r/SurvivalGaming

Currently all weapons in EvoX deal fixed damage. Musket always hits for 100, arrows always for 50, and so on. I'm considering adding a small random variance of around plus or minus 10 percent to each weapon so a musket would deal between 90 and 110 damage per shot.

The idea is to make combat feel slightly less predictable and more organic. But I'm wondering if this would frustrate players who expect consistent TTK especially with slow reloading black powder weapons where every shot counts.

Would you prefer fixed damage for consistency or a small random variance for unpredictability?

Steam page if you want to check it out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4814790/EvoX/

Hi everyone!

We launched the Steam page for Village51 just over a month ago, and today we reached 20,668 net wishlists.

We're incredibly grateful for the response. We knew the concept resonated with people, but we didn't expect the game to gain this much traction so quickly.

Here are the numbers so far:

- 21,042 wishlist additions

- 374 wishlist deletions

- 20,668 current outstanding wishlists

- Steam page live since June 4

As the graph shows, the first days generated the biggest spike, followed by a couple of smaller waves and then a more stable daily growth. That seems to be the typical pattern once the initial excitement settles.

Most of our traffic came from:

- Reddit

- Steam's organic discovery

- Content creators and social media

Our next milestones are:

- Launching our first public playtest

- Releasing the demo

- Participating in Steam Next Fest

- Continuing to share development updates with the community

We're curious to hear from other developers: What helped keep your wishlist growth going after the initial launch spike?

Any lessons or strategies you'd be willing to share would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading!

Steampage: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3819700/Village_51/

Hi,

It's my first solo steam game, so i would really like to get any kind of feedback.
- Did you like trailer?
- How is my store page?
- What do you think of the art? I drew it myself, but I'm not an artist.
- Does the game look interesting? Would you play it?

And about the game Duco:

Duco is a card-based survival roguelike set in a post-apocalyptic world with zombies.

You have to draw from location-based decks to gather resources, loot, craft, build, and survive.

On Release, you will be able to unlock new characters and maps, combine them with traits to create unique runs and interact with NPCs while building and managing your own settlement.

It's inspired by Project Zomboid, but reimagined as a card-based survival roguelike.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4872850/Duco/

Hey everyone!

A while ago, I posted here about Ember’s Verge, a grounded, primitive survival experience with no modern tools, no electricity, and no zombies.

I’ve been reading every single piece of feedback, and I just pushed a major overhaul patch to fix early-game friction and expand the mechanics.

Just to mention a few:

• Surrounding Fetch System: Crafting can now automatically pull missing resources from the ground, piles, or containers near you, so you don't have to constantly run around different containers.
• The winter freezing and thawing system has been completely revised and made more robust. The UI will show the current state of the item, if it’s freezing, already frozen or thawing.
• Extended the drying mechanism for tea ingredients (like nettles and lily flowers) to help to preserve them for later use without them rotting.
• You can now use a lit torch near a beehive to drop down the hive and scare away the bees immediately. This allows you to harvest honey safely without getting stung.
• Stick and twig spawns are now unified across almost all tree types. Also windy weather now resets tree spawn timers. This means that storms will actually rip down branches for you to gather.
• New Content: Added a slow-cooking Smoker (rain won't ruin it), Rain Water Collectors for your base, candle wall mounts using animal fat/sap as fuel, and a new iron tier overhaul (hoe, cauldron).
• Many QoL improvements added for smoother game play

This was the game I wanted to create and here it is. I’m really proud of how the game has shaped up.

I'll drop the Steam link in the comments. Happy to answer any questions!

Three years ago, I started with a simple dream — to create my own indie game one day.

I had no real experience in game development, just a strong passion for survival games.

Together with three friends, we started building 404 Survivor from scratch — a sandbox zombie survival game focused on base building, survival, and controlling infected.

We learned everything step by step along the way, trying to turn an idea into something real.

As for some of the unique gameplay features in our game, the main one is that you can control zombies. Players can capture zombies and make them work for you—having them carry items, do tasks, and even go into dangerous areas with you.

This system is still being improved, and we plan to keep expanding it in future updates.

Players need to find a balance between survival, building, developing a “zombie factory”, and defending against zombie hordes, or choose to focus on one part to speed up the progress of the others. This also introduces a layer of resource management elements.

Three years later, we’ve finally completed the DEMO of this game.

We’re excited to share it with you.

This is the game I’ve been working on: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4038790/404/

We know we should be working on the actual game but we got distracted making this snake and now we're unreasonably proud of it.

The head is rigged. Attacks, bites, jaw movement — skeletal animation just handles that better.

But the body? We went full procedural. Every segment calculates its own path in real-time, handles collision, coils around obstacles. That continuous, squeezing deformation is something a skeleton struggles with.

Turns out mixing both was the right call. We keep opening the build just to watch it move.

Anyway it's one of the corrupted predators in Emberhaven. The wilderness is mostly hostile, and this one is particularly good at making you check your surroundings twice.

Wishlist if you want to get hunted:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4612360/Emberhaven

I'm making a survival game and I wanted it to be fresh, free of the annoying "chores". But paradoxically, I realized these things aren't as useless as I thought.

• I got rid of slow early progression: you start the game already with a gun because gun combat is the core of the game.
  • The result: Players never get to feel the power spike of earning the first ranged weapon
• I removed ammo limits and durability: farming bullets always annoyed me so I always played as a mage or smth and don't get me started on durability.
  • The result: There is no endless material sink so scavenging loses meaning over time
• I removed the hunger meter: I hate it when games slap the hunger bar as an afterthought. I though in my case it would only distract you from the actual gameplay.
  • The result: Players lose an obvious motivation to explore.
• No searching for the place for you base: my game is about a moving base so you never settle for one place.
  • The result: well I'm not sure tbh but I think that it removes the beauty and emotional attachment of finding your place

So I wanted to make a frictionless experience, a fresh look on the genre, but paradoxically this friction slowed down the steep learning curve. Doing familiar stuff like in all other games (cutting trees to build a crafting table) gave you time to understand the game while doing something you already knew.

All in all I don't regret it, I still want to make it feel fresh and will find other stuff to fill these holes eventually, but do you agree? Or am I dramatizing too much? Do you also hate these tedious mechanics? Or do you love your second job?