[June 2013 Update] Hi Everyone! Kevin here from Auxbrain, Inc. We're super excited to tell you all about our upcoming title: Zombie Highway: Driver's Ed! Driver's Ed will be a spin-off all about driving! It is not a direct sequel to Zombie Highway, it's something completely new that presents new challenges and requires new strategies all while feeling familiar. It takes place after the Zombie outbreak while much of the world population is still uninfected, a division of the government is formed to help the people adapt, and to ultimately exterminate the disease and you are enrolled in their driving school. Read on for all the details. The Highway Driver's Ed is ALL new, and that shows best in our new engine and new highway generation technology; The foundation of a great Zombie Highway sequel. Gone is the infinite straight "treadmill" road with evenly spaced plateaus. This really is a whole new world. Drive on a beautiful, infinite road complete with turns, altitude change, overpasses, cliff faces and tunnels. Guard towers are stitched seamlessly into the terrain at varying distances from the road. Boulders are strewn about. Never see an identical sequence of road twice. To be able to navigate properly, steering is all new (not auto centering), and now feels like a real car. There will be some adaptation needed for pro ZH players, but we think you'll love the more realistic feel. Zones In Driver's Ed specifically, the road is broken up into 3 zones: Freestyle - Random debris with escalating challenge Slalom - Debris that requires you to pass on one side or another to keep your current combo alive (more on this below) Tunnel - A tunnel rigged to limit your visibility by only turning on lights a limited distance in front of you which shrinks as you go further. These 3 zones provide different challenges to hone skills necessary for survival on the real Zombie Highway. The Game Scoring: Combos When you get right down to it, Driver's Ed is all about combos. It's not enough for you to simply survive anymore, you have to do it with finess. The way we measure this is by tracking how many "good" things you can do in a row... while trying to stay alive. Here is the information you are given about your current combo. Here we can see a combo of 7 items. The bar underneath '7' tells us how much time we have to do something "good" before the combo ends and our combo bonus resets. Above it we see the list of "good" things we have done, and the rewards (and combo bonuses) associated with them. These are then summed for the total combo value shown in the middle of the screen under the total score. Scraping your car on debris or a wall, missing a slalom gate, or going too far off road, are "bad" and your combo timer will be shunted brining your current combo to quick end if you are too reckless. Scoring: Distance You are of course, still rewarded for distance. With each mile your reward for survival increases rapidly. Additionally more challenging zombies appear more frequently at greater distances, providing better opportunities for bigger combos. Depending on driving style, players will choose unique strategies to maximize their score from a combination of distance and combos. The "Popper" While guns have been removed in Driver's Ed, a simplified strategic weapon is added to get you out of tough situations. All zombies brought into the controlled Driver's Ed Training course are equipped with an explosive device attached to the base of their skull. I mean, you gotta be safe right? The "Popper" activates it and the results are glorious. But watch out, it has a very limited battery life, though it is upgradeable. (Skip to 14:00) Objectives Driver's Ed introduces an all new Objective system. All objectives are achievable in any order you want. Similar objectives are organized into "stacks" to help see what kinds of objectives you are good at achieving and might want to pursue further for BIG rewards. We're also introducing an objective recommendation system which looks at your current progress and recommends objectives you are likely to achieve the quickest. Money & Experience For each point you earn, you earn $0.01. Long runs and big combos lead to big cash rewards. We want to reward your for your skill, not just time played. You are also rewarded with experience for every run based on your performance. Leveling up unlocks new features of the game as well as higher multipliers (more below). You also receive large cash and & experience rewards for achieving objectives. Upgrades Dramatically improve the performance of your training vehicle with an array of beautiful upgrades. Equip different combinations of upgrades to make your car ideal of the Objective you are trying to achieve. Multipliers When you level up, you are given a choice of which type of multiplier you want to increase: Distance or Combo? Increase your Distance multiplier for a consistent higher score OR upgrade your combo multiplier for HUGE combo bonuses, but nothing is guaranteed if you can't achieve those big combos. Nothing here is final and we've got a few more features coming before launch, check back for more info soon! We're shooting for a August release of Driver's Ed. As always we'd love to hear what you think! - Kevin
Awesome, I played Zombie Highway before and I loved, this two new games will be really great, I'm really excited to see more about him
Looks awesome! And it seems you guys are adding in what a lot of people requested for the first one - curved roads, more complex driving, etc.
Being a ZH fan, I'm really looking forward to this game. I'm even more excited for ZH2, though than this. But hopefully this will keep me distracted until the sequel comes out!
Hey Kevin, my name's Kevin also. 0.o I'm a big fan of WGW. Judging by ZH 1 your next two games will be fantastic. Can't wait to play them!
thanks! Thanks for the feedback! We'll be getting more details up here regularly, we'll want to know what you think @workingman - As Exact-Psience said, it's more of a spinoff. Think of ZH2 as Forza Motorsport, pure, few gimmicks, end result is what matters (survival). Driver's ed is like Project Gotham Racing... with zombies!: skill, style, combos, these get you the high score and the loot. We'll have specifics up here soon once we have some better screenshots to make things clear.. a picture is worth a 1000 words. @KevinS - thanks, look forward to your feedback! @johnem95 - I think that's fair (ZH2 will be awesome!), but the Driver's Ed prototype really got my heart pumping. Our combo system makes for some intense gameplay (more details very soon!), and of course both will have waaay better graphics. @LCDDreams - we do our best to listen to our fans
suggestions? Did you get my few suggestions on TA main page under your article? i am Peter hope they are helpful!
I did! I got a little busy today at WWDC and did not respond right away. You have lots of good Ideas but some are hard to implement. However, worry not about being rewarded for safe driving, in fact safe driving is not "good", good is killing zombies and going fast - you have to be a little reckless to get the big scores! Your requests for ZH2 are dead on, you will NOT be disappointed.
Well am sure you guys will work hard on making these next games the best they can be! p.s please make playable on ipod touch 4G as thats all i got to play on Thanks!
Yeah this looks great, but all of the better games now play poorly on iPod touch4! I hope that it works well.