Full Release - Version 1.0

Welcome, Survivor!

The time has come! After 3 years of Early Access, YAZS is finally out in version 1.0!

We've created an awesome animated trailer for you to celebrate the occasion:

Have you watched it? Great! Then, let's go straight into the meaty details:

The Full Release of YAZS!

This update is huge - the size of around four typical major content updates!
Let's recap the most notable additions as we've presented them in our devlogs:

Ranger, Bio Lab & Main Bosses!

The Ranger - a combat-ready veteran - marches into the fray with her trusted companions, ready to face any foe, no matter their size! The ninth Survivor has been a park ranger in the past, and with great experience in handling enemies with the use of her crossbow and her closeness with her beloved animal friends, she makes a great team on her own. Still, when joined by other Survivors, she shines further with her ability to boost all Survivors' Critical and Luck stats, as well as ways to heal her allies!

Bio Lab - the place it all started. Explore the facility, whose experiments are said to be the core reason for the apocalypse. Here, you'll face high-tech experiments and some of the most powerful foes yet. This new map is shaped differently than any other before, being a circle, the borders of which are filled with toxic fumes. Watch out for the decontamination process, as it'll keep you on your toes; you don't want to be caught stuck inside the red danger zone! Is the virus the reason it all went wrong, or was it human greed all along?

With the new Boss Rush game mode, we bring you REAL boss fights, as you'll face the toughest of foes so far! In this mode you start your run as usual, but you're actually racing the clock to get as powerful as you can before the 10'th minute mark, at which point the Final Boss spawns! Face the most powerful enemy of each area to prove that no zombie can threaten you. The faster you kill that enemy, the higher you'll place yourself on the leaderboards for each arena and difficulty level.

The Camp, Story & Missions!

As promised, we are adding a new hub location. You will be able to visit it between runs to access both old and new interfaces, as well as some hidden details scattered throughout. In the Camp, you can complete various missions, tune in to radio transmissions, and eavesdrop on conversations between different survivors to learn more about them, their daily routines, and how they manage to get along with each other. To reduce any potential friction, we're also adding a "Quick Run" option to the main menu so you can start playing immediately, as well as an option to restore all the old menu options with a simple toggle.

Narrative missions are another big addition to the 1.0 release. In the Camp's Briefing Room one of these will be waiting for you after every run. Other than the main storyline, which concerns the Survivors' discovery of the source of the virus, each of our characters received a personal questline. You will be requested to assist them in different tasks, which will help them deal with their unique problems - and let you learn about their backstory in the process. Any Mission you complete brings the team closer together - you are rewarded with Friendship, which permanently boosts your Cash and Specialization points that you receive at the end of each run.

In true rogue-lite fashion, these stories are expanded in a somewhat random order - but don't worry about missing something due to RNG or getting stuck. The Briefing Room also contains the Mission Log, which lets you refresh your memory about a storyline's past events and check whether you need to unlock a certain mode or map to progress a given narrative thread. In addition, by using the Mission Log you may manually retry a mission you haven't managed to complete yet - so you don't have to wait for it to be offered again before giving it another go.

Synergies, Torments & More!

You want more synergies, we want more synergies. What else can we do but add more synergies? To start with, we're increasing the number of cross-Survivor synergies for each character to four! Three of these are tied to abilities, but the fourth will work independently of them. We needed more space for the entire expansion, so we're introducing a fifth rank to the Survivors' skill trees. With 1.0, for each Survivor we're adding 2 new synergy nodes, 2 passive improvement nodes, and one passive node with a bonus for the whole team, provided the said Survivor is present.

Torments are finally making their debut! These fully optional, extra-difficult challenges aren't connected to the achievement system and don't offer anything except bragging rights (you don't need them to 100% the game!). You can view these challenges in the Hall of Torments tab of the Achievements interface. If you find the base game's challenges too easy, give these a go… but be warned - there will be pain and struggle!

But that's not all. We've implemented a lot of important details here and there and improved on many pain points you've asked us to. You have another batch of cool items to discover and a whopping 88 new achievements to complete. The game should now work even better, load faster, and stay at a higher framerate. There are also many new music tracks and refreshed sound effects for you to enjoy. We hope you'll enjoy the new things we've prepared for you and will let us know what you think about it!

