Major Updates:

• Shields & Off-Hand Slot: Wooden, Iron, Riot, and Tactical shields grant +10 / +15 / +20 / +25% bite protection, capped at a combined total of 95% with armor.
• Two-Handed Weapons: Shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, bows, and crossbows occupy both primary and off-hand slots. Pistols and melee weapons only occupy the primary hand.

Minor Updates:

• Fields: Seed selection now uses icon tiles displaying available stock; the hint "Seeds only on expeditions" has been removed.
• "Cleanup": Has been merged into "Burial" (settlers first, then zombies).

Bug Fixes:

• Field left-click menu: Text was overlapping.
• Lawn edges: Had steps at inner corners.
• Supply tooltips: Icons were slipping out of the frame.
• Resident window: Columns were overlapping with commands.
• Scavenging loot: Now scales with group size (one person yields about 10–15 items, two yield about 20–30). A truck adds +50%. Larger groups clear locations faster.

Performance:

• Fixed shadow stuttering when zooming and scrolling (frames over 12 ms reduced from 316 to 9 per 120 s) 
• UI fonts are pre-baked
• Zombie pathfinding is faster (test run reduced from 105 s to 8 s)
• Autosave runs in the background, and sound effects are preloaded.

Major Updates:

• Livestock: chickens, sheep and cows can be kept in pens, fed and slaughtered. This comes with pen zones, feed troughs and auto-slaughter rules.
  • Chickens lay eggs, brood and raise chicks.
  • Sheep: shearing for wool (wool is woven into cloth at the loom).
  • Cows: milking for milk.
  • Livestock finds on expeditions: farm (chickens, sheep, cows), orchard, garden centre and cabin.
  • Auto-slaughter per animal kind with its own numbers, auto-shearing and auto-milking per pen.

Minor Updates:

• Livestock finds on expeditions: farm (chickens, sheep, cows), orchard, garden centre and cabin.
• Auto-slaughter per animal kind with its own numbers, auto-shearing and auto-milking per pen.
• Tall grass on the meadow: yellowish, can be mown for hay (gather zone or right-click), grows back.
• Food rule: one food rule for the whole camp (what spoils first is eaten first, only cooked, never raw meat, tins last, the best first).
• Drying rack: redrawn, residents visibly hang raw items on it, and they are dry after one day.
• New food: stick bread, corn porridge, apples, pears and dried meat.
• Watch tower: residents can be posted as guards on purpose.
• New storage categories for ingredients and seed.
• Canned food item redrawn.

Bugfixes:

• The nature menu texts now say “Gather” and “Cut down” instead of “Harvest”.
• Research messages for sedatives, mask filters and decoys.
• Dressing carcasses: hunters still dress felled animals under Hunting, while slaughtered livestock is dressed by residents under Livestock.

The process of obtaining bones and meat was incorrectly linked to the "Looting" task instead of "Hunt."

I will adjust this in the next update.

Mood and mental state are intended to be the primary focus of the game, but many items for these systems are still missing. A significant amount of content will be added in this area.

Later on, there will also be a knowledge base and a short tutorial.

Good idea. It will be included in the next update.

I will include it in the next update.

Devlog #13: Faith, Honey and Candlelight (v0.0.32)

Major Updates:

• Faith: Two fictional faiths, the Covenant of Light and the Ash Cult. Every resident carries a belief strength from 0 to 100. It decides conversion and loss of faith. Friends, partners, believers in the camp, services and funerals each pull them in one direction.
• Altar and Preaching: New work type “Preach”. Believers hold evening services at the altar, and couples can be married there. Left-clicking the altar opens a menu: “Service with candles” and “Service with wine” (alcohol from the stores). Either one strengthens comfort and conversion and eases the strain on the mind. Services still work without them.
• Beehive, Candles, Beeswax: The beehive makes honey (every 12 h) and beeswax (every 18 h) by itself. Candles are made from beeswax at the workbench.
• Brewery: A new workbench where all alcohol recipes are made, plus a new recipe: 3 alcohol from 2 hops and 1 wheat.
• Finds on Expeditions: Rescued survivors, distress calls, notes, murders, and sights of horror and hope. They affect mood and strain.

Minor Updates:

• More Stories: 8 new traits (Charismatic, Marksman, Scout, Inventor, Veteran, Jealous, Secretive, Vengeful) and camp stories where you decide: quarrel, zealot, wedding.
• Camp mood and psyche in the top bar: Both values sit on top of each other, with a trend arrow. Clicking either one opens a window with a graph over 24 hours, 7 days or everything kept. It lists the causes that pull down or lift up.
• New “Religion” section in the resident panel: belonging, strength and influences.
• Flower pot: a small mood bonus for everyone nearby.
• Power and water now sit in a panel at the right edge. Machines without water show a pulsing drop.
• Story window with a “Later” button and key J. Chips for band, role and marriage.

