Urban Strife: Big Update and a 20% Discount!

Mar 03, 2025

Our first major update (long overdue) is finally here! To mark this occasion, we’re also offering a price discount so you can fully enjoy it. Here’s what’s new in this patch:

Non-linear RPG

After reviewing player feedback, we realized the start of the game felt too linear. Originally, we designed it as a step-by-step mission, with the map unlocking in small sections. While this worked as an extended tutorial, it ultimately forced everyone down a narrow path—something that didn’t align with our vision for the game. Now, you can bypass (at least for a while) the entire Sheriff Rogers quest and choose where to go right from the start.

DISCLAIMER: We did our best to ensure these script changes do not break your saves, so we don’t have to invalidate them. However, playing from an old save may not provide the optimal experience—unless your only goal is to test the two extra maps. You'll miss many important changes; for example, if you eliminated factions from the suburbs, they will remain eliminated, and hero characters (named NPCs) won’t respawn. Ultimately, the choice is yours, but we suggest starting a new game for the best experience.

Peaceful Diplomacy and Daily Trader Restocking

Another common complaint was that the factions you encounter in the suburbs forced players into overly aggressive choices too early in the story. It didn’t make much sense to drive them away when you could benefit from their services. To address this, these factions now include traders who restock daily with fresh goods, making them worth keeping around. They also provide three recruitable characters—Bubba, Samuel, and Benny—each with new or updated recruitment quests tied to their backstories. Additionally, all bosses now offer new alliance-related quests or, at the very least, have new interactions with added depth.

More calibers and weapon types!

Some players felt that ammo variety was too limited early in the campaign. To fix this, we’ve introduced 9mm and .45 caliber rounds, making them more common in the early stages. As a bonus, you’ll also encounter SMGs chambered in these calibers, along with snipers equipped with 5.56mm rifles. We adjusted damage and armor values to balance these weapons within the starting gear range. While addressing this, we also tackled another issue: frequent insta-deaths from headshots. Instead of just tweaking armor values, we increased the shock effect of bullet wounds while reducing direct HP loss. In practice, lighter calibers will now cause significant bleeding and temporarily incapacitate characters/NPCs rather than outright killing them. Smart players and AI can recover by bandaging wounds and using stamina boosters. However, zombies remain highly vulnerable to headshots, so that hasn’t changed.

Shelter Industry Recipes!

Industry crafting has been a long-discussed feature, and this update finally introduces the most requested workbench upgrade—the ammo press. It’s still in a proof-of-concept phase, so we’re open to feedback and suggestions on how to expand it. We’re considering adding special ammo recipes as unlocks in future updates. For now, the ammo press will consume some of the recycled junk you donate as materials, mix it with a bit of gunpowder, and yield a decent batch of bullets. Production time is intended to be around 12 hours, but that will come in a future patch. Additionally, recipes for armor, optics, gunsmithing, and explosives workbenches are in development. As a quality-of-life improvement, we’ve also added a favorites system, allowing you to pin your preferred recipes to the top of the crafting list.

New "sandbox" maps to fight and loot on

In keeping the promise to provide more maps without any strings attached, where you can fight and loot freely without worrying you're breaking something in the main campaign, this patch brings two new locations:

A small forest village where something dramatic has taken place. Up to you to discover what and deal with it. Just make sure you bring a lot of hollow point ammo. The locals will NOT welcome you. The map is accessible from the Gas Station.

The small grocery store in across the road from the Motel California has a strange group of fellows, with a twitchy trigger finger and a bad attitude. They don't like zombies, but they aren't crazy about the living either so no red carpet for you.

Other fixes

• A bug that prevented trader Ruby (Motel) to sell you promised gas if you finished the boss quest was fixed
• We removed the locker storage in the Sheriff's Department and replaced it with the already available base stash; also added a tutorial about using the stash properly;
• We removed the map limits in Villa so you can engage anyone at will now;
• Sheriff Rogers burial was moved inside the Shelter since the new Villa map is too dangerous for cutscenes;
• More texts have been proofread, including the recruit stories;
• We're moving from automatically triggered cutscenes (that often overlapped and caused bugs) to cutscenes triggered by dialogue
• And a lot of other minor code tweaks that would make this TLDR...

Coming next:

• We will rework the RPG for the published four T1 maps (Gas Station, Motel, Supermarket, Courthouse), so they function as standalone questlines (storywise they will still be linked, but quests will untangled to make more sense). The ones lacking a sister mini-map will receive one, too;
• Shelter industry will be expanded to include more recipes;
• Federal and Scrapyard locations will complete the first tier of the campaign;
• We are collecting feedback on the forum on key shortcuts you consider must-haves; make sure you go there and have your say;
• Stealth will receive its advanced upgrade, adding initiative the model and other improvements;
• The promised scavenger mechanic will be added, allowing you to use the idle refugee population as looting parties (maybe even scouts, we'll see). A big bonus of the scavenger mechanic is that it will not depend on the player explored location. They will chart their own routes, your job will be only to assess the risk of the expedition and to adjust the duration/range, the size of the party and their defence equipment. Longer trips will be more profitable, of course but might also result in brutal losses.

THANK YOU FOR PLAYING URBAN STRIFE!

Please remember that if you like this game and want to see it develop into a great product we need your feedback! Get involved, report bugs and leave a review if possible! It all helps!