August DevLog 2025

Authors: Kittengirlgames (Rylan SD)

Work on Zombified: It Begins is progressing!

A few features mentioned in the June and July DevLog of 2025 are either completed or are a work in progress. Here are some of the features, their progress, and what they do.

Hunger, Health and Thirst Systems

Your hunger and thirst systems keep track of how hungry or thirsty the player is. For thirst, the player can drink out of the stream that leads from River Falls, or they can drink out of puddles during rainy days. For hunger, the player can grab food from the prey pile. After adding a piece of prey to their inventory, the player can click on that slot in their inventory and chose the "eat" option. It is planned to add insects and worms that the player can snack on as well for minimal hunger points.

There's also a nutrition value, which tells the hunger bar how quickly to deplete. If the player snacks on insects, only minimal nutrition points are added. But eating a snake can add up to six nutrition points.

You hunger is deducted by a timer, just like thirst. But depending on what the player ate last with their hunger above 30, more seconds (the nutrition value) are added to each time integer that your hunger decreases by 1.

You may have noticed a health bar. This is different than your battle health bar, and tells you the overall health of the player.

Low hunger or thirst, as well as being exhausted from excessive training will result in the fatigued health status. Your attacks are 50% weaker, and you're more likely to miss. Having your hunger or thirst at 0 will make your character have the sick status. Sick players can't attack at all, and can only attempt to flee from battle. Sick players must go to Edith to be healed.

Injured players are the most vulnerable, as losing a real battle while injured will cause the player to die. Injury happens after losing a battle to an enemy (such as a zombie.) Injury must be treated quickly by Edith.

Incomplete features (hunger, health and thirst)

• Healing players will stay in the healing status before they rest in a separate bed that appears in the healer's area. Resting is different than sleeping, and won't progress the day.
• Edith doesn't have the ability heal a player quite yet-- it's hypothetical in development.

Hunting

The player can learn to hunt on day 3. Marble will teach the player how to hunt with a set of visual tips. The following prey can be caught on River Hill, the safest place to hunt:

• Salamanders. These little lizard-like creatures are often seen as black with yellow spots. You can use the pounce move to catch one (by holding space, releasing, and holding the arrow keys.) Landing on top of one gives you 5 EXP and adds it to the prey pile.
• Snakes. These are long, legless creatures that can range from small to bigger than an apprentice. Smaller snakes are easier to pounce on and catch, but large snakes trigger a battle. They have low health and strength, but can use the flee move to get away from you.
• Worms. These can also be found around the map. They offer minimal hunger points, no nutrition, and can be hunted by just clicking on them.

Incomplete features (hunting)

1. The ability to hunt near the river, which is generally unsafe due to the chance of zombie spawning. You can go into the river and hunt minnows by swimming, but swimming for a long time while fatigued can drain your energy and cause you to drown.
2. On rainy days, you can hunt frogs and toads, which spawn by the river bed and by the caves.
3. So far, there is no coding for salamanders to show up in the prey pile. The prey pile assets are also incomplete.

Swimming

While generally unsafe as an apprentice due to zombies, swimming is a way to cross the falls and get to Mystery-pack on the other side. It is also a way to hunt as an older apprentice. You need to use the pounce move by holding space to jump into the water, and then, you're in the water.

For now, you can only swim back and fourth, but here are some hypothetical features we may add.

• Like stated in hunting, the ability to dive and hunt minnows (maybe another kind of fish?)
• An energy bar that appears in the water. Every time you dive, you lose energy. Having 0% energy will cause you to drown.
• The ability to swim with your party.
• Maybe a pond area that's for relaxation?

Incomplete Features

My first priority is to finish the training from days 2-5, which is the first moon of your training. I still need to finish days 2-3 with character interactions, as well as the gathering on day 4. My other priority is the party system, which I explained like this: 

"The mongooses in your party will  follow you around the map, and will fight with you in enemy battles. Party members can be chatted with, and may have exclusive dialogue depending on where you are."

"Party members will mostly stick by you, but hanging out in the same spot for a while will cause your party members to wander around the same area, rest, and chat with each other. Some party members will urge you to keep moving if you have an important task."

"To Party Spar, click on one of your party members to assign a “party task.” If you don’t currently have a party task (either one assigned by another pack member or one you assigned yourself,)  a dropdown menu will appear,  giving you the options to “party spar” or “party hunt.”"

These are just ideas for the party system. Of course, it's inspired by Wildflight on Scratch.

If anyone has any ideas for simple minigames that can add to your training experience, let me know in the comments!

Things that will be certainly added before the release:

1. Of course, finishing the animations of the other characters.
2. Adding cutscenes for certain things.
3. The healer path.
4. Different endings depending on your actions
5. The complex save system.
6. A second gathering

Other ideas I have pitched in general:

1. The possible appearance of Dusk and Log in the healer path
2. While I am working on it, I'm not sure how exactly it will be executed. But I'm using friendship points to determine a relationship with mongooses your age so you can choose your close friends.
3. Maybe introducing Olive in the first game rather than the second.
4. A more interesting way of telling stories through cutscenes instead of dialogue.
5. Possibly a friend from another pack? Maybe you can choose?
6. Gamepad support

Last thing's last: this is a huge project with Turbowarp exclusive code that is Itch exclusive and will not be released on other platforms... the only other platform I may release it on is GameJolt, but probably not until the whole game is complete (2027-2028).

When will It Begins release?

Good question, but I'm thinking it might release in Spring to Summer of 2026. I want to finish it before I start heading back into the workforce in June of 2026 as a camp counselor... and maybe take up some classes. I will not release a release date until it's in the final stages of development (full release.)

None of the Zombified games are full release yet. Stay tuned!