Zone:Blackfall
Night over the start camp. The derelict hangs in the sky above the Zone's centre.
The ZoneOpen the map
FramesFrom the build

Nine years inside the fence

WishlistSteam page coming

A first-person voxel survival shooter in one seamless Zone. Scavenge it, fight over it, and carry what you find back out through the wire.

Dev log, 12 Nov: the derelict over the centre Pre-alpha. In-game frames

The Zone

Thirty-two kilometres a side and one seamless map, with no loading between places. Four rings around the power station, and each one closer in is worse than the last.

Top-down map of the Zone from the world generator: the fence, the reservoir and the main rail line running north to the station.

    Blackfall Power Station

    Core. The centre of the Zone

    Four reactor blocks and two cooling towers, one of them down. Block 2 is a black, slagged ruin, and the derelict hangs above it.

    Fringe 12 to 16 km out
    Farmland, villages and birch woods. Scavs and bandits. You start on its south edge.
    Belt 7 to 12 km
    The main rail line, towns and lakes. The army and the contractors work here.
    Exclusion 3 to 7 km
    Uplands, burned forest, military sites and labs.
    Core inside 3 km
    Ash and slag, the dead city and the station. Even the scavs stay out.

    Factions

    Six sides on the roads. Each one came for the programme, or never left. Press play to hear a radio intercept; sound only starts when you ask for it.

    Gear

    Every gun is built from its real parts. Swap sights and muzzles in the field; barrels and gas blocks only change at a workbench. Parts wear, rounds misfeed, and you clear the jam yourself.

    AV-79 Purga

    Calibre
    5.45×39
    Type
    Assault rifle

    The Zone's working rifle. Also comes as the AV-79 SD, suppressed.

    Some of the parts on the bench

    Armour works by class and wear: from a soft ballistic cap to a visored heavy helmet, from a worn soft vest to a heavy plate carrier with ceramic plates. Rounds roll against it, and AP rounds with violet tips roll better.

    Survival

    Everything you take in, you can lose. Everything you bring out is yours.

    Night in the Fringe. A weapon light picks out a cottage wall.
    Hard loss
    Die, and everything you carried stays on your body where you fell. Only the secure pouch comes home. Walk back for the rest before Meridian finds it: what a contractor loots is gone, insured or not.
    Wounds
    Head, chest, stomach, arms and legs, each its own problem. Bleeds keep bleeding, broken legs need a splint, and food, water and energy run down on the walk.
    Inventory
    A grid where every item has a size, cases inside rigs inside packs, and weight you feel in your stamina. Items you find in the Zone carry a mark that says so.
    Safe zones and traders
    Four camps march inward, one per ring. Weapons lower inside, one shared stash and a workbench wait in each, and the traders pay in Kupons, the coupon money printed after the fall. Mykola insures your kit for 8% of its value.

    PvP and co-op

    The same guns, ballistics, armour and wounds, in two other ways to play.

    The Depot PvP map from above: brick warehouses and rail sidings.

    PvP servers

    A separate mode in the old-school server style: no stash, no hard loss, just the fight. Host a match, fill it with bots from Recruit to Nightmare, and pick the weather and the hour.

    • Team deathmatch
    • Free-for-all
    • Gun game
    • Team gun game
    • Zombie defense

    Thirty ranks, ten prestiges, weapon levels that unlock attachments, and calling cards and medals for the profile.

    • Headshot
    • Longshot
    • Collateral
    • First blood
    • Payback
    • Savior
    Evening fog over open land, a lone birch, the dead walking in from the treeline.

    Co-op

    Working now: a dedicated server for four players, where everyone walks the same Zone and sees each other in it.

    Next: co-op PvE for two to four, with the story playable together and each player keeping their own quest log. After that, a shared PvPvE Zone with the three player factions, clans and weekly fights over the checkpoints and bridges.

    Underground runs for one to four players are in already: Garrison 7's bunker, with keycards, an alarm, and the Major waiting at the bottom.

    Frames from the build

    Straight out of the game, no paintover. Pre-alpha, so the look is still moving.

    Dev log

    Day by day, from the first commit. Every entry is in the build.

      • The derelict now hangs over the Zone's centre and answers when the Shard calls.
      • Co-op, step one: a dedicated server for four players.
      • The Reed Choir comes out on the marsh at night. It hears rhythm, not noise.
      • A drivable UAZ-469, with jerrycans, a trunk stash and tyres that go flat under fire.
      • Zombie defense joins the PvP modes, and zombie packs walk the Zone at dusk.
      • Garrison 7's bunker, its alarm, and the Major.
      • The renderer moves to Forward+ on Vulkan.
      • PvP gets its match loop, bots and profile.
      • Recorded guns, footsteps and ambience replace the placeholder sounds.
      • Armour by class and wear, with a roll for every round.
      • Day one: a first-person controller, the world generator, the first guns and the first slice of the Zone.

    Wishlist

    The Steam page isn't live yet. When it opens, this button will take you straight to it.

    Wishlist on Steam Page coming

    Until then, the dev log is the best place to follow the build.