Steam's endless torrent of new games means that far too many of them go overlooked, but it also means that surprise hits are being created pretty much every week. Such is the case with Vein, an early access zombie survival sandbox that aspires to be a hybrid of DayZ and Project Zomboid, and has quietly but consistently accrued an impressive following over the last few weeks.
Broadly, Vein is a familiar affair, plonking you in an open world where civilization has been overrun by zombies and tasking you with staying alive in its sandbox. Like Zomboid, its appeal lies in its high level of granularity, with players able to interact with pretty much anything in its world."Open mailboxes, adjust faucets, and knock on doors," the game's Steam page promises, adding "throw a can of beans at a zombie if you like." I do like.
But all of this is presented in 3D, with dynamic seasons and highly perceptive undead. Even with a billion zombie survival games out there, you can see why fans of the genre might find Vein appealing. Even so, its launch has taken developer Ramjet Studios by surprise, so much so that it's having to readjust to compensate.
Ramjet explained all this in its most recent weekly blog post (via PCGamesN) which also details what's coming to Vein next. At the outset of the update, Ramjet mentions that it is "still quite busy from the early access launch, which was much larger than we expected, but we're managing what we can."
It's toward the end of the post where Ramjet explains in detail what's going on. "With the success of early access, we have a lot of considerations to make in terms of prioritising features, and there's a bit of a transition period as we settle finances and expand the team. Apart from game development work, a bunch of time has been just doing regulatory/financial/legal business work, so that's all happening simultaneously."
All of this is affecting how fast Ramjet can work on the next update. But the studio is beavering away regardless. For the next patch, players can expect changes to zombie spawning algorithms so they won't randomly spawn right behind you or reappear too quickly in a house you've recently searched. In addition, the studio is working on replacing foliage assets with better quality art, starting with cornfields, fixing double doors so they open and close as a single unit, adding gamepad support, and introducing new seed types so players can grow vegetables like artichokes, broccoli, cabbages, cauliflowers and more.
Finally, Ramjet is also looking at adding two bigger features to the next update, namely "better animals and better hunting". While Ramjet doesn't explicitly say this, it sounds like these are a bit more speculative, and I wouldn't consider them guaranteed additions at this point.
