- Version 0.2.0 Progress - 21 May 2026
Hey guys,Let's talk about the upcoming update, new features and some related news.Animation OverhaulTo start with, I completely overhauled the game's animation system and changed how animations are controlled under the hood. The old animation system relied on a fixed animation tree and signals from various other systems to transition states, then it would wait for animations to play before sending signals back to those systems to trigger gameplay events. This didn't scale well with the complexity of the game at all and was prone to causing a lot of spaghetti code and gamebreaking bugs. It also came with some major limitations that were preventing the implementation of more advanced combat features. As such I replaced it with a new implementation where all gameplay functionality runs completely independent of animations and the animation state merely reflects what's going on internally.…
- November 2025 Progress - 7 December 2025
Hey guys,Let's talk about animation systems.Animation Trees and AI InteractionLast time we concluded the AI refactor portion of this upcoming update, this month we took a pass at the animation system that's interconnected with the AI. Until now we've been using Godot's built-in animation tree to handle transitions and playback. You can think of an animation tree as a series of branching animation nodes, transitions and blend values that are combined together to calculate a final animation. This allows for easy layering of different animations for upper and lower body, smoothing cross-fades, etc. To control this tree structure, AI systems would send transition requests to the animation system to trigger animation changes, then listen for callback events that happened at certain frames in the animation to trigger gameplay behavior (for example picking up an item for hauling midway through…
- October 2025 Progress - 8 November 2025
Hey guys,It's time for a brief progress update.AI RefactorI mentioned last time that this update will focus on a major under-the-hood overhaul of the AI and animation system in preparation for a new combat control scheme. The AI portion of that refactor is now complete. It took a bit longer than originally expected, partly because it turned out there were more issues than anticipated, partly because of some personal health matters keeping me from dedicating as many hours as I would've liked over the last few weeks.The previous AI setup was a rather convoluted mess where AI agents would sometimes pull tasks from a behavior tree, sometimes other systems would push tasks directly on them and fight each other for control. Mental states acted as a magic second behavior tree that was completely hardcoded and could lock out other tasks through a complicated system of priority layers. Then we h…
- v0.1.6 Update - 6 October 2025
Minor hotfix update addressing several smaller issues.FixesFixed an error that occurred when a portal was destroyed while agents were trying to path through it.Corpses no longer incorrectly show as blobs in the fog of war.Fixed context menu not opening for corpses and storage containers.
- Tutorial Update, AI Progress - 29 September 2025
Hey guys,Let's talk about some progress.Version 0.1.5 passed beta testing and went live earlier today. We've already talked about the new additions in our previous dev log, so I won't go into detail here. That said, while this update was undergoing testing we've already started work on the next upcoming release. Right now there are three main areas of gameplay we want to address in the near future: combat, survivor/base management and visitor mechanics.Combat is rather skeletal at the moment. The foundational mechanics of melee and gunplay are there, but we still have many basic and advanced features planned that need to be added for a fleshed out experience. Management has a number of features that were almost ready for launch but ultimately had to be cut before the deadline. Now that there's less time pressure we want to finish them and get them into the game proper. Visitor mechanics…
- v0.1.5 Update - 29 September 2025
New feature update featuring various UI improvements. We've added a basic tutorial popup system to teach new players how to play the game. Events now have a dedicated notification UI instead of spawning an immediate popup dialog. A new alert system notifies you of ongoing issues requiring your attention.Additionally, we added several new apparel variants and fixed various bugs and issues, including a save game issue that caused games not to load if they were saved while an animal was fleeing.AdditionsNew ballistic vest armor, can be looted from gun stores or found on elite raiders.Added several new outfit variants.Implemented a new tutorial UI. Tutorial messages will pop up throughout the game and inform the player about mechanics.New UI will display alerts about ongoing issues the player needs to address.Events now create notifications on a new dedicated UI instead of popups.ChangesRai…
- August 2025 Progress - 2 September 2025
Hey guys,Let's talk about update progress.Last month was split between feature development and dealing with various logistical matters. Aside from some smaller fixes (including one for the save issue people have experienced when saving with animals in the fleeing state) this upcoming update will focus on improving UI usability, making it easier to learn the mechanics of the game.AMD Driver IssuesFirst off I'd like to talk about an issue a number of users with AMD graphics cards have been reporting where upon starting the game they are met with a grey screen, only UI being rendered properly. We've investigated the issue and found that it is caused by AMD's 25.8.1 driver update. The update was released shortly after the game and breaks the shader compiler used by the Vulkan renderer. This is a general issue with this particular driver version and affects any game using the same renderer.…
- v0.1.4 Update - 4 August 2025
