Hello survivors! I’m Evan Wolbach, Founder of Dead Drop Studios, and a solo indie developer who works tirelessly to get you kicking and screaming back into the world of survival horror. I’m here to tell you all the gruesome details about Outbreak: Endless Nightmares and how PlayStation, especially PS5, allowed the series to take a generational leap. Prepare to get lost in this new nightmare.
Apocalyptic levels of player commentary led to this nightmare
For nearly six years, players have blown up the undead in the Outbreak series, covering the events of an undead apocalypse. Each title has been slowly iterated based on player feedback, but now is the time for a generational leap. High quality mo-cap animations, persistent gameplay experience to improve your survivor over 10+ hour adventure, semi-procedurally generated levels, access to multiple camera views, enhanced experience split screen co-op with a streamlined interface, deep crafting and loot system, and much more await you.
Outbreak: Endless Nightmares is a love letter to retro survival horror.
Face the living dead as you wish
You now have the option to choose how you want to play this nightmare. The entire game has been designed from the ground up to play flawlessly in a classic survival horror fixed camera, over the shoulder or first person view, with an intentional emphasis on designing environments so that enemies, traps and loot are visible in all views. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any hidden secrets, and you might find that a useful item hidden in the still camera view is revealed when you switch to the shoulder. With user configurable options like FOV, inverted aspect, left or right player placement in OTS view and more, you can configure the camera exactly as you want.
You also now have access to a free tactical camera that you can use to monitor the environment for danger. When using the Tactical Camera, the whole game freezes including all physical and visual effects, so you can snap the perfect screenshot as well.
The next generation survival horror is coming to you …
Choose from six survivors, each with their own story, abilities, and gear. As you accumulate XP, your stats will continue to improve and you will be able to choose from 15 different perks unique to your Survivor.
Over time, you will find that the central area, where you can safely restock 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 plenty of NPCs – some offering shops, alternate costumes, new dungeons (called Anomalies), and more.
Every time you step into an anomaly, you will find a semi-procedurally generated, semi-procedurally generated obstacle course in front of you. You will explore many different locations, encounter new gruesome traps, face off against grotesque creatures, and hopefully find powerful supplies such as new weapons, healing items, gunpowder to craft ammo, parts upgrade and more. And you can even randomly stumble upon NPCs in these anomalies, which can help … or hurt you! If you’re particularly lucky, you’ll even be able to access your linked storage cache, allowing you to manage your larger inventory.
The Independent Journey of the Living Dead with PS5
Being a solo independent developer means doing more with less. But now I am now able to develop for platforms like PlayStation 5 without compromise. As a PS4 developer, it was a pleasure to see that my whole experience has evolved seamlessly into this new console – but now with pretty much all of the bottlenecks removed.
The semi-procedurally generated levels keep the scares unpredictable as the PS5’s high-end processor and SSD load them in seconds (or less!). The incredibly powerful GPU, coupled with loads of RAM, allows me to increase texture quality to maximum levels while ensuring that all lights and shadows are in real time with multi-layered VFXs for gore, explosions, etc. The particles of these effects have full collision detection to interact with the environment.
All of this results in terrifying environments with shadows leaping through the walls, while each piece of blood is incredibly detailed to perfection. And that’s not all, every action of your character is affected by real-time physics, such as dropping your magazine when reloading, ejecting shell cases from your weapon and many more. subtle details never seen before in the series. You’ll feel every squeeze of the trigger thanks to the premium haptic feedback available in the DualSense Wireless Controller, with additional improvements coming in a future update to support trigger resistance, as well as additional DualSense features. during combat or exploration.
We are not done with you
Outbreak: Endless Nightmares hits PlayStation on May 19. Experience it in native 4K on PS5 and prepare to lose yourself in these endless nightmares.
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