Rebuild

I really enjoyed this! Not sure why the ending I got stopped the Zombie horde, but good fun!

Don't tell us which ending you got then :P
Possible endings I saw:

Um... swap

I got the perfect pattern to the endings:

It takes awhile to clear overrun and infested area, and it doesn't yield an ending. I guess it just lowerd the amount of zombies spawned.

I enjoyed the game. I like turn based games where you can put some though into your actions and consider your options.

all endings I remember:

Is it at all possible to save the game?
I'm deliberately not winning because I want to be able to see the

endings.

You know, normaly I dislike the zombie genre, but I quite enjoyed this game!

Hmm if there is an evil portal, who would ever want to join its fort barricades around it, so its right within the fort?

I captured all city blocks.
Hint for infested/overrun areas:

Two suggestions:
* Why have to manually assign survivors to defend? Why not simply have any idle survivor defend? Additionally it would be nice if the % of being overrun would be displayed somewhere on the main screen.
* I'm not yet sure about the mechanics, but zombies pile up on the borders. So I guess one should aim for having a square or circle formed fort. No rectangle, or having "needles" out of it. If thats so it would be preferable if one could willingly give up fields to concentrate defense on a core.

I liked the seriousness of the game. It wasn't "zombeeez! omglol!" or deary, end-of-the-world depression. The daily notes turn the game into a survival/civilization game instead of a shoot-fest.
The win messages reflect this.

WARNING! End-game text!

Definitely a fun game, and I liked the multiple endings. I played on Easy the first go, now I'm going to try normal.

SkylerF: You can keep playing after you get an ending.

I won on "normal" my first time around, captured all blocks. I've been trying on hard a few times, but I can't do it yet. I can't imagine what "harder" and "nightmare" will be like. I want to keep trying though.

When I loaded my completed city on normal difficulty to have another look, I noticed I only had 40 survivors at the end, but room for 250 or something. So here is the in-game tip you should pay attention to:
- survivors flee when you reclaim their block. So, before you reclaim, get your leaders to fetch the survivors.
- almost the same with food, except you still get 50% of the food that's on the block when you reclaim.

Also a tip from me, but it hasn't helped me to win on "hard" quite yet:

This game is really addicting. :)
I like how you can keep playing after you win so you can figure the other ways to win.

I named my city Castlerock, and one day a survivor joined my city named "Stephen King" :D

Hey, it saves your game automatically! You have to click the settings icon (gear + musical note) to find out.

Got the Cure ending first time through. :D

159,000 on normal mode, I don't know if that's a lot or not though

Is there a way to save, or a mute button? I don't want to lose my game just because I have to go and do something else, but I don't want the background music going if I have to leave it open.

Found the mute button -_- can't believe I missed it.

I really enjoyed this game, I found the 4 different endings. Does anyone know any other games like this?

There is a mute button. It's in the upper-left of the screen. It appears to auto-save, yes.

DEFINITELY the best improvement that this game could make would be to automatically allocate unassigned people to defense. Maybe continue to allow you to allocate people to defense as well so that you don't find yourself accidentally allocating people to real actions beyond your "safe" defensive level.

Tip: Be aggressive about running kill-zombie missions to the areas around you. The way I started to lose my first game was to get into a cycle where I had to allocate more and more soldiers to defense, and so I had less and less ability to do anything proactive, and I lost momentum. If you're killing the zombies in the areas around you, you won't need to have many soldiers on defense, and you can expand.

Another tip: Scavengers have pretty limited utility by mid-game -- you should be getting net-positive on food with your farms (turn suburbs into farms aggressively, it's easy to get apartments for living space). Retrain scavengers into something useful. By end-game, I had a TON of soldiers, quite a large number of builders, about 10 scientists, and just a smattering of the other classes.

Got

Loved the game!
Just wish there were more.

This game is an instant hit. It's like a Sim City--with zombies.

Anyway, I decided to play on normal. By the time I won I had 101 people, on day 86 or earlier. The way I won:

I may end up playing it again on a harder difficulty

While playing there were some things I learned. Early on I found that I was losing too many people, and so I became much more careful about using my people. I kind of got too focused on defense though and fell into the same trap Epoch describes, where I put too many people on guard duty for a while. It's better to just utilize a forward defense instead. You will need some people to keep guarding your base, but ideally you should have a lot more people, soldiers and such, taking the fight to the zombies, so that when the zombies end up attacking your base they will already be reduced in number. But even so, try to keep your percentage for danger as low as possible, preferably in single-digits, by using more soldiers in your attacks. You can skimp a bit on your number of guards. Throughout most of the middle of the game my danger for my defense was around 10%, and that was fine--the only bad thing that happened was I once lost a single square to the zombies.

Other than that, the most important thing I can think of is to concentrated on building your base in the direction of farms nearby. Scavengers are pretty helpful early on. I started running low fairly early on--I even lost a man to starvation. Even by the middle of the game food still ought to be a pretty big problem. You probably shouldn't even bother with turning any of your squares into farms using builders. It takes way too many turns, so it's almost always better to just keep expanding your territory with the builders, instead of having them change anything into a farm (2 builders and 1 should be able to reclaim a territory in 2 turns). So try to get the farms as early as possible, and remember to do all the standard stuff, like getting more recruits and such. Victory shouldn't be too difficult, and chances are you can probably win while only losing three or four people the whole game, perhaps less if you want to be a bit slower about it.
Iconian

I'm quite sure there is quite a big food bug in the game:
Max food storage is 50. Let's say you have 18 food in storage and lose 9 food per day. If you then scavenge 50 food, you don't end up with 50 food, but with something much lower. It seems the scavenged food is completely thrown away because it makes you go over the max. I'm not entirely sure, but there is something fishy going on.

Now two suggestions:
- have idle workers defend the fort automatically (has been suggested before and I completely agree). No need for any changes to guard duty.
- when zombies attack, it says "click any key to skip", also make mouse-clicks work. The game only needs mouse clicks, except here.

Curses. If you get all four endings on the same day, you only get to see one of them.

I finally managed to finish it completely on hard. One thing I did was to never have negative food production. Don't get more survivors than you can support from your own farms. So don't depend on scavenging. I'm sure it can be done with scavenging, but I failed many times trying.

Also something to take note to is the defense value for the police station:
+25 defense for police station (& fortified mall)
+15 defense for soldier
+5 defense for others.

I just played normal and went for the first ending I could get, Constitution (I didn't have enough Labs). One thing that happened was IMMEDIATELY after I clicked to write a Constitution, the game dropped a zombie horde on the map next to me. Supposedly the zombies wanted to stop my Constitution. A horde came every day until I wrote the constitution.
I play somewhat aggressively. The problem is when I had a ton of soldiers, few builders (claiming spots took more time), few scavengers (food would be lost if I claimed, but that didn't matter much), and only 1 Leader (ensures that survivors join you).
At the end of the game I has claimed one half of the map. That drastically reduced the zombies' attack power.

I have a few more things to say.