Bugfixes:

• Removed the unknown style rule :last-child (warning when the Hud stylesheet loaded).
• Resident window: someone is always selected when it opens, and the selection is cleared when it closes.
• Saplings show their growth progress in percent.

Good idea. I'll do that!

Thanks for the feedback!

The different trees and rocks already drop different amounts of resources.

Devlog #11: Defense & Upgrades (v0.0.31)

Major Updates

• Spike pit: Neighbouring pits merge into one big pit, 1x2, 2x3 and so on. The dead fall in, take damage and slowly crawl out.
• Siren: Steel horns and a lamp on top that shows the alarm level. No siren, no alarm.
• Tank trap: Brutes tear it down, but only slowly, and they go for tank traps first. All other dead crawl through between the beams and break nothing.
• Mine: Craft it at the reloading bench, then bury it. The first dead to step on it sets it off: area damage. Your residents walk over it safely.
• Searchlight for watch towers: Mounted like the machine gun, a tower carries either a machine gun or a searchlight. The guard lights up the dark with it, it needs power, and it follows the nearest dead. The dead in the beam are easier to hit.
• Watch tower redrawn: With steel plate and sandbag upgrades through the work list.

Minor Updates

• Machine gun ammunition: MG rounds are now their own item, made at the reloading bench. Every machine gun on a truck, tower or nest has a belt of 60 rounds and goes silent when it is empty.
• The tower’s range ring shows the machine gun’s reach while the belt has rounds
• All ammunition icons redrawn
• The bed window shows who sleeps there, with a picker window; new pillow upgrade
• Rules menu as drop-down lists, every rule is a drop-down
• Temperatures can be shown in °F
• When quitting or returning to the main menu, the game asks whether to save first
• Auto pause now defaults to “Danger”
• Campfires and burning pyres give off light smoke, campfire and truck smoke is denser and darker, campfires always crackle
• Decoy and floodlight redrawn
• Shelves redrawn: empty, with boxes that fill up per shelf

Bugfixes

• A parked truck’s machine gun no longer fires on its own
• German texts now say “Brecher” everywhere (the tank trap tooltip still said “Brutes”)
• The bucket can now be turned with R
• Barricades and barbed wire are built turned the way the drag preview showed
• Fair job search: whoever has waited longest searches first, and a resident who just became free searches at once
• Residents with mood below 15 no longer refuse work, they work at half speed
• A body that is picked up and put down again keeps what the rats ate
• World tooltips close while the pause menu is open
• The camp gate can be turned with R and gets metal plates
• The forge only counts as a light source while somebody is working at it

Devlog #10: Intake & New HUD (v0.0.30)

Major Updates:

• New HUD design
• Intake room with interviews, group decisions and rejection variants.
• Electric fence
• Gas masks, FFP2 masks and filters.
• Daily schedule for residents: one tile per hour (work, sleep, leisure, watch).
• Storage filters for shelves, refrigerators and zones with categories, presets, copy and paste.

Minor Updates:

• Fever check and skin examination show real values (temperature in °C, skin finding) instead of just “suspicious”.
• The supply truck changes lanes smoothly around wrecks, with tyre tracks and exhaust smoke.
• Picking up bodies takes only a quarter of the time. Laying them in the mass grave costs almost no time.
• Research tree with icons showing what an entry unlocks, and wider tiles.
• Earth and grass as floor tools. New dirt tiles with pebbles and tufts, plus collectible sticks.

Bugfixes:

• Order buttons in the resident list no longer wrap into a third row on 2K screens.
• The construction site message showed “00d7” instead of “×”.
• When salvaging a wreck, the cancel button said “Cancel search”. Now: “Cancel salvaging”.
• Trees no longer sway wildly at 2× and 3×. The gust phase jumped when the wind changed.
• Storage filter keeps its scroll position, and the cards keep their width.
• Respirators stay on after being put on.
• Trees no longer all stand in the same grid.
• During fires, the old flame image is no longer drawn under the new flames.
• Figure shadows follow the sun.

Major Updates

Trucks

• New graphics: The truck is now a 3D model. It currently has four views: flat from the side, steeper from the front and back.
• Expeditions with a truck: The crew fetches weapon, ammunition and supplies, climbs on board, and the truck fades out. It halves the travel time, carries 36 more items, lowers the risk and costs 5 fuel. With a machine gun it is safer still.
• Moving a truck: Right-click the truck, pick the new spot, and turn it with R in four directions.

Machine Guns

• MG on the truck: Right-click “Mount machine gun” and a resident takes an MG from the stock and builds it onto the roof. It makes expeditions safer.
• MG on watch towers: A resident fetches an MG from the stock and builds it up on the tower. It fires as long as a guard stands on top, and it can be taken down again.
• MG nest: A sandbag wall with an MG, buildable from the build menu and rotatable with R.

