Undead Farmstead 2

I made this game for my wife Louise. She loves stories about zombies and is addicted to The Walking Dead. All the zombie games she’s tried are too action-based and intense. The games she loves are casual farming games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. So I decided to see if I could cross-breed casual farming with zombies. The result was Undead Farmstead.

This is the sequel to the original Undead Farmstead. That was a very simple game but version 2 is a big step closer to what I originally envisioned.

You can download and play the beta version for free, right now.  Although less polished, you’ll get a good sense of the gameplay. It contains about 80% of the content of the full version.

Gameplay

I strongly recommend you watch the trailer because there's no tutorial but if you prefer read on…

The basics of a farming sim are all there. Find some seeds, plant them, water them each day, and then watch them grow. Seasons come and go, and this affects how quickly each of your crops will grow.

Harvest the crops for food. If you have enough food then craft more seeds in the greenhouse or trade them for other types of seeds to broaden your range.

Pick fruit from trees once it’s ripe. You’ll know it’s ripe when you see three fruits on the tree. Look after those trees though, there’s no way to replace them.

Gather other resources like wood. I say "like wood" but right now it’s just wood. Craft fences and gates at the crafting table in your house.

Keep your things in the chest. Perhaps there are other chests elsewhere?

Your house is a good place to hide from those zombies. Zombies are attracted to sound. The more noisy things you do, the more zombies will come your way.

You can attack zombies but you can often sneak around them instead if you’re quiet. Keep an eye on the sound meter on the right above your energy and health meters.

If things get too intense with the zombies, head back to your house and get some sleep. Sleeping lets you regain some of your energy and the zombies will usually have wandered away by morning.

Trading is very basic as it stands. Head to the right, off the main map, to find the market. Take a look at the notice board pinned to the outside of the market. Available trades change slowly day by day, so it’s worth revisiting if there’s nothing you can trade immediately.

Beyond building up your crops and zombie defenses there are no other ways to progress right now. It’s taken 16 months for me to build this much of the game in my spare time but there’s still a lot that could be added.

• I’d like to add animals, to make more use of the barn and coop.
• It would be good to let you expand or move the available farmland.
• And plant more fruit trees.
• The zombie apocalypse is a very lonely place as it stands, so I’d also like to add some NPCs.

I can’t really commit to when I might get around to adding any of these things. I'm talking about them though to make clear what’s not in the game should you decide to play. I’ll probably keep chipping away for Louise but if you enjoy playing then do let me know. This is probably the best way to keep me developing!

That’s everything I have to say about Undead Farmstead 2. Try it out and I hope you have fun!

Controls

W / A / S / D / Left-click — Move
Space / Right-click — Use, take, eat, open, close…
Left-click (toolbar) — Select inventory, use on second click
Tab & Shift+Tab / Mouse wheel — Cycle selected inventory
R — Rotate item when placing, e.g. gates
Esc / Click clock — Open menu

Install

I strongly recommend the Itch App as a convenient way to download and update the game. However, you can also download and run the game directly as follows.

On Windows, find the undead-farmstead-2-windows.zip file in your Downloads folder, right-click, select Extract All, then double-click on the undead_farmstead_2.exe file. If you see a security warning, click Run. You can also deselect the Always ask before opening this file option here if you want to skip the security warning in future.

On Mac, find the undead-farmstead-2-mac.zip file in your Downloads folder, right-click (Control-click) and select Open. You should see the file undead_farmstead_2 now in your Downloads folder. Right-click this and select Open. In the security confirmation dialog click Open. After this first time confirmation you can just double-click undead_farmstead_2 to start the game.

Feedback

I’d love to hear from you! Please leave a comment here or head over to our Discord server.

Credits

Design & coding - ANDREW SMITH
Graphics - SHUBIBUBI
Fonts - SLAVFOX, ZEH FERNANDO
Sound effects - 15HPECHAM, ALI_6868, BIGAL13, KENNEY, PIXABAY, SHEYVAN, WDFOURTEE & ZAPSPLAT.COM
Testing - GRAEMEMK, MILLSTONEBARN, THE SHRIKE & LOUISE SMITH