TSUKEN: I never noticed that my food storage maxed out at 50. However, through much of the game my food production was negative, and I only got by through scavenging, until I had enough farms. In perhaps the last dozen turns of the game my food production was positive and my my maximum food was claimed at 200 and later 250. However, the real amount I was able to store was 150, the exceptions being when I scavenged any food or something. In that case it went up by the amount scavenged for a turn. In effect my maximum food was 150, but that didn't really matter anymore, since by then I had a surplus of about 20 food a turn. If your food doesn't seem to go above 50, even with scavenging, it could be that your production is too far negative.

Now, about the zombie attacks. Early on it seemed like the attacks they made weren't very big, but neither were my forces. As the game progressed though I conquered more and more squares. But even though I conquered so many, zombie attacks still increased in strength. By the time the zombies had maybe 20 squares and I had probably 80, you would think that the rest would just be mopping up. Instead, toward the end I noticed that zombie spawning increased vastly. In the early part of the game I might clear the zombies from a tile. Once the zombies spawn there, the danger if I were to send a single soldier might be 5%. With the last few squares though, squares owned by zombies would often spawn a whole bunch of zombies in just a single turn. I might clear out a tile of all zombies, and if I didn't reclaim it then, the next turn it might have a hazardous level of zombies, or even infected, whereas before it would be safe-ish. It still was pretty easy to win even with that being the case, because my strength was greater than theirs and I was clearing out new squares. To put it simply, it seems the fewer the number of squares the zombies have, the higher the number of zombies spawned per tile is. It means that until you've completely beaten the game and pushed the zombies out of your town, you can never sit back and just watch the zombies try to get into you town. You couldn't stop at 80 tiles in your possession and 20 in theirs and just watch them try to get in, because eventually they would get in and overrun you, I believe. I don't know if that's to be explained by the

or what, but even if it is I'm not sure I find it all that realistic.

Wait, "The randomized map means you won't be playing the game twice"? So the randomization is a bad thing? I think you dropped the word 'same' from that sentence. Also, a missing 'have' in "You'll have to guards at defensive buildings, such as police stations, to ward them off."

The spawning makes perfect sense. If you're only trying to control a 2x2 square, the zombies are going to be all over the countryside, i.e. diffuse. Once you start eating up 10x10 or 12x12 territory and serving up yummy brains all in one place, they're going to start gathering at your border. This game is not treating the "board" as the limit of the world. It's saying the world is all-zombie, and all you have is a fort.

Keep that in mind for the next zombie apocalypse.

I didn't even know there were alternate endings, because I explored aggressively, found the evil graveyard immediately, and focused all of my attention on meeting the requirements. Only 47 people at the end, but I didn't need any more.

Great game! Definitely 5-stars.

@Iconian dont look for any sense or realism in a zombie game. zombies do not make sense! (except for the arms lobby)

@Iconian:

If you haven't noticed, zombies tend to get attracted to places with food (human), light, or sound. Since your city is growing and the map is meant to be infinitely large (but limiting your city just so the game can actually end), zombie "reinforcements" are quite possible.

Nickyh, I haven't noticed anything about zombies, because they dont exist and never will be, sorry to break that news, so they behave just like the game mechanics tells them to do. Its obviously coded that way to keep being challenging while you grow.

The exact function how many zombies you attract is IMHO the key to winning the harder modes. I've not figured it out. Is it just a function of time, the number of squares you have, the number of squares you border with, the number of people you have? the number of food you have?

I'm not yet sure if its more effective to have a condense layout so you have less borders, or to have a stretched, so the constant amount zombies dependent on your size are better distributed.

@Shudog and Nickyh:
I did consider earlier that maybe the huge number of zombies spawned in squares toward the end of the game is due to zombies being attracted toward your town--becoming aware of it over time and then heading there. I think there would be some number of zombies showing up, but I don't think it would be anywhere near as many. In the last few squares I conquered, the squares went straight from just having the zombies wiped clean, to "Infected." I'm not sure of the levels, but "Infected" is even more zombies than "Hazardous," though not as many as "Overrun." All of those zombies are concentrated on a single tile. So, if zombies really are showing up from all around the surrounding countryside, why is that they all end up arriving at just single square? Do they all flock together and concentrate their numbers there? Where are the borders for the town? I figure your borders ought to reach a point where you bump against the wilderness or undeveloped areas outside the city, after which further expansion is fairly pointless, since you won't be getting anymore buildings. But just as had been the case throughout the rest of the game up until then, even then you ought to need to defend your borders on all sides. The only way I can see such a large number of zombies spawning in single squares on the map is by them being teleported in by the evil gate, or being guided by some malevolent force to a single place where they concentrate themselves to attack you. Zombies showing up from the surrounding countryside, OTOH, would most likely result in a very uniform distribution (I can see an exception if there was some large city nearby or something that the zombies were arriving from). In any case, this aspect is certainly not explained by the game.

@fuzzyface:
A lot of games probably don't make much sense when you think about them some. Especially for someone who is probably not going to get much or any money from this game, I think this is a very good effort. Anyway, yes this is a zombie game, but the maker could have gone and created something with almost no realism at all. Instead they made a game that actually feels pretty realistic, apart from the zombies. When the game has already gone a fair way to be realistic and explain a fair amount of how the game works, I find it a little annoying and perplexing to see it basically change its mind. But even so I enjoyed Rebuild a lot, and I fully expect to play it more. 4/5.

An amazing game that snugly fits a niche combining the depth and abstraction of a good board game and the streamlined mechanics of a well-thought-out casual game. I really dig the love for details and hard work that evidently went into it. And the functional fullscreen option is a nice extra. Kudos to the developer!

Any other strategy advice for winning on hard? This is as frustrating a game I've seen in a while; I know I can win, but it keeps eluding me.

Also, the game says it was created by Sarah Northway. I've played hundreds, if not thousands, of online games and this is the first one I've seen made by a woman. This is a great game and I hope this means that more female gamers get into the production side of gaming.

Yes, Sarah and her husband, Colin, are both game developers. :)

There are many female game developers we have featured reviews for over the years. Not as many as male developers, that's for sure, but Sarah is definitely not the first.

A few notes for harder difficulties.

Just finished the game on 12x12 nightmare, a couple of hints:

@iconian - The zeds do indeed teleport. If you surround an area and kill all the zombies on it, some will respawn.

I really like this, as tough as it is. I find myself giving elaborate narratives to the events as they unfold. There are political intrigues, shattered loyalties, and even love affairs.

I think I tend to pick on things the more I like it, so here's my list of grievances with the game:

Outright bugs:

UI/mechanics gripes:

Gameplay issues/suggestions (these have some actual spoilers) :

Based on how the game behaves, when you end the turn, the food you gain through farming and scavenging are added, then your maximum cap is applied, which discards any food beyond your capacity, then your daily use is subtracted. It would make more sense to apply the cap after the daily use is subtracted, but that's how it's set up, judging by the reaction. That's why you'll never be at full food capacity.

Would love to have a bar with more information about how many survivors and which type are doing what. Also, rather than list each survivor individually just have sometime like 10 X solider 4 X builder etc. By end game I had well over 50 soliders so when i wanted to find something else it became a bit of a pain.

Loved the game though.

