Fighting changed this week. Until now your character hit back on its own when something bit it. Now it doesn’t. A zombie can be chewing on you and your character will stand there until you tell it what to do. Nothing you own fights for you.
Why nothing swings back
That sounds harsh, and it is, but it follows from the plan: your character stays in the city when you close the tab. If it fought back on its own, it would be picking fights while you’re asleep, and a fight is the loudest thing that can happen on a street. I would rather you come back to a character that stood still and got bitten than one that pulled every zombie in the district onto itself.
So everything is a tap and a confirm. Tap a tile and you get a short list of what you can do there: move, enter, break in, attack. Every line shows what it costs you in energy and how loud it is before you commit. Hitting something with your hands or a bat is silent. Firing a gun is heard across the neighbourhood. The menu doesn’t let you forget which one you’re about to do.
Staying in the fight
Attacking is a commitment. You pick a target and your character keeps hitting it until it drops, or it gets out of reach, or you move. Moving breaks the fight. You don’t fight and walk at the same time; you stay and finish it, or you leave.
Guns came in with the rest. A gun needs a line to the target, a magazine with something in it, and ammo to reload from. When the magazine is empty you reload, and that is its own action with its own small noise. A gun is the loudest thing you can do, so carrying one is carrying a choice you haven’t made yet.
For now you can only attack zombies. Other survivors are off the table this week, not because I’ve decided against it, but because I want to feel how the zombie fight plays before I let people use it on each other.
The doubt is speed. Confirming every step and every attack is safe, and on a phone it’s the only way I know to avoid fat-finger deaths. But it might be too slow when there are three of them and you need to move now. I’ll know when I’ve died to it a few times.