Vein dev details its next plans following a "larger than expected" launch for the first-person twist on Project Zomboid

If you've ever wished you could dive into the world of Project Zomboid and play it as a first-person survival game, Vein is one to watch. The Indie Stone's beloved creation is one of the key inspirations for Vein developer Ramjet Studios, and it shows. There's a focus on realism and challenge, where any wrong move can quickly escalate into you being swarmed and overwhelmed by a horde of zombies. It might have a long way to go to challenge the might of DayZ, but two-person team Ramjet has already scored itself an impressive launch player count of over 11,000, with early Steam reviews at a very impressive 92% positive.

A new Vein weekly update digs into what's on the way next, but not before Ramjet acknowledges its "much larger than expected launch," which it says is keeping them very busy. While the walking dead might not be the smartest threat, the best zombie games still use careful spawns and behavior to escalate the tension, and that's top of the list moving forward. In the next update, zombies will no longer appear unexpectedly behind you, and will be prevented from spawning in houses for a while after you've searched them.

"We have a lot of improvements planned for zombies, but we have to be careful of changes we make to them as they are at the core of Vein," Ramjet explains. "Making them excessively difficult would render the game unplayable, and making them excessively easy (which, to be honest, we think they are right now) removes threat from the game."

Also coming with the next major patch is clearly marked XP boosts on cooked food. "I don't think we showed these anywhere, so now you know," Ramjet notes. There's also a new setting that lets you toggle the date between day-first and month-first formats. You can also look forward to lots more seed varieties, including artichokes, broccoli, cabbages, cauliflowers, eggplants, garlic, and watermelons. "Two heavily requested features we've repeatedly heard have been better animals and better hunting," it continues, "so we'd like to potentially try focusing on that for the next update."

Ramjet is also working on double doors. While you will see quite a few of these dotted around the map, the developer explains that these are currently coded as independent entities that "don't know about each other," meaning they open and lock entirely separately. "We're working on a way for double doors to be considered as one 'unit' so they can no longer be independently locked," it remarks.

Another key priority is support for PC controllers. "We know a lot of players default to gamepad use and don't care for keyboard-and-mouse controls, so this is a priority for us," Ramjet writes. It says this is almost ready to go: "The game is currently playable on a gamepad for the next update, including using the UI, but has a couple of bugs that we want to iron out first."

"With the success of early access, we have a lot of considerations to make in terms of prioritizing features, and there's a bit of a transition period as we settle finances and expand the team," Ramjet concludes. "Apart from game development work, a bunch of time has been just doing regulatory, financial, and legal business work, so that's happening simultaneously." It teases that there's a bunch more in the oven for the update, and says it plans to release at least one more hotfix in the meantime, "as it's never too early to fix bugs."