I like this game and I love how it doesn't force players to grind for the multiple endings.
I think the easiest goal is:

Also I note something with evil portal:

Here's a few hints on getting your city started:

*Initial moves*

*Expansion*

*Personnel*

*Soldier management*

I enjoyed this game. Yesterday I beat it again, once again on Normal, but this time with a 12x12. Before that I tried to play on Hard two times (before anyone had really posted some of their techniques). I got tired of constant deaths and running out of food and morale though. I figured it could probably be done. But the truth is, I'm not sure it's really worth it.

I really like Normal difficulty. It's a nice, fun game. You can beat it in just a few hours. But with Hard, it's like the game just goes out of its way to punish you for just about anything you do. I went through about 30 turns being pretty careful, but morale dropped to about 10% (I at least had a couple morale buildings), and soon the riots began and everyone pretty much stopped working, which resulted in more people dying, several buildings lost, more deaths, and me quitting.

So yeah, I believe that you beat it on 12x12 Nightmare, pacifist. But personally, I don't think it's worth it enough for me, or most people, to try. If the game had much better tools for dealing with trouble, and some tweaks were made to a few aspects of the game engine, I'd probably be more than happy to slog it out on Hard. But to me, too many aspects of the gameplay are just too poor to make Hard worth it.

Normal gives a nice, enjoyably challenging game that I think most 4X fans can appreciate. I think if Sarah Northway makes another game like this or updates it, she should probably make some changes to the game universe and give the player a lot more tools for dealing with that universe for anyone who wants to try their hand at Hard. But I'm not really worried about Hard. As I said, 4/5, and two big thumbs up for Normal mode. :J
Iconian

@Iconian
LOL, I think you're still thinking of it in game terms instead of the sim-world terms. And you have a rather narrow idea of zombie lore, which includes varying degrees of intelligence. (Some of which is covered in the lovely narrative text, which is worth the read.) And you don't understand real-life natural swarms and/or Brownian motion. If you equipped a bug with only one sensory quality, such as smelling living human flesh, you'd be covered in bugs in three minutes, and it would most certainly not be inexplicable or random.

I will say, though, that it is possible to watch different groups of zombies move across the board from day to day. They are *not* just plopping onto the board out of nowhere.

It's an excellent game. Yes, you can lose it; that's 'cause it's a game and not a crackerjack prize.

For you (addicted) roleplayers out there:

My favorite thing to do is go to the End Game screen, write down the VIP of the game (right column), and use that name in my next city. The cycle continues!

OK so I've beaten this game on Nightmare difficulty about five times now. The method below isn't necessarily the best available, but it's basically foolproof once you understand the game mechanics:

I looked into the source :-) The amount of zombies spawned per day is only a function of time maxing at day 75. So there is no point in keeping being small. The amount of zombies spawned is constant despite how much space is left, so the less squares are left the more will be spawned per square.

After I had been informed that one of my soldiers had lost an eye clearing zombies, the survivor list changed her name to "Lieutenant Cyclops." XD

Tip:

Keep your fort as square as possible as you expand. The perimeter of a square is always less than the perimeter of a rectangle of equal area. This will minimize the number of squares you can be attacked from.

After many tries I finally won a "harder" 10x10. Knowing some forumulars/dependencies helps :) For most points I agree with xenapan but on some I differ.

JIGuest, square or not the number of zombies approaching you is pretty equal.

@Shudog
I'm not sure how much purpose there is in addressing each of the points you bring up, but I'll at least address some of them.

First, I'm wondering what you mean by "I think you're still thinking of it in game terms instead of the sim-world terms." I'm wondering if you might be misinterpreting something I said. Either that or I'm misinterpreting you.

As far as the movement of the zombies, I've repeatedly come upon a situation where I reclaimed all of the eight squares closest to a single square, but not that square itself. The square was completely enclosed, so no new zombies should have been able to reach it simply by walking there--in fact, it was my hope that the zombies would naturally die off from starvation or something such--and yet their numbers in that square still continued to go up. Neither Brownian motion nor very great intelligence on part of the zombies can explain that. Whether the zombies are being teleported in, digging up through the ground, or have sprouted wings and started flying, I don't know. At any rate, they're being spawned by the game in the square. I don't know if sometimes (other than hordes) the zombies might move from one square to another, but very much of the time they *are* "just plopping onto the board out of nowhere." As it is, it doesn't feel too realistic to me, and considering the lack of an explanation in the game, I'm guessing it's more of an oversight on the programmer's part than a deliberate decision.

Now, as far as Hard goes, I have very little doubt that if I put enough effort into it I could beat it--could probably beat it on Nightmare too, especially considering everything people have written about it since. But the fact is, the game engine is not good enough for me to really enjoy doing so very much. I found myself repeatedly comparing Rebuild to The Last Stand games, and Rebuild falls short of it and other 4X's in many ways. For instance, one of the major disappointments I found with Rebuild is that time passes much too quickly. Fully clearing a square of zombies, then fully recruiting the people on that square, and then fully scavenging all the food from it, and then fully reclaiming it using two builders and a soldier takes all of eight days. Now, if each square in the game is actually supposed to represent a whole city block, it might be a bit more believable. But as the game is, something seems very off about it. If I'm just looting a single house and the lot it's on then it ought to take much less time. And recruiting is probably the worst part. Honestly, in almost all cases I think it would take a matter of minutes or seconds to gain a recruit from a building. Scavenging the material might take a few hours, and building a fence around it might take a day, depending on the exact size of the buildings, etc. But recruiting people? It shouldn't take very much at all. I'm also very disappointed by the fact that sending out parties to scout, scavenge, kill zombies, etc, act as though they're basically teleported to the location in question. The number of zombies in between you and the target make no difference. The fact is, your parties of people don't actually *move* like they would in most games. Compare to most RTS's and 4X games out there.

If Rebuild were more realistic, you'd send out a group of soldiers or whatever to a location. On arrival they'd start shooting the zombies there. This would instantly alert basically any human in the vicinity, unless they happen to be deaf or something. If those humans had weapons they might come out and start helping your soldiers kill the zombies. If not, they'd just wait until your team finished the slaughter, and then come out of hiding and join your people, in almost all cases. Gaining recruits should *rarely* require a recruiting mission. Sure, there might be some stubborn, timid, or stupid people that would need to be convinced by a leader to join you, but most of the time you'd probably get most of the people from a given location just by sending a small squad through. There shouldn't be such a heavy focus on specialized missions--"Kill Zombies," "Scavenge," or "Recruit." Missions ought to have a lot more options and flexibility.

Anyway, my point is that it's little problems like this, combined with the much higher difficulty on Hard and above, that give me no desire to make any attempts at beating Hard or above as the game is. If the game had better tools and a better engine for addressing things like this, I think I could probably overlook the greater difficulties in Hard and above.

So was my strategy lacking in my first attempts on Hard? Yes. But it's not worth it for me, or most people, to beat it on Hard, even with a better strategy. The fact is, if I have to accept morale regularly hovering around 0-15% with the frequent desertions that accompany it, negative food production with regular starvation, and treating almost all my people as almost completely expendable, so that I frequently use single non-soldiers to clear squares of zombies, even though the chance of them dying is 10 or 20 or 35% or more, then I darn well want to have a much better game engine to do it with. Simply put, I don't feel Hard warrants me playing it with the game engine being as currently implemented.

