New Features, Balance, and Performance Optimization

Hi everyone,

I have been listening to all of your feedback and I'm excited to share that a brand new demo update is live with a mix of balance changes, quality-of-life improvements, and a big round of performance boosts. The game is also now available to wishlist on Steam. If you have played and enjoyed the demo, please do wishlist the game as it will help me tremendously in getting more attention for it.

Here is what's new in the demo.

A Faster, Cleaner Upgrade Path

The skill tree now scales up much faster, with roughly half as many upgrades overall. Instead of concentric circles, you now have an organized tech tree that’s easier to read, plan around, and optimize.

More Turrets, More Firepower

You can now unlock up to five auto-turrets. They also start strong enough to one-shot zombies at base level, so your early game feels snappier and builds have more room to grow.

Chain Reactions and Civilian Logic

• Shockwaves now chain-react and wipe out a percentage of low-level zombies in increasing tiers: 5 percent, then 10 percent, then 15 percent.
• Civilian cleanup is fully fixed. Evacuation upgrades now removes them all by percent instead of a flat value.

Rewards, Penalties, and Wave Changes

• Penalties for killing civilians are higher, while bounty zombies now pay out more gold.
• The final zombie is larger and tankier with double the base health, making the end of a run feel more dramatic.
• At the end of each wave, you now get a counter showing how many zombies and civilians you killed both this round and total.
• You also gain extra wave time for every surviving civilian.

Performance Optimizations

A large set of behind-the-scenes improvements make the demo run smoother, especially on lower-end machines:

• Frame-based chain reaction queue for smoother chain kills

• Entity sprite pooling to reuse sprites 

• Global VFX caps and per-effect particle limits

• Gold display caching so UI only refreshes when needed

• Squared-distance checks for faster targeting and AoE

• Removed debug logs for cleaner performance

• Safer sprite resets in the pooling system

• Minimal HUD redraws to reduce UI overhead

Thank you to everyone who has been playing, testing, and sending feedback. This update makes the demo more stable and more fun to optimize. Let me know how it feels, and enjoy the new tech tree and turret setups!

Again, if you enjoy the demo, please don't forget to wishlist on Steam.