AdditionsAnimals now flee from hunters when attacked.New auto-save feature to periodically save the game. The feature can be configured through the settings menu.Map generation now shows a loadscreen instead of locking up the game for several seconds.Added new exploration and combat music. Exploration ambience plays during expeditions, while combat music turns on whenever the player enters combat.Added a console warning if crafting task is running in an invalid state.ChangesWhen selecting things, plants are now sorted lower than items, meaning clicking on a tile with an item on it will select the item before any grass/bushes.Hunting and crafting bills now default to "do until x" instead of "do forever."FixesFixed a VFX-related error when returning from expeditions.Fixed several errors around visiting NPCs and save games.Fixed a save load error that sometimes happened when field-dressing…
- Update Progress, Forum Launch - 2 August 2025
Hey guys,Let's talk about some news.Update ProgressOver the last few days we've been working on various quality-of-life improvements. We've taken in player feedback and focused on some of the more straight-forward issues to get them resolved quickly. One issue we've seen repeatedly is people starting the game and getting confused by the map generation, thinking the game had crashed while it was calculating the map. To solve this, we've added a load screen to indicate progress while map generation is going on.We've made a number of additional fixes to save games and added an auto-save feature to help prevent loss of progress. The game will now create periodic saves, as well as save whenever the player goes on or returns from an expedition. The feature can be configured through the game's settings. The game's soundtrack has been expanded with a new ambience and combat track that play on e…
- v0.1.3 Hotfix - 30 July 2025
ChangesAdjusted font scaling to reduce blurriness on lower resolution screens.FixesFixed various save errors when corpses or visitors were on the map.Blood loss now properly decreases when injuries have been treated.Fixed an animation issue that occurred when picking up multiple items in a row.Crafting tasks now check if a required ingredient is reserved by someone else before starting.Visitors now correctly go to the center of the player base.When a visitor is recruited they correctly update fog of war now.Fixed an issue around weapons in loadouts not being counted properly.Leaving expeditions now properly clears and recalculates wall meshes.Storage now displays the correct state when loading the game.Drafted survivors will no longer consider animals as hostile targets.Fixed various issues around the field-dressing task.
- Post-Launch Update - 28 July 2025
Hey guys,Let's talk about the launch.Where we are currentlyAll in all the launch went about as we expected, which is to say not great. We did what we could to get as many features ready for release as possible, but given the strict budget there was never much hope for anything but a very basic release. Since we're a small team we didn't have much of a testing setup either, the result being a lot of bugs slipped past us when we tested the game internally.While this type of release is not that uncommon among small indie teams, they usually launch through vendors other than Steam to smaller audiences that are more dedicated. We found that our core base that has been following the state of development and our news updates has been able to enjoy the game a lot, even in this early state. Unfortunately, launching on Steam exposed the game to a large crowd of people with very different expectat…
- v0.1.2 Hotfix - 27 July 2025
ChangesIncreased frequency of random events triggering on the home map. Wandering scavengers should now show up sooner and more often, allowing the player to recruit and talk to them for new expedition targets.FixesOptimized pathfinding to opt out early on unreachable destinations. This should significantly reduce lag spikes in cases where lots of build sites have been placed in unreachable locations.Crafting recipes now account for all possible ingredients on the map correctly.Fixed another save game issue that happened when a survivor was in the middle of equipping or picking up an item.Corrected build site pathing to once again path correctly to roof and floor build sites.Picking up weapons and apparel from storage no longer picks up the whole stack.Survivor animations no longer get stuck when trying to pick up an immediately adjacent item.Plugged a memory leak caused by VFX on exped…
- v0.1.1 Hotfix - 26 July 2025
New AdditionsAdded a version string to the main menu for easier bug reporting.Different types of bed now define a rest quality stat, with lower quality beds filling the sleep need slower.Added a popup dialog when saves fail because of an error. Previously saves would encounter errors mid-save, causing the save to fail with no feedback, leading to a lot of lost save files and making it hard to find these issues in testing.Survivors now initialize with a default assignment of work priorities based on their work preferences.ChangesSurvivors now prioritize sleeping more during night-time.FixesFixed an issue with sleep recovery speed, causing survivors to refill their sleep need way too fast.Drafted survivors didn't give the option to tend injuries while drafted. They can now tend regardless of drafted state.Fixed various save game related errors that would prevent a game from saving properl…
- Video Log #1 - 16 July 2025
Hey guys,We've released a new video update talking about the state of the game, Early Access and future plans.An important point to note concerning the release date: unfortunately we've encountered a number of critical bugs in QA that took longer than expected to resolve. Because of this, we've decided to move the release day from Monday the 21st to Friday the 25th. While we don't like to delay the launch, we'd rather not release the game in a dysfunctional state. The new release date is fixed and there won't be any more delays beyond that. While we understand that many of you are keen to get your hands on the game, at the end of the day we want to deliver a functioning product, even if it is "only" an initial Early Access version.That’s it for today. Until next time, stay safe and keep surviving!