Normal is perfectly fine to deal with, and so I'm perfectly fine with giving the game a high score. But I don't feel Hard is good enough to warrant a play through. And most people probably won't either.
Iconian

Iconian, there is NOTHING realistic about zombies, think of it as game mechanics and try enjoying these, personally I really zombie-themes, yet I still enjoyed this game mechanics, might have blue squares vs. yellow circles as well.

You do not need to scavange a square, just kill/recruit/claim. Or recruit/kill/claim, or often enough just recruit or only kill without claiming, claim only if it helps you in increasing your numbers.

Recruiting is considered as taken time, since other survivors distrust you, and considering the mechanics that survives seem to survive endlessy in their hideouts in infested areas but might soon die when they join you, this distrust is understandable.

@fuzzyface
Whether zombies are realistic or not bears absolutely no weight regarding the realism of the rest of the game, and I will show you why right now.

Let us simply and up and replace all the zombies in Rebuild with rabid dogs! As a matter of fact, this would be an *extremely* simple matter. All you'd need are a few changes to the graphics and dialogue, and the game would completely transform into a tale about how the world has been overrun by rabid dogs. Just read the first two opening paragraphs and replace "the undead" with "diseased dogs," and "zombies" with "rabid dogs," and the game still remains quite strongly in the realm of reality, in spite such a seemingly important change.

It is interesting to see how over the years so many games--even many games with extremely strong fantasy elements--have decided to go for a path of increasing realism, instead of less. My favorite example is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Here is a game that strives for very great realism compared to a lot of games out there--even though it has magic, vampires, minotaurs, elves, and on and on. And yet for some reason the creators tried to make it more realistic, even alongside such things. They have armor and shields, swords and bows and arrows, cities filled with people you can talk to and interact with, and on and on and on.

As is the case with so many games, Oblivion has striven for a great degree of realism to go hand-in-hand with its realistic aspects, and to a fair extent Rebuild has done the same, featuring a fairly believable setting, objectives, and so on. I am not saying that Rebuild is a bad game because it is not more realistic, but I am saying that if it were more realistic, and if it properly tempered its realism with the appropriate tools, techniques, and ideas, then it would be a much more fun game. It ought to have far more flexibility regarding its search parties, something much closer to what The Last Stand, where a group of survivors could go to a building and recruit other survivors, kill some zombies, and scavenge some supplies in a single trip. This would have made Rebuild much more fun, not less, and it would have made it much more realistic as well--because once again, if you were to simply replace the zombie epidemic with an epidemic of rabid dogs.

As to recruiting survivors, there is quite a simple and realistic change that could be made to the game that would make it more realistic and improve the game. I have also never seen any survivors you have not yet recruited killed by zombies. This ought to be possible, and happen pretty frequently. Certainly that would make the game much more realistic, and would make your city into much more of a safe bastion. And as a result, as a I said before, recruiting ought to be a much more simple matter--in most cases, people ought to be recruited very easily by a group of soldiers or whatever who are there with fairly generic orders. (Maybe each time you send out a group of people through the city you could have check boxes you could click that would give them different orders--don't scavenge any food, don't recruit any survivors, don't kill any zombies, or focus on killing zombies, focus on scavenging, focus on recruiting, etc.)

You are trying to defend broken game mechanics, but you are failing and will continue fail if you continue to try, because you are as the man who has built his house on a sandy foundation. That foundation cannot support Hard mode, but I will defend it for Normal mode because it was well done considering the game engine, and especially if you consider that this game is free. But beyond that, it is pointless to defend the game's engine, because it could be a lot better if a few notable changes were made.

I am curious though as to why you have such a strong need to support a decrease in realism in games. Does it have something to do with you doing your best to run away from reality, to worlds that bear as little resemblance to the real one? Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?

Anyway, I congratulate you for winning Rebuild on Harder. It shows that you are a good strategist. Maybe you should sink your teeth into something with a bit more meat, like Conqueror! or Warlight, or even Stars! I'm sorry to say I've yet to find a 4X game as good and realistic as I'd like, but some come very close. If you don't like zombies much anyway, one of these alternatives might be more to your taste.
Iconian

@Iconian

I said quite clearly that PEOPLE are able to go in and out of the squares. PEOPLE get bitten BY ZOMBIES and this INCREASES the number of zombies in a square. Even if it is enclosed. There is plenty of in-game evidence for this. Likewise, if you have a diffused population of zombies in a 12x12 square, and you start eating up that territory, guess what? They will gather around the border of your territory.

You are constantly saying there are all these conditions "stopping" you from winning, and yet all of us beating it on harder levels are encountering these same conditions... and yet we manage to beat them. This is by definition not a game mechanics problem. You have come into a strategy game not expecting to use any strategy, and then complaining to everyone that it has not been made easy enough for you. Okay -- we're having fun. And we're challenging ourselves.

I have no idea why you keep comparing this game to scenarios that have nothing to do with zombies. This game hits all of the repeated themes from zombie movies, books, and other games. For instance, if you are a group of survivors who's hidden long enough from EVERYONE, i.e. other people and zombies, you are going to hesitate to join a group who may not give you a better chance of survival. Why should I join this band of crazies with guns versus this other band of crazies with guns, if I've held out this long?

Thanks for the condescending tone, too. It's quite helpful to the foundation of your opinion.

if anyone cares about how the game does it in fact.
) moving of zombies. Moves move to your fort, unless they are in a graveyard, dump, mall or policestation. A mall can thus be a good temp. shield if you do not touch it.
) it determines the amount of new zombies to be spawned (unless you discovered the cure), this is a complicated function without various jumps, but the only inputs are day and difficulty level.
) these zombies are distributed over the empty squares by random.

About the discussion, I'd differ between "broken game mechanics" and "broken logic". A game can have broken logic and still be a well on the go in its game mechanics. Almost all games have some broken realism logic when you think of it. The whole consept of "levels" and "lives" is some strange thing.

Re: the question of how new zombies appear in isolated blocks: they rise from the dead! At the start of the game there are hundreds of corpses in every block in the city. Over time, they will gradually turn into zombies. The only way to stop this happening is to kill any active zombies, then burn all the corpses while claiming the territory.

@fuzzyface
I didn't pay a ton of attention to whether zombies move, but I suspect you may be right about them staying in certain locations. It's also interesting what you say about zombie spawn rates. Again, I didn't pay close attention. But at the end of my second game, on Normal 12x12, I had captured all but a single square around day 80. I hung around at that point and waited for the constitution to get drafted and the evil graveyard to get cleared, and during that time I noticed that 45 zombies spawned on that single square every day. That might help with anyone interested in getting a more accurate view of zombie spawns.

Anyway, I guess you could say it's broken logic leading to broken game mechanics. Or maybe just an oversight on the developer's part, or a lack of time. I have to say I think you're dead on about the logic in a lot of games. I've thought over the years about a lot of different gaming conventions that probably could be handled in better, more realistic manners, and yet for whatever reason--because they're CONVENTIONS I guess--they stay the same. One forum I was recently on for an FPS mod was pretty strongly opposed to the idea of implementing much more realistic ablative armor. I guess that's life. But I don't blame people too much. When a convention is so well established and accepted, when it's already been programmed that way and people just want to get the game done with already, I'm not surprised that they're really not too interested in changing it.

