Games by JimD Newsletter – ZE:SH Part 3, Vampires True Faith

Welcome to my 52nd newsletter!  Happy New Year to all. It’s currently snowing outside my window, and I’m enjoying writing this newsletter as I watch it come down. It reminds me how Safe Haven started with a snow scene and I have been writing that story for the past eight years. I wish three parts did not take me as long to produce, but I’ve also come out with two other games since then and also helped code another. I don’t regret any of it, although I’m happy to say I am going to focus on Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven going forward, and it’s quite a relief. I still have more work to do for Out for Blood, but that will end this year, most likely by the summer. I also announced a new game set in a zombie apocalypse that will not be connected to the ZE Universe, but I only work on that game from time to time. I’m really setting my sights to publish Part 4 in two years. Someone has to keep track of this and report how I did in 2024.

I have some exciting news about Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, Part 3 that I will share below but the summary is that everything is on schedule for a March release. I am also continuing development on Part 4, though I slowed down just a bit to put the finishing touches on Part 3.

In this newsletter, I will talk about ZE: Safe Haven, Parts 3 and 4 and the True Faith patch for Vampire: The Masquerade - Out for Blood

Let’s get started.

Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, Part 3 & 4

Yesterday, I received the edited files back from my editor who fixed up all of the typos and grammatical issues in the text. Now I can go through and fix the coding errors that you all have reported to me as well add small bits of text based on beta tester suggestions. It’s a lot of work but I want to publish the game with as few issues as possible.

That means the words count for Part 3 is now at 672,000 words, an increase of 6000 more words already since yesterday. That will keep going up as I make more additions.

Turning to Part 4. It’s at 35,904 words so far. That’s about 12,000 more words added this month. I’m not going to be adding any more, since all of my focus will be on Part 3 so that I can make it as perfect a release as possible.

The good news is that I will post the new version of Part 3 for beta testing soon. I still want people to have the opportunity to find errors. That means I will post it to my Patreon testers on the 25th of this month and then post it for a public beta shortly thereafter. I only have until the first week of February to send in the final version to Choice of Games/Hosted Games for release.

Vampire: The Masquerade — Out for Blood

I continue to work on the True Faith patch for Out for Blood and should have that to Choice of Games for review by the beginning of next week. This will allow you to use faith as a way to fight the vampires in the game, and it also adds new paths to explore. I don’t want to list any spoilers but you will finally get to be a true hunter in this game using the power of your faith. I’ve already heard from several readers about all of the interesting styles of characters they want to build using faith as a tool to fight the Kindred. In that regard, someone has shared with me a Google Sheets calculator to plan characters in Out for Blood. I had nothing to do with this calculator, but it seems accurate to me.

That’s all for this month. Until next time, stay safe and thank you for all of your support!