Thank you all for being here still. As promised an update before the end of the year. I have mostly been experimenting with the visuals, trying to get a higher quality look while maintaining vibrancy and much better effects. The zombie models were almost completely redone at one point, but they are the heart and soul of the game, so only slight changes were made to make them look smoother and have less weird shading.

Otherwise, work is continuing in my free time as I push forward with my other work (Read the previous news update for a better explanation) https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/games/645530/announcements/detail/4183358371422028876.

I'm excited for what's to come and I hope many of you will be too.

Environment

Working on dynamic atmosphere and day and night cycle. Testing detailed stylized rocks and majorly improved grass.

Volumetric lights and awesome post-processing.

It's still a small empty plot of land for testing so it will be a bit bare bones, missing cliffs, trees, rocks, details ,etc. These are the base minimum just to get a good understanding of how the elements will look together.

Effects

Lots of unique effects.

Cool portal vfx
Here is an experimental paintshot (might not be used for paint though could be used to shoot liquids and potion ), just a fun toy
Zombies

What Raise The Dead is all about. This time they are more smoothed out and colorful! Still goofy and minimally dangerous!

Lots of experimentation happening, but I think the improvements will mostly be graphics, presentation, feel and quality! The game design will be upheld at its core, only improved. So you'll still be catching zombies and putting them in the lab, harvesting their parts and such. Testing out potions and doing crafting, farming, base management, research and exploring.

Thanks for sticking around, and until next time!

Thank you all for your interest in Raise The Dead! This game was a dream project of mine for a long time, an idea I always wanted to get back to one day in some way.
That time has come - more or less. This will be a bit of a long post explaining the situation.

I didn't mean to make this go live immediately, and I didn't realize until I saw a comment in the forums. But basically I had explained my situation to Steam and actually had to appeal for them to reactivate it, so I am grateful to them for believing in me. And I hope some of you will believe in me too.

Raise The Dead was cancelled at the time due to a combination of a difficult life situation and a bad experience with a publisher. This made it very difficult to continue both from a survival aspect (lack of money, mental health) and a motivation aspect (feeling defeated after being treated badly by a publisher). I announced the cancellation of the game as I did not want to make it just to make it. I basically stopped game dev for a while, and worked on finding a new software development job and improving my mental health. I wanted to make this game something people would love, something I could be proud of. I always knew I would return to a similar idea, but now I've decided to take it in its existing form and improve upon that and create a great game.

I have so much more experience and ideas now. I just played it recently after years of not even wanting to look at it and it's rough obviously, but still packed with so much potential. Yes the influences are obvious: Slime Rancher, Harvest Moon, etc; but it's unique enough to stand as it's own and it will be even more so as it develops. I believe it's beautiful to be inspired by others, I will never shy away from that. Beautiful works (games, movies, music) inspire us in more ways than we realize, more than just in our art and creations, but in our personalities and motives and drives as well! We draw influences from all these + other people and it helps us both grow and shape us into better people.
(Anyway that's a bit off-topic, but just something I feel I need to say and maybe it gives a little bit of an idea of the type of person I am)

I have been working on a lot of games (freelance mostly) and my skills have grown a lot. Looking at the code for Raise The Dead made me cringe a bit lol - but hey it worked.
I will be recreating it 'almost' from scratch, I just know so much more now, even the tech has improved so I see more opportunity to even surpass what it would've been back then.
But my current plan is to finish my other game which is listed under another company and Raise The Dead will be placed under another company soon enough, I don't want to reveal all that so soon - once again, I didn't realize when Steam reactivated this it would immediately show up to everyone.

Based on that there probably won't be many updates for a while, but Raise The Dead will come. I will mostly be doing small experiments and slow development in my spare time for now and will announce when development is in full force.

Things are looking great and I am super excited.

Thank you and hope to see you soon!