@Ed Burst
I suppose that could be what Sarah Northway was going for, but once again, I just don't like it. To me, it feels a whole lot more like on oversight on her part in programming. For one thing, you have to consider that Rebuild is supposed to be taking place about a year after the zombie invasion began. You're telling me that the corpses have sat around for a year without being zombies? Or that they all just happened to die off recently enough that they hadn't become zombies yet? To me it doesn't seem likely. It's much more likely to me that Sarah Northway didn't think about it too much, one way or another.

@Shudog
I can find where you previously said,
"I will say, though, that it is possible to watch different groups of zombies move across the board from day to day. They are *not* just plopping onto the board out of nowhere."

I'm not finding anywhere about how you said, "I said quite clearly that PEOPLE are able to go in and out of the squares." Maybe I'm not looking hard enough.

Anyway, I know that zombies are just spawned into squares, even when those locations are totally cut off from other zombies--meaning they can't move into those squares from elsewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if there's movement too though, in addition to the spawning.

But you're telling me that a square that's totally enclosed by your walls, but that you have not claimed, is spawning zombies because more people in that square are still getting bitten?

OK. I give you that there's a slight possibility of that happening. I mean, certainly it doesn't seem likely. According to the storyline, it's already been about a year since the zombie plague began. Most of the city is already overwhelmed. The individual squares in the city don't seem that big to me. At the most each only holds four people and maybe 48 food, with most holding much less, or even none in many cases. My guess is that one square is probably supposed to be about the size of a single lot, and it might take nine or sixteen squares to equal an entire city block.

At any rate, I very greatly doubt that there would really be enough unzombiefied people left in a square that's completely cut off from the other zombie squares to keep its population growing even after you repeatedly clear it of zombies. It just seems really unlikely to me. Those zombies have to come from somewhere, just as a fire needs fuel to continue burning. And after a year, I really doubt there'd be that much fuel left--except for the people inside your walls, or maybe the people that you can recruit--except we've already established that they CAN'T be zombiefied. So, it could be that I'm overlooking something here. But as it is, I honestly can't see how the fire continues to burn.

Anyway, as I'm pretty certain I said before, I'm sure I could win Hard--possibly even Nightmare--if I utilized different techniques. But I don't like the game mechanics enough to do that. The way the game works really isn't as realistic as it ought to be, and isn't as intuitive as it ought to be. I honestly loathe the idea of treating just about everyone following me as being so expendable as is apparently required on the harder difficulties. Are risks necessary? I believe they are, and ought to be taken at times. But I like to mitigate risk as much as possible. I like to be smart, and to me being smart does not mean playing with people's lives like they have no value.

In fact, now that I think of it, it reminds me a lot of the United States' present economic situation. Here have been these companies going psycho with people's money and taking on way too much risk, and now we're all paying for it. That's not the way I think financial institutions ought to be run. And I don't like the idea of playing with people's lives like they are so worthless, either. My opinion is, I really don't like it when a situation is artificially created in which players (of games or the stock market) are unrealistically rewarded and incentivized for taking such unnecessary and unintelligent risks, and money or lives are rather carelessly tossed down the drain. I would much rather see patience, hard work, and caution incentivized instead.

So, could I play on Hard mode or higher and do well? Once again, I'm pretty darn certain I could. But I don't want to. I don't think it's worth it. I want to minimize my risk. And the idea of using burning through recruits to pay for the ones that were recklessly allowed to die just makes me cringe, the same way that this country investing even more money into a broken system makes me cringe.

If you like Hard mode, go ahead and keep playing it. I'm not gonna. I just really hope that if you do play it, you don't apply the same sort of strategy to your monetary investments. Because if you do, I think that at some point you're going to pay the price.

Anyway, I could say more, but I really don't feel like it, and I think I've said enough already. If you feel differently post some more and perhaps we'll continue talking.
Iconian

If I would have done the game, I'd make it a wasteland around the city you cannot secure and have new zombies arrive on the edges of the wasteland instead of popping up on unsecured areas.

I also go along the line, it would be nice, if game designers put more thought into the logic of their game world. Like so many occasions you have a redicolous feature of "cash" where in the game world you are no entity that has "cash" - Rebuild is good in that it doesnt have something like that.

But ditching a game mechanic, just because you consider it too "unrealistic", thats bad. Do you ditch chess as well, cause its so unrealistic a sole King could ever destroy a marvoulous structure like a Tower? Or that a Tower moves? Or that the horse cannot go straight? I understand people ditching chess because they consider it boring, or dont like losing all the time against someone better, etc. But to ditch it, because it "unrealistic" is rediolous.

@iconian - I've pulled this quote out to highlight two things :

The way the game works really isn't as realistic as it ought to be, and isn't as intuitive as it ought to be. I honestly loathe the idea of treating just about everyone following me as being so expendable as is apparently required on the harder difficulties.

The first sentence is, I think, the main point here.

Contrary to what you've argued above, I'd say that the more realistic the game, the better the fantasy gameworld is. If it really seems to me like I'm sending people around risking their lives to reclaim the city and fight off the zombies, then I'll get more into the game. If instead it feels like I'm pushing numbers around on a spreadsheet, it's taking me "out of the game" and I'm just manipulating the mechanics. While that can be entertaining (figuring out how a system works), it's better - for me, at least - if I feel I'm exploring those things on the level of the game.

It somehow becomes even worse when a lot of things are immersive except for one glaring thing. The glaring thing here is the territory. For the most part, since zombies spawn randomly everywhere but in the end move toward you, there is no sense of meaningful territory. Instead it's just whether you can get the people and resources. With little exception, territory is relegated to resource acquisition. This is what's counter-intuitive. Most games you'd expect something meaningful to occur as you gain or lose ground, or clear/open different sections.

It can also be immersion-breaking if it becomes too tedious or difficult to play how you want to. Playing on Hard I'm confident I can beat it 8 of 10 games while still enjoying the details. One game I had a Lord and Lady show up on the same day. I decided they'd avoid ever doing any work, and instead throw parties all the time (to the annoyance of the population). On higher levels, I'd have to spend more time exploiting the game mechanics to achieve that kind of win rate, and wouldn't be having fun. Of course on any level I'm doing that simply because that's how the game works, and no interesting game is going to allow for perfectly free gameplay, but hopefully there's a good balance.

Another example along those lines : After playing a few times, I find that the guard duty problem isn't so severe if you're already doing well. But for those first games, in which the player is often in a hopeless position without realizing it, it starts to become a source of frustration.

The difficulty gradations seem to be a bit uneven here. Going from Normal to Hard, everything is much worse. Going from Hard to Harder isn't nearly as much of a jump. Nightmare is about the same amount of a step up. That is what I'd consider something of a flaw, if only a minor one.

One thing of note, though: Hard appears to have been tweaked so you start with 100 food storage, making it far easier. I don't know if that's a reaction or a corrected oversight.

Geting back to your second sentence, try looking at my hints posted above for getting started. I play a very low-risk to people style. The last three games (on Hard) I have never sent any mission with a risk higher than 12%, and that happened only three times. I played through 3 endings plus all zombies eliminated and only lost 13 people each time, mostly due to illness/random accidents. My base risk occasionally went much higher (~ 50%) but as you must know the actual risk of loss is far lower even in that case since they don't attack every night. It may be possible to play your style on Hard. Higher/Nightmare difficulty, I'm not so sure.