Map and Trip Planning

• The expedition window is now called Map and opens with [M].
• The world map is about 2.5 times as big (150 % more area) and has eight new places: fire station, prison, power station, campground, mine, mall, orchard and scrapyard.
• Clicking a place opens a trip dialog: 1–6 residents, weapon and magazines, food and water, and optionally a truck. A forecast shows the risk of death, infection and injury, the expected loot and what is missing.
• On the map, a truck or people symbol travels to the destination and back.

Minor Updates

• Nothing can be built on trucks and wrecks any more. A truck can no longer be put up over piles of items or planned buildings.
• Roads and buildings on the map are properly connected, the river has a more natural course, and there is an additional cross road.

Thanks, these are good questions.

Dots: Right now green covers both “nothing known” and “tested and looked healthy”. Yellow and red already have their own shapes (rounded square with “?” and diamond with “!”), but green is just a plain circle. A small checkmark or a label for “examined, nothing found” would make the difference visible without relying on colour. I’m noting that down.

Diary: At the moment it only records that something happened (“fell in love with X”, “had a row with X”, “broke up with X”), not why. I agree that showing the cause would make the relationships feel like part of a person instead of another status meter. That’s something i’d like to look at for a later version, but I can’t promise it yet.

Major Update

New resident overview

• The list on the left and the side panel have been replaced by a dot strip and a wide resident window.
• The dots show a resident’s status at a glance: green = nothing known, yellow = suspicion or signs, red = known infection, grey = away. An orange ring means something else needs attention, and a double-click opens that resident.
• The window has a sortable table with filters (guards, unarmed, professions) and columns for health, mood, psyche, weapon and equipment.
• The detail pane is split into collapsible sections (traits, equipment, health with signs and examinations, diary, story).

Residents with their own story

• Traits appear as chips.
• Diary, couples and quarrels: residents keep a diary, get together and fall out with each other.
• Biography and obituary: every resident has a biography, and an obituary is shown at the grave. The first team shares a common founder story.

Minor Update

Looks

• 13 hairstyles and a separate beard layer with 5 beard types. Younger residents (under 45) no longer get receding hairlines or bald heads.
• Zombie kinds now look clearly different (runner, brute, screamer), each with its own face and body overlay.
• New trees: birch and dead tree. All trees have been redrawn with more realistic geometry.

Zombies

• When feeding, they now kneel and lean over their prey with arms and head, with flesh scraps and the new eating sound.

Residents in daily life

• Eating at a table: the resident sits in the middle of the chair at seat height and faces the table. The chair turns towards the table, and from behind the body hides the food.
• Shower: residents stand a little closer to the wall while showering. The shower head stays where it is and is no longer covered.

Note on old saves

• This update may prevent old saves from loading.
  

Gamepage: https://maxmakes.itch.io/conplan-z

Hey, thanks for your comment.

I’m really glad you find the idea just as exciting as I do.

I’m already at version 0.0.26 because I’m taking lots of small steps and always have friends and family testing it. :D

I’ll give “getplaytests” a try.

Thank you very much for your comment.

Feel free to provide some feedback as well, once you’ve played for a bit.

There will also be a major update this afternoon.

Hi everyone! I’m a solo dev, and I just released my first game: CONPLAN Z. It’s an early build (v0.0.29.1), and I’d love some honest feedback.

What it is: A base-building survival game set in the zombie apocalypse. You build a camp, but the core of the game is the people. Infection is hidden and staged, and colds and flu look similar to it, so tests can be wrong. You build an infirmary, quarantine suspects, and decide whether to release, expel or shoot them. Every verdict affects your camp’s morale. Survivors have families, friends and rivals, some will report symptoms while others hide infected loved ones, and stress can push people into a breakdown.

Link: https://maxmakes.itch.io/conplan-z

Questions for the community:

Does my page (cover, tags, description) make clear what the game is? I’d love blunt feedback on it.
Feedback I’m looking for in the game:

• Was the start understandable?
• Did the quarantine decisions feel hard or tedious?
• Was the camp’s mood fair?
• Are there any bugs I haven't found yet? (Known issue: Tooltips sometimes flicker; hopefully the next update will fix this.)

Thanks for reading!

Thanks for playing! As a solo developer, your feedback and feature requests are the fuel that keeps this project growing.
Feel free to post your ideas, wishlists, and suggestions in this forum!

Note: If you run into any bugs or technical issues, please post them in the [Bug Thread] so I can track and fix them right away.

Thanks for your support!

Thank you for helping me make CONPLAN Z better!

To help me identify bugs quickly, please use the following template:

• Title: Brief description of the bug
• Description: What exactly happens? What is the problem?
• Steps to reproduce:
  • Go to page X...
  • Click button Y...
  • Enter text Z...
• Expected behavior: What should have happened instead?
• Actual behavior: What happened (including the exact error message, if available).
• System information:
  • Operating system (e.g., Windows 11, Windows 10)
  • Hardware
• Attachments: (Insert screenshots or screen recordings here)

Thank you very much for your help and patience!