Hey survivors! I’m Evan Wolbach, founder of Dead Drop Studios, and a solo indie developer working tirelessly to drag you kicking and screaming back into the world of survival horror. I’m here to tell you all the grisly details about Outbreak: Endless Nightmares and explain how PlayStation, especially PS5, has allowed the series to take a generational leap. Get ready to lose yourself in this new nightmare.
Apocalyptic levels of player feedback led to this nightmare
For almost six years players have been blasting away the undead in the Outbreak series, covering the events of an undead apocalypse. Each title has slowly iterated based on player feedback but now it’s time for a generational leap. High quality mo-cap animations, a persistent gameplay experience to level up your survivor over a 10+ hour adventure, semi-procedurally generated levels, access to multiple camera views, improved co-op split screen experience with a streamlined interface, a deep crafting and loot system, and much more are waiting for you.
Outbreak: Endless Nightmares is a love letter to retro survival horror.
Face the undead any way you choose
You now have the opportunity to choose how you want to play this nightmare. The entire game was built from the ground up to play great in a classic survival horror fixed camera, over-the-shoulder or first-person view, with intentional focus on designing environments so enemies, traps and loot is visible in all views. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t secrets hidden around, and you might find that a useful item obscured in the fixed camera view is revealed when you swap to over-the-shoulder. With user-configurable options like FOV, inverse look, left-or-right player placement in OTS view and much more, you can configure the camera exactly as you’d like.
You also now have access to a free-look tactical camera that you can use to survey the environment for danger. When using the tactical camera, the entire game freezes, including all physics and visual effects, so you can line up the perfect screenshot too.
Next generation survival horror is coming for you…
Choose from six survivors, each with their own unique backstories, abilities and equipment. As you accumulate XP, your stats will continue to improve and you will be able to select from 15 different perks unique to your survivor.
Over time you’ll find that the hub area, where you’re safe to restock on supplies and upgrade your character continues to expand as you gain access to more rooms in the hospital. These rooms will have essential supplies, as well as access to numerous NPCs – some offering shops, alternate costumes, new dungeons (called Anomalies) and more.
Every time you enter an Anomaly, you’ll find a semi-procedurally generated terror-filled obstacle course in front of you. You’ll explore many different locations, encounter new and horrific traps, battle grotesque creatures and hopefully find powerful supplies like new weapons, healing items, gun powder to craft ammo, upgrade parts and more. And you may even randomly stumble across NPCs in these anomalies, which may help… or hurt you! If you’re especially lucky, you may even find access to your linked storage cache which will allow you to manage your greater inventory.
The undead indie journey with PS5
Being a solo indie developer is about doing more with less. But now I’m now able to develop for platforms like PlayStation 5 with no compromises. As a PS4 developer, it was a delight to find that all my experience transitioned seamlessly to this new console – but now with virtually every bottleneck removed.
Semi-procedurally generated levels keep the scares unpredictable while the PS5’s high-end CPU and SSD loads them in seconds (or less!). The incredibly powerful GPU, alongside loads of RAM, allows me to boost texture quality to maximum levels while ensuring all lighting and shadows are real-time with multi-layered VFX for gore, explosions, and more. Particles from these effects feature full collision detection to interact with the environment.
All of this culminates to create terrifying environments with shadows leaping across the walls, while every bit of gore is disgustingly detailed to perfection. And that’s not all, every action your character takes is affected by real-time physics, such as your magazine dropping during a reload, shell casings ejecting from your weapon and many more subtle details never before seen in the series. You’ll feel each trigger pull thanks to the high-end haptic feedback available in the DualSense wireless controller, with additional enhancements coming in a future update to support trigger resistance, as well as additional DualSense functionality while in combat or exploring.
We’re not finished with you
Outbreak: Endless Nightmares is coming to PlayStation on May 19. Experience it in native 4K on PS5 and prepare to get lost in these endless nightmares.
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