I feel I'm harping too much on the negatives, without pointing out the positives : There's clearly a love for both great games and all the zombie/horror movies. You can see the influences of Will Wright and Sid Meier here. Despite the flaws an awful lot of work was put into this and a lot of it is done right. The game was simply good enough that we hoped for it to be better.

@fuzzyface
Yeah, I have a pretty strong dislike for all the ton of games out there that love to use cash when they ought to be using something else. I've mostly noticed it with fairly short browser games. A lot of RTS's I've played thankfully use other resources instead, like the AOE series, Total Annihilation, and others. I like it when I find a browser game like Via Sol 2 or Lunar Colony, for instance, that has several different types of resources. I've thought about it over time, and cash is a pretty flexible tool for different games to use, but some of the intricacies are lost when you just pool everything under "cash," or even "resources."

@

Anyway, I was actually just thinking about chess yesterday, in regard to realism. The level of abstraction is quite high, but when I have played it I usually do find myself enjoying it (though I've never had the desire or the patience to really get into it and become a real expert). I think the reason games like chess and go have hung on so long is the strategic depth. Would it be more fun though to play something with more realism? Maybe, if the realism is handled carefully. I think too much realism can break a game if it doesn't focus on the fun too.

I suppose the way I see it is that if a game is done well, then added realism will bring out a whole lot new strategies and possibilities. In thinking about it now, I tend to guess that a whole lot of wargames and 4x's really have their roots in chess, checkers, etc, and games in recent years especially are focusing on particular aspects that games like chess oversimplify. I almost feel that the answer is some sort of extremely realistic, extremely polished game that gives the player the ability to do tons of different things. But I don't think we'll see anything much like that unless companies start focusing a whole lot more on AI and reducing micromanagement.

@Kangra
"If it really seems to me like I'm sending people around risking their lives to reclaim the city and fight off the zombies, then I'll get more into the game."

Ah, but wouldn't it be better to do so by giving the player more of a visceral feel for the action? I'm just saying that I'd like to see games like this perhaps give you multiple viewpoints and such. I think it would be cool to for instance combine this game with some of the top-down shooters out there. You could walk around your territory and take a look at your defenses and the zombies over the fences and stuff. You could inspect the people with you and try to gauge each individual's level of skill, equipment, and other things, something like in an RPG, as well as how well fed they are, whether they have an injury that might keep them from using a weapon or making it away from a fight, and other stuff. I guess I'd really like to see more games that are a lot more focused on the gameplay and the people, so you can get a grittier hands-on feel to what's going on. I do like the game telling me that there's a 25% or 20% or 15% chance of someone dying or whatever, but I'd prefer such things to be more based on observing conditions around you, and thus more based on skill than luck.

If these games would do that sort of thing, I think we could see a lot more what you're talking about in-game. You could talk to people, and learn about the sort of stuff you mentioned, like political intrigues--or maybe certain characters would have personalities such that they are extremely unwilling to doing any fighting, but they're very happy to throw parties all the time, like your Lord and Lady you mentioned.

As far as territory goes, I did notice that a few times when zombie hordes succeeded in overrunning my fort, I lost squares close to where the horde attacked, but I still think it falls a bit short. By and large, it really doesn't matter where the zombies attack from. They're still going to be hitting all your combined forces at once, including all the combined defense of your buildings, even if those buildings are deep in your territory.

As for your people not automatically being assigned to guard duty if they're not on a mission, I actually never had a problem with it, but I think it's because I'm quite meticulous in micromanagement for most turn-based games and made sure everyone not doing something else was always assigned as a guard. I can certainly see though where it could be a problem. I think it ought to be changed.

Anyway, the honest truth is, playing on Hard for even a little bit just started to make my stomach lurch. I had someone die within just a few days of starting--from starving to death in front of my eyes, or whatever language the game used to so eloquently and brutally put it.

I do think that sometimes sacrifices are necessary. Yeah, I suppose that if you really were in this sort of situation--if we were to substitute zombies with rabid dogs for instance--some people would end up starving to death. But I'll be damned if I wouldn't take every possible step to try and prevent something like that from occurring. Because of that, as you put it, the game just doesn't really have the level of immersion I want. When I play something like this, I want to feel as though I'm really there, really directing these people and trying to help everyone survive. But particularly when I played Hard, it just felt like it wasn't really me. These people are apparently going to die and starve to death, no matter what I do. Sometimes that's how life is. But if it were life, I'd take a lot more steps to prevent people from dying than the Rebuild engine lets you do. I mean, come on, starving to death before my eyes? Just the thought of seeing such a thing makes me so angry that I'm pretty sure that I could do SOMETHING to at least TRY and prevent it. Hard mode makes me feel too powerless, because I don't think there are enough options, not enough ways to mitigate risk, and the passage of time is unrealistically rapid. When the gameplay is like that, it goes from feeling pretty enjoyable and entertaining, to feel a lot more like torture--almost like the game is thumbing its nose at you and saying, "Ha, they're going to die and I'm not even going to give you the chance to TRY and save them!" In a life and death situation I'd try a hell of a lot more than this game allows me to. I actually expect that if it was a single level in a larger game, I'd probably hunker down and beat it. But as it is it doesn't feel like it's worth it, and just thinking about it makes me too sick to want to try to it anymore.

But as you said, I think we have talked too much about the negatives for this game. I really did enjoy it. There are lots of interesting random tidbits thrown in, little things that can happen along your journey to make it more enjoyable. Once again I have to say it reminds me of Sim City 2000 in that way. It was cool to gain access to the statue, the mayor's manor, and other stuff as the game went along. It was also pretty cool to see the disasters randomly occur now and then. I think it was a very good idea for Sarah Northway to incorporate the story's dialogue and narrative into all those reports as you go along. And as fuzzyface pointed out, I think she has to be praised for not taking the lazy way out and just going for "cash" as the universal modicum for doing everything. It actually takes time to reclaim territory, build defenses, scavenge, recruit people, and kill zombies. Too much time, I think, but at least everything doesn't happen instantly, like in countless other games out there.

Plus, the visuals for the game are pretty nice to look at. At a glance it looks quite a bit like Sim City 2000 (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri too, but it's been a lot longer since I played it at all). The music is good, and there are enough different pieces included that it doesn't get too old too quickly. I was able to play the game for, I don't know, maybe 8 or 10 hours total and not get very bored of the music. The game actually feels like quite a bit of a homage to Sim City for several of these reasons. Though, maybe not quite as replayable. Cities in Sim City took on a lot more character as you built them. I did some roleplaying in the most recent city I worked on, putting up signs and naming some areas. That's not something you can do in this.

But hey, Sim City doesn't have zombies. And I wonder what Sarah Northway could do if she had their budget and a team the size of the one that made Sim City . . .

So good luck to Sarah in her future games. I hope to see more of them. Maybe she'll even come back to Rebuild and update it some.
Iconian

Waaaaaaay too much bickering about the realism of this game. It's awesome and let's just leave it at that. I just beat it on nightmare. If you wanna know how to beat it on this level, its quite simple. Never scavenge for food. Try get one of every building quickly and get as many ppl on your base asap.