- May 2025 Progress - 31 May 2025
Hey guys, Let's talk about some progress. Visual Improvements, Wall Optimizations Following up from last month, we wrapped up our work on the game's visuals. The new outline algorithm we were working on ran into some unexpected engine bugs. While we could fix or work around those bugs, doing so would have taken an indeterminate amount of time. Given that it's a relatively minor feature we decided it's not worth putting in what could well be multiple weeks of dev time at this point and went with a stop-gap fix to Godot's built-in outline shader instead. It's hardly perfect, but fixes the most glaring problems with the default outline and will hold us over until we can put some time towards addressing those engine issues. Walls and floors received some visual improvements as well. Previously every wall mesh was rendered individually, leading to missing corner pieces, performance problems…
- April 2025 Progress - 3 May 2025
Hey guys, Let's talk about last month's progress. Rooms, Rocks and Visuals As we're nearing our release date, we want to get some more promotional material out. We've been picking up the pieces since our publisher's bankruptcy and while we don't have the resources to do a full-blown PR campaign we do want to put out at least one or two brief videos showcasing gameplay before July. While our publisher's marketing made heavy use of mockups based on future plans and what the game is meant to look like someday, we believe it is important that we give you guys an honest presentation of the game and what Early Access is going to look like. That's why last month we put some effort into polishing up the game's visuals. Before we rework store page screenshots, press kits and videos we want to get the game looking more or less how it will on release, so when we show off new features you'll know w…
- March 2025 Update - 31 March 2025
Hey guys, Time for another progress update. Finishing up base building On the base building side of things, we finished the crafting system: you can now build crafting stations, assign and manage bills, and survivors will carry them out. We added a number of new crafting stations and recipes, as well as some new floor and furniture options. We also implemented the last couple survivor needs, finalizing that part of the game. In addition to new features, we did an initial QA pass, fixing various bugs, performance problems, UI and quality-of-life issues, with a total of over 50 bugs squashed. Combat, stealth and expeditions With base building in a decent state, we’re now moving on to combat and exploration mechanics. Since combat requires weaponry, we’re starting with the loadout management system. Survivors in AoA need to carry all kinds of gear in their pockets, from food and ammo to co…
- Roadmap Update - 25 January 2025
Hey guys, As you recall, in our last update we talked about how our publisher went insolvent and we have to work around a reduced Early Access budget as a result. Today I'd like to go into more detail on what that means for the roadmap, what our plans are for the initial release and what the implications of the new budget are. As always, you can find the full roadmap over on our homepage at: https://vivid-storm.com/roadmap/ Base Management This milestone focuses on building a home base and keeping your survivors' needs met. At a basic level, you have your survivors with a basic set of needs: food, sleep, purpose, comfort and beauty. That means you'll need to assign survivors work types they enjoy, provide them with bedrooms and dining areas, and farm crops to turn into meals and clothing. Failure to meet your survivors' needs will lower mood and trigger mental breaks at lower levels. It…
- January '25 Update - 17 January 2025
Hey guys, With the new year it is time we give you another update on the game, where we are development-wise, and how things are set to go forward this year. On Budgets and Publishers As you may recall, shortly after our Kickstarter finished, we signed up with publisher Camlann Games to handle the marketing and distribution for the game. After our Unity-related issues they also offered to fund the Godot port, which eventually extended into a larger deal to finance a more extensive Early Access release and additional team members to help speed things along. With the new budget agreed on, we drafted up a timeline, hired new team members and soon got to work. While the new team members were a major boost to productivity, things unfortunately didn't last very long. Soon after we began work on the Godot port, Camlann ran into severe financial troubles. It started with missed or severely dela…
- Roadmap Progress - Oct 2024 - 28 October 2024
Hey Survivors, Progress being made on the roadmap to Early Access. Focus is on getting to a core gameplay loop of: Build -> Explore -> Fight -> Loot -> Upgrade More to come as we head into Nov...
