Whoops!
Things can either get better or worse, depending on how you look at it... As time goes on, the civilians will start to have better skills, making them less likely to die. This either gives you better opportunity for guards at your safehouse, as well as sanity leverage, but also gives you tougher competition. Then you have national guardsmen dropping in, who tend to clean the streets for you until they run out of ammo. They're there to protect you, so they won't fire at you randomly or smash down barricades they find. They don't take food and they pick up planks to build fortifications.
Then there's the other people. 2 main biker gangs plague the streets, the Hell Soul's and Free Angels. Hardened punks with good melee combat skills, basic melee weapons and tough leather jackets. They tend to leave you alone unless you have something they want, at which point they will try to club you to death and take. They aren't on good terms, though, and the 2 gangs will fight to the death if they meet each other. There's 2 gangster factions as well, Craps and... *picks up manual* Floods, yeah, Floods. They're basically the same as bikers, but with guns and little skill to use them. They act the same as the bikers, killing each other if they meet and attacking you if they want your stuff. Don't expect either anarchist types to turn out well if they meet national guardsmen, though. Other, special enemies pop up weeks into the game. Also, CHAR guards.
Changing the environment to suit your defensive needs is almost as important as that bag of groceries you found. Don't build any defenses and you could wake up to a shambler taking a piece off your neck, or find all your food and weapons gone, having been "relieved" by your fellow civilians. Not only can you build fortifications, but you can do things like push cars. Move 4 cars into a line on the road and you can block out most every zombie in the early game, save agile ones like the zombie masters or fresh zombies that have a rank in certain skills.
I should mention the needs. You have 5 bars to your right: Health (durr), Stamina (climbing, melee attacking and pushing lowers this. If it gets too low, you can't do any of those), Hunger, Sleep (you slow down if this gets too low. Sleep on a bench/bed and your health regenerates slowly (if you have the skill Hardy it regenerates anywhere) and you get rested quicker, sleeping people attacked by someone will take more damage than normal and always get hit), and then Sanity (This lowers slowly over time, or by seeing disturbing things or cannibalizing someone's corpse, increase by bonding with a companion or reading books/magazines. If it lowers too much, it reaches "disturbed," which makes you randomly wake up and possibly shout when sleeping because of nightmares. Then you can go insane when it hits 0, where the game randomly takes over your actions for a few turns at a time). C&I and Vintage games will also have the Infection meter displayed below Sanity.
Sure, surviving armageddon is fun and all, but what about the other end of the spectrum? You can play as zombies, too! If you noticed when you pressed "new game," there's an "undead" button too. Press this and you have some choices:
- Skeleton: No. Do not do this. Skeletons are crap, their only advantage is their speed. The weakest skeleton can move at a human's walking speed, and further evolutions move faster than a walking human.
- Shambler: Slightly higher health than fresh zombies, even slower (1/2 human walking speed) and crappy defense. These guys still suck, even with their evolutions. Don't do this either.
- Zombified Man/Woman: These guys will likely be the most common zombie after a couple days. They move at 2/3 a human's walking speed, have decent health, defense and attack, and can evolve very quickly. Best for newbies.
- Zombie Master: These guys are monsters eventually, but impossibly hard to evolve as quickly. They also move slow (1/2 human walking speed, again), have the same defense, attack and damage as fresh zombies (almost, if not for the minor gender differences) but have twice the health and the best sense of smell + sight of any of the starting undead. They also emit "ZM trail," similar to a human's scent. This makes zombies follow it, which tends to pick up a horde pretty quickly. Best at storming barricades or taking down groups of gunmen, thanks to said ability. Needs tons of kills to evolve, though.
You're stuck in a similar situation as the humans. You're tossed into the world, likely in the street. If the RNG hates you, with a cop right next to you who will blow your head off instantly. If not, congratulations! You passed the first test. You, unlike humans, have only 1 need: rot. Rot is hunger, pretty much. Increase it (and your health, if you're hurt) by damaging a human (living feast!) or munching on a corpse (if the gamemode has them). Zombies don't need to sleep, have no stamina, can see as well as always in the rain and darkness as always (but all zombies have a lower FoV than humans, even the top-tier rapetrain ones), and have no Sanity meter. Zombies also have hindrances, though. Most basic zombies (and even some fully-evolved ones!) move slower than humans and have a shorter FoV. Some zombies also lack the dexterity to open doors or operate certain things, and some don't have the agility to climb, or even the strength to push objects, strangely enough. Skeletons have it worst, they can't do any of this. Shamblers can bash objects, but nothing more (but if your options allow them to learn skills, they can push/open objects.). Fresh zombies are similar to shamblers, and their default settings allow them to learn the skills needed. Zombie masters can open, push, and bash objects.
Beyond all this, you basically just run around and eat people while trying to avoid getting shot up or beaten by the cops, gangsters, bikers, national guard and pissed civilians. You will die a lot, I'll bet.
And now,
SCREENSHOTS
(these are recycled from the other topics, and will make me feel bad until someone gives me some new ones to put in here)
Why being a hick is bad. Plenty of guns and ammo, but no food...
Cops sharing weapons and ammo while being rained on.
GENERAL LIST OF RANDOM FEATURES
- Basic needs, like hunger, sleep and your grip on reality.
- Harsh weather, basically heavy rain, with (mostly) negative effects on humans. It clears your scent faster, though.
- Walk the streets as a living or undead, fleeing from or stalking your "prey."
- Roam the surface, basements, or sewers.
- Reincarnate when you die!
- Many options are customizable, like whether or not certain undead can learn skills, whether they can evolve, how often national guard supply drops come, how big the city is etc etc.
- 5 district types to explore! Shopping, Residential, Business, Green, and General.
- Avoid the nastyass police officers if you killed someone without provocation. They were taught by Cyrodiil guards and can peer into your soul to tell your crimes.
- As you gain kills as a zombie, you will evolve, increasing in power.
- Sometimes, unique survivors can pop up in the world, ranging from Mr. T knockoffs to drunk mall Santas with shotguns.
- Traps can be laid, from empty cans that just knock around and make noise to bear traps that will latch on your (possible) enemies. Humans and agile zombies are much more likely to avoid them.
- Get a rank in Leadership and recruit other survivors to your cause, whom you can tell to guard an area, build fortifications, heal you or other commands, given the time required to trust you. Form a bond with them and keep a solid grip on your sanity.
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