If anyone makes it down to this point past the thesis above this...two tips to make playing easier.

1) Play in full screen. The viewable area of the map is actually larger than the hosting webpage allows.

2) You can interact with the map while the "news" is open. So you can click on the police station while the news is open and ungarrison, and you can also click on the highlighted square when you find out all of the zombies have been killed, for example.

I love this game. If I had to choose one game to play while hiding out from zombies in a mall for the rest of my life, this game would be it.

I love this game, but it's probably good jig gave it an orange rating: even in the not harsh mode, my guys said they found some

on one of my scavenging trips. These kind of things don't bother me, but they might someone else, like parents looking for good games for their kids.

Anyway, judging by some of these comments, it looks like some people are taking this game dead serious. O_o (lol, very sorry for the horrible pun) I thought it was a very, very fun game, but to write like 6 paragraphs arguing over how realistic and whatnot it is? No, thank you. :)

So, yah, I've so far only played it on easy (cause I suck at these of games and I know it), and that was just pretty awesome. Great game, great idea, thank you so, so much for it!

For whatever reason, the amount of ammo does not seems to be a problem for a game "somewhat" based on ammunition...

So either we are getting into a "Pirates of Caribbean" situation where anything crazy like forks and spoons and paperclips are shot to zombies by the soldiers.
or
Air is enough to kill a number of zombies.
or
bullets fall from the sky as gift.

... yeah

Here are some tips for getting REALLY high final scores. (I presently hold the #1 top score, btw)

I forget something.... a suggestion:
What about libraries? They can be used for scientists to unlock new things for research, or a substitute for school and churches...

After MILLIONS of tries (literally, I started at December 2008) , I completed "Nightmare" mode. It was literally a Nightmare. I bet my survivors were so scared that they didn't shiver at all, they were too scared to do that. I won by sealing the portal, I won earlier than my expected win at 200 days. I wasn't able to get a screenshot, sadly, because I was too happy dancing to CaramellDansen. Forgive me humanity.

Anyway, as they all are saying, soldiers are EXTREMELY important at endgame. Send as many soldiers as possible, get all labs and cure zombieism if you wish to find the easy way out.

That was a really fun game! I like the randomness of it, though sometimes it's annoying when someone dies from a 3% chance. At first I was disappointed with the graphics, but they are actually pretty cool, they look almost handrawn. It's really hard at some of the higher difficultys, but I had no problem beating it on easy. Great game, and I haven't seen any glitches.

I beat every ending on normal in about a day (my first time) and kept playing. Now I have a totaly safe city, free of zombies. And the only action I still get is that f*cking "Last Judgement" biker gang.

My key to victory: Train soldiers!!!! TRAIN EVERY UNTRAINED SURVIVOR TO BE A SOLDIER! Then just recruit scientist/builder etc.

I had about 60 soldiers, and the other like 35 people were everyone else :P

Also, I haven't tried this yet, but if you change your original leader to a soldier, can he/she still lead, and slay zombehs?

It's a lil' bit funny Iconian that you say that the game lacks realism on some points, and that the developer hasn't thought about other points while you're also not doing it yourself. When there's no explanation for an in-game event, just think about it. You said you couldn't understand how zombies kept rising. Like you said, maybe people died recently. When the zombie plague came in the game, it wasn't like ''BAM! All these people suddenly turned into zombies'', zombies infected other people, and the cycle goes on. It takes too much time to scavenge resources, convince people to join you? Maybe travel time has been added to that. The survivors tries to take the best (safest and/or shortest) path to reach the destination. You try to avoid shooting zombies on their way, since it could attract a nearby crowd. It seems ''logic''. I'm no expert to zombie scenarios, and sure there are some flaws (d'you know something flawless?) but I think that with imagination, we can give an answer to almost everything.

You compare that game with Oblivion. Why not compare every flash games with Blizzard, Electronic arts, Ubisoft (etc.) games then?

''Does it have something to do with you doing your best to run away from reality''

Instead of ''attacking'' someone's arguments, you directly ''attacked'' the person with an insult. (Call it an ''observation'', there's an insult hidden behind these words, it's just not clearly formulated as any other word.) Way to go.
___________________________________________________

For Command&Conquer fans, I got a question:

A young leader recently joined my town. His name is Kane, and he whispers things about ''tiberium'' every night. Is he dangerous ? What should I do ?

if you want to have it so you can last whithout farms just play it on arcade pre hacks its quicker

I figured some people might be interested to know what your builders can turn your city blocks into.

Nice game. Here's the order I got the endings in:

@Someone (asking about kane) You laugh at the Command and conquer reference and keep going.

Wow. This game is evil. I really liked this game, and played many rounds, and some of them were very frustrating. But the game just destroyed my entire town. I'd noticed in other rounds that the danger percentage means absolutely nothing (I've lost squares and multiple survivors on 4% danger from the first invasion, and had the fort hold at 85% close to the end of the game), but this one takes the cake. I played for over 3 hours, had most of the city blocks, lots of food, all the research except cure zombieism, and 50+ survivors. Then they threw hoard after hoard after hoard at me (I wasn't even doing one of the endings), and I eventually didn't have enough people to defend against them. I'd already recruited everyone in the town, and gotten all the defense buildings, so all I had to hope for was the random survivors that show up at your town. They eventually sent me one when I was down to about 8 survivors, but then the next "random" invasion killed the rest of them anyway.

Just commenting because I'm a little speechless here. The fact that something in the programming decided I literally couldn't win after I was already most of the way there impresses me. Time for me to stop playing this one for good, I think.

Best random names ever? I got Sarah Kerrigan and Ashley Williams

To tigrita:
You did not need to lose that one.

@TheWesson: I'd been using that strategy, but then they started sending pretty much nightly invasions and hoardes (and like I said, I hadn't even started one of the endings to trigger the constant hoardes), so I had to keep pretty much everyone at the base. And since each hoarde tends to be bigger than the last, the 5th or 6th one eventually broke through my defenses, because I simply didn't have enough people to overpower it. Each loss was taking at least 6 people and multiple squares, and since there was no one left in the game to recruit, I couldn't recover from it.

@tigrita:

I have just never had an experience like that. I've even won on 10x10 "Harder" with only 36 guys (after A.V. of course.)

but I have to add that the game can decide to cut your feet off pretty arbitrarily, and I guess that's your point.

I want an Android version of this game -- tried running the flash game and it's unplayable unless you're a fanatic...

bet it would sell

This game is amazing! it's similar to that Class3Outbreak game (I'm in their forums) I think with a little time, there may even be a sequel :D

[WARNING: You may not use profanity in your comments here at JIG, your comment has been edited. This is your only warning. Next time your account will be deactivated. -Jay]

Addicted to this game, love it. I do have a question... How does one End Game manually? After winning all goals, if I go back into the game, I can't see how to End Game again...just Quit, which takes me back to Start. It would be nice to be able to do this in order to re-submit the score (which did not "take" because of the game host server issue, I guess. Anyone know?
Posted by: plethora1 Author Profile Page | March 23, 2011 4:59 PM

I got several endings and now I'm at a standstil. Someone help please! The endings I got are:

Chelseaaa:

I've played this game a few dozen times on other sites, and twice on this one. There are 4 goals (although an apparent glitch has a double for curing zombieism). On this site, the game doesn't show your scores and tallies if you click end game, and doesn't put you back in the game if there are more goals to gain. I had to go back to start and re-enter. Try it on another site, and that may make sense! There were other differences too detailed to go into here. Hope this helps.