Version 1.0 Changelog

Additions:

• New Survivor: Ranger (Unlocks with Survival Level 175).
• New Arena: Bio Lab (Unlocks after completing the Dead Terminal on the Default mode).
• New Game Mode: Boss Rush (Unlocks after the Hardcore mode for each map).
• An in-game HUB location: Survivors' Camp.
• Well over 1,000 lines of dialogue and mission briefings.
• 5 main bosses, 2 standard bosses & 3 new standard enemies.
• Rank 5 for Survivors with new skill-tree nodes and synergies.
• 88 new Achievements (64 of which are of a new category: Story).
• New Mission (quest) system: Play runs with additional objectives.
• 15 Main Story, 45 Survivor, and 19 Repeatable Missions / quests.
• Mission Log to check your progress so far and replay incompleted quests.
• New Friendship system: Completing missions permanently increases Cash & Specialization gains.
• 28 Torments (optional, very tough challenges, for bragging rights).
• Survivors in the Camp now chat with each other on various topics.
• Radio in the Camp offers messages that change after each run.
• New, high resolution 2D bust art for every Survivor.
• Multiple new music tracks & lots of new/improved sound effects.
• 21 new Items: Black Box, Jailbroken Phone, Ragged Patch, Hijacked Signal, Access Keycard, Brave Toaster, Mushroom Mushroom, Dartboard, Silencer, Mana Potion, Fishing Pole, Accumulator, Hyperactivity, The Word, Great Nade, Power Generator, Boiling Pot, Pawn Shop Receipt, Last Round, Acoustic Guitar, Easter Egg.
• Dogs.

Changes:

• Another major pass on optimization and load times (expect higher framerates).
• In-game Survivor models now look better and drop less FPS.
• Difficulty 2 & 3: Horde stats modifiers increased slightly.
• Basic zombie spawn intensity slightly reduced.
• Elite enemy spawn chance slightly increased.
• Boss enemy base HP increased by 1/4.
• Most weapon attacks no longer lose damage on penetration.
• Tweaks for how active statuses transfer to other targets (higher activation chances, lower spread).
• Burst and multi-projectile attacks of weapons and abilities will now roll a critical hit chance once for the whole group / all projectiles (from rolling each and every hit separately).
• Tank: Sawblade Drone: Final damage changed to 150 (from 200).
• Engineer: Electrocution: Damage on early ranks decreased by 75 to 25. Final damage unchanged.
• Huntress: T2 & T3 weapon firing arc reduced from 30 to 20.
• Ghost: Windcutter: Projectile travel distance increased slightly.
• Ghost: Kunai Dance: Final damage changed to 150 (from 250).
• Ghost: Shuriken: Final damage changed to 400 (from 350).
• Ghost: Shuriken: Single: Damage increased by +100.
• Improvements and a small rework for the run's endscreens.
• Some achievement item rewards moved and/or swapped.
• The achievement reward for "Why'd You Pick That?" is now "Great Nade" instead of "Skip Rope".
• The achievement reward for "Curly Little Potato" is now "Easter Egg" instead of "Jade Amulet".
• Improvements to user interface interactions.

Bugfixes:

• Mouse cursor should now properly stick to the game window.
• Infinite mode now correctly unlocks by reaching 30 minutes in Endurance mode for each arena instead of by completing Hardcore mode.
• Items: Improvements to damage type tag related calculations / combos.
• Items: Glass of Milk: Is no longer incorrectly considered as a "healing item".
• Cash & Specialization gains should now display correctly on the run's endscreen when the max rank is reached within the same run.
• Translations-related fixes and improvements.
• Fixes for some music tracks loop timings.
• Lots of miscellaneous tweaks and fixes.

Thank you!

We wouldn't be here if not for our awesome community, which helped us create the game we can all be proud of! Early Access might be finished, but Yet Another Zombie Survivors isn't! We'll keep on updating the game, both with fixes to each and every issue you might potentially encounter, as well as with new content!

As always, if you'll ever encounter any bug or an error, let us know, and we'll fix it. We'll be here to help you out, so feel free to reach out to us if needed!

Here's a toast to another full release from our studio - one of many more to come! 🥂

Have fun, enjoy, and don't stop being awesome!

Stay awesome,
Kalafiorek @ Awesome Games Studio