During the  Post Jam "Jam" #7 the following list of improvements  has been implemented:

TL;TR

• Building properties: Random buildings are infested by giant rats
• Battle mechanic: Rats steal food items during battle to increase their health
• Less RNG: Spawn a Tape item early (needed for crafting axes)
• Special Event Tutorials: When certain situations come up for the first time (like finding a locked car), new tutorial cards pop up teaching players how to deal with these situations (only shown when players choose Tutorial option)
• New Card: Dead ducks spawn randomly in certain places
• New food sources: Dead ducks and rats can be cut for meat and bones with a knife
• Cooking: Is now a new option of the Fireplace card. New recipes are available (more roasting incredients, cooking glue)
• Crafting: Sharp sticks can be carved from branches with a knife (needed for most cooking recipes)
• Touch support: Touch-friendly movement controls via start screen option plus Cards can be dragged by touch gesture in battles
• The Horde! Info icons and a special event card inform players about zombie horde locations (Hint: Fight against the horde in  the East, the one in the West will kill you almost certainly)
• Balancing: Sleeping is finally more rewarding than Resting, Cutting down trees can randomly yield one extra branch, one bottle of water contains more fluid, roasted food has higher values

Gallery

Reward yourself

If you find yourself struggling with surviving (the game is often  ultra hard and unforgiving to new players) reward yourself with a Care Package from time to time, e.g. when you reach one of the target locations (Read the Signposts to mark them on the map). To trigger a care package, open the Game Editor (the small ribbon on the right corner of screen), select any square on the map (e.g. the square with your character) and then click "Place it!". A healthy amount of fresh veggies, water supplies and some helpful items will be transfered into your inventory at once.

Daily Jam Devlog

I was documenting my daily progress - here you can find more details, thoughts and outlooks for each short note from the section above. Includes also two  videos I recorded when testing some features.

Day 1

Polished  some code parts in the battle section. Think everything is ready for the new concept of infested buildings and fighting rats.

Day 2

When attacking, rats now steal food items from players inventory to increase their health. This can quickly  get out of control - within 2 rounds, rats can become pretty strong (depending  on what kind of food they steal).

(when the video doesn't start playing, choose the "Watch on YouTube" option inside the video)

Day 3

Tape is an important game item that is needed for improvising an axe.  Axes are the most versatile tool in game, as they can be used for breaking doors, windows and are a strong weapon in battles.

Game now makes sure, that players can find a tape early on -  less RNG  for a better start. I introduced a small bug with this new feature, will take care of it soon.

Also improved some visuals and fixed a nasty bug - some images didn't render only in the published version. Turned out, the itch.io CDN doesn't find images when their extension is in uppercase but game referes to it in lowercase. My local environment doesn't care about that difference at all.

Day 4

Ducks now spawn as separate cards, not only as loot items, like before.

For now, ducks are  just spawning already being dead and can be cut  for  harvesting meat and bones with a knife – later players have to hunt them in a card-based mini game.

Meat, once roasted tender and crispy over a campfire, doesn't ask where it was coming from. It is an excellent food for saturating the great hunger.

Day 5-6

(took a break)

Day 7

Players can now cook in a card-based environment. Once a Fireplace is build, choosing the  action "Cook" will turn the Fireplace card into cook mode and a selection of cooking recipes is coming up. Also added cooking glue out of water and bones. This will become useful as an alternative item for repairing the durability of weapons.

Recipes with unknown ingredients stay unknown until players find these ingredients.

(when the video doesn't start playing, choose the "Watch on YouTube" option inside the video)

Day 8/9

Crafting: A sharp stick can now be carved out of a branch with a knife.

The sharp stick not only is a  nice weapon with decent attack and defense values, but is also needed for cooking/roasting most stuff over the fireplace (it was a branch before, but a sharp stick makes more sense). Touch Support: Players can choose a touch support option before starting the game. It offers touch-friendly movement controls in bottom right corner as alternatives to WASD keyboard input. Also cards can be dragged via touch gestures during battles.

Last day of Jam

Playtested a lot and fixed some smaller issues I found.  I destroyed the final winning condition code in two ways - luckily I stumbled over that as well and fixed it ;-) Added a Care Package in the Game Editor - as already said, don't fell bad when using it - the random  loot and zombie strength makes some runs impossible to win (I have to do more balancing for that in the future). Updated the soundFX for break car glass - sounds much more realstic now. The first tutorial card now shows "who" you are (this wasn't obvious to some players). And on the map the zombie hordes have their marker now. If you come that far, pick the one in the far East (not the one  in the West closer to your start position). In a future version these hordes will spawn + move towards the player based on the number and frequency of actions / activities executed.

Last not least I was  updating this  article here and created some nice images for the gallery section.