[Thanks for pointing that out! I didn't realize there was a newer version available. I've just updated the game hosted here, so it should now behave the same as you've seen elsewhere. -Jay]

Thanks for updating, Jay.I didn't realize I had been playing a newer version, as I have only been playing the game for a couple of weeks. Today, it is not recognizing my log in and is supplying one of the generic names. Oh well, always something to deal with! Thanks for a great site!

I won cure, portal, and constitution in 1 game.
MVP- Brock Clark

A question and some tips

Question: does anyone know how the different endings affect the game if you keep playing? For instance, does drafting a (you-know-what-spoiler) actually do anything -- does it generate more survivors or anything?

Tips: I'm usually able to beat nightmare 12x12 without much trouble, as long as I get a good start (i.e., I don't lose my leader early on, and I'm able to reclaim at least one extra farm and at least one extra housing square in the first ten days or so). Here are some tips. Some of them may seem counter-intuitive - but don't knock em till you've tried em!

-Until you have more than one leader, protect your leader as much as possible. Don't use her to scout, and only recruit if the danger is 0%.

-Like a lot of people have said, don't bother scavenging. Let the people starve. If you use your scavengers for scouting, protecting the fort, and reclaiming, you'll free up more people to reclaim other squares. With this strategy, you have to be aggressive about reclaiming farms (and turning parking lots and parks into farms).

-As soon as you get a school, start converting all your white shirts and scavengers to soldiers and builders (about half and half).

-Ignore squares that aren't directly touching your fort. Don't even scout them.

-Kill all the zombies in the square before you recruit survivors from it -- afterwards, you can send leaders in at 0% danger.

-Unless there's a zombie horde the next day, or unless you can't think of anything* to do with your extra survivors, keep the fort at 50% danger. (50%?! Yes, 50%.) I'm pretty sure this is the secret to my success. You'll see the wisdom in it the first time your fort gets overrun and (on the same turn) you've reclaimed four squares, built defenses, recruited five survivors, and built two bars. (* A caveat: I'll put extra survivors on guard duty before I use them to convert squares to bars, churches, etc. But building defenses and farms takes priority to guard duty, after I've got the fort at 50%.)

-It's true that keeping your fort square has certain advantages. But I find it much more effective to go after useful buildings, no matter what sort of contorted shape your fort ends up with. (Though if you have extra soldiers, after you attack all the useful squares and get your fort to 50%, kill zombies in useless squares, even if you're not planning to reclaim them.)

-Get one hospital and one lab early on. This takes priority over schools, churches, and bars. And once you get a lab, research non-stop.

-Don't (ever!) take missions with higher than 7% danger.

Other than that, just let your survivors do what they do best. Kill zombies, recruit, and reclaim.

I am so bored with zombies that playing most zombie games make me feel as lifeless as a zombie myself... and I like this game.

It helps, of course, that the game doesn't make you do the fighting yourself (with the inevitable fiddly controls and clone stamps of badly drawn corpses), it tones down the macho survivalist fantasy aspect, and sticks the obligatory whinging dialogue in between-mission reports.

Just a few suggestions:

1. Electricity should have more of a purpose. I understand its value in providing the one-time happiness booster which you'll need to start researching the zombie cure on harder levels, but it should make at least some processes easier.

2. Maybe the length of mission time should not only vary on what kind of mission it is, but also on what type of space you're sending the mission to? Like, converting suburbs to a farm might take longer than converting a parking lot, or maybe vice versa or something.

3. Yeah, having non-assigned survivors automatically guarding the fort would make things a lot easier.

How can i check my score? i won the game in all 4 ways but I can't see the score.Can someone help?

Does anyone finish the HARDER DIFFICULTY ?
I tried the normal and I finished it easily but I tried the harder I can't survive for even 30days.

I play and finish Harder all the time. Like any of the higher levels, your first moves will probably dictate the rest of your game.
A) Manage your time wisely, e.g. don't tie up soldiers on building if there's a horde coming.
B) Plan which way to go. The farther you scout, the more of the board you can see, and if you see the tip of a mall or a slice of a laboratory, then don't waste time on directions with lower-priority resources.

Just balance out as best you can:

MOUSE-OVER THE TOP ICONS. You will get all the stats you need, and overviews on the map, besides. That will immediately tell you what's running low or what will be running low, which is how you figure your priorities for each game.

Hi,

Great advise, thanks. But what should I do now? I took your advise on trying for a high score, and this is where i'm at...

I'm on a 10x10 nightmare board. I've got most the map reclaimed. Only one corner of the board (about 23 squares) are free. 8 squares are directly touching my fort. My total defense is 88 survivors (about 1523 defense if all protecting the fort). The hoard arrives every 4 or 5 days, 500-600 danger at most. I have no problem protecting.

I'm just in repeat mode right now. Clear the 8 touching squares from zombies, defend from the hoard, clear the 8 touching squares from zombies, defend from the hoard... etc.

Is there anything else I can do or do I just repeat until i get board?

Thanks!
Andrew....

Tip for Nightmare mode:All soilders kill 3 zombies!And To destory a Overunned sqaure!You have to send 25 soilders to kill them all!Note:there is 75 zombies in overunned sqaure.

Good comment.

In Nightmare mode: It take 5 solders to clear a Troubled square and 7 to clear a Hazardous square.

Not sure about Infested...

Still not sure how to score higher than 600,000 points in a game.

Very enjoyable and addictive game. I've been playing on and off since it was posted, though I haven't managed to beat Nightmare yet.

Something weird happened today though. I was playing 12x12 Hard and got five endings: my scientists cured zombieism twice and both times counted as separate endings. Apparently, I had two labs working on this concurrently, with the second lab having started a few days after the first one. IIRC I had a total of 5 labs cleared at the time.

so is there a way to train people to be scouts? or do you have to send one of your other types of people to go?

One day to go for Best Of voting, so I'm gonna stump for Rebuild! Don't forget how many hours you put into it. Great replay value even after all this time.

Bug report... I'm playing on the site, with Firefox and updated Flash at the same settings. My forts are mysteriously disappearing between browser restarts. I have a program that sorts and protects flash cookies, and I have the files as usual, they just went from thousands in filesize to 216 each (empty slots). It *is* recognizing my user name, so it's defn mine. Granted, I've been having some flash problems, but if it's on my end then the files should've been corrupted, not deleted/reset. A bit heartbroken! I had a really great fort going. Surprising too because the save points are between days.

I restarted the whole computer, and I've still got the same problem... but I looked at the flash cookies a little more carefully, and I think my fort is *there*. It just doesn't register when I load the game, just the default new fort and 2 empty slots. And it's still loading my default user name.

I just thought you should know, 'cause this is totally new for me. If I had accidentally clicked delete, that'd be one thing, but there's something odder going on. Well, thanks for checking anyway.