SurrounDead, the open-world zombie game that has recently been gaining popularity, has received a brand-new update that brings a bunch of new items, gameplay changes, and bug fixes. Developed by Zurvivor, SurrounDead has been available in early access exclusively on Steam since 2022.
Despite emerging three years ago, SurrounDead didn't experience any noticeable uptick in players until the past few months. Since April, the post-apocalyptic game's player engagement has gone up consistently, ultimately reaching over 5.4K concurrent Steam players at one point in July. To put things into perspective, this is a multi-fold increase compared to the game's numbers prior to the aforementioned period, where its peak concurrent player count was under 1.1K. With the hopes of continuing SurrounDead's fine form, the devs recently shipped a new update containing a plethora of content.
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New zombie games are always on the horizon, and 2026 will not be an exception, as a few major titles have already been announced.
On July 26, Zurvivor released Patch 0.7.1f, titled "Preparation," for SurrounDead's quickly growing player base. This update expanded the game's lineup of ghillie items with a new mask, hood, top, gloves, pants, boots, and body armor. For those chasing a more tailored experience, there are new difficulty settings, such as a health regeneration multiplier, a radiation filter depletion multiplier, and a battery depletion multiplier. To offer more flexibility, the game now allows players to bind vehicle movement controls separately. For improved clarity, available storage spots finally appear for buildable storage and tent items. Additionally, a camera transition has been added for when the player moves in or out of a vehicle.
Apart from the aforementioned new additions, Zurvivor devs have also introduced gameplay changes by the dozen in SurrounDead's latest update, in a bid to retain and possibly boost its chunk of Steam users. Among the notable changes are the ability to craft Molotov cocktails and makeshift splints without needing a workbench, the doubling of the zombie population in abandoned camps, and a higher rate of zombies spawning in the new lab. Shotguns in the game have also received an overhaul with faster recoil, increased reloading speed, and an increase in the number of pellets shot by the Exterminator (from six to eight), among other things. Tweaks to the swing speed and swing delay of melee weapons, such as the dark machete and the fireman's axe, have also been incorporated.
As for bug fixes in this patch, the devs have resolved the vicinity menu exploit, which enabled players to—for instance—put 1000 rounds in a 30-round magazine. Disappearing shadows during in-game dawn or dusk hours, boss zombies spawning at a POI despite being blocked by buildables, and the Crusher rifle wrongly using the pistol headshot multiplier have also been addressed. Finally, Zurvivor also confirmed that more SurrounDead updates were in the pipeline for the coming weeks.
Just like SurrounDead, there are quite a few Steam titles currently out on early access that have been becoming increasingly popular in recent months. From the drug dealer simulator called Schedule 1 to the co-op horror game titled R.E.P.O., there is a fine variety of such games for players to choose from.
SurrounDead Patch 0.7.1f—Preparation Patch Notes
Additions
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New items added:
- Ghillie Hood x2
- Ghillie Mask x2
- Ghillie Gloves x2
- Ghillie Top x2
- Ghillie Body Armor x2
- Ghillie Pants x2
- Ghillie Boots x2
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New difficulty options:
- Health regeneration multiplier
- Battery depletion multiplier
- Radiation filter depletion multiplier
- Buildable storage and tent items now show how many storage slots they have
- Added camera transition when entering/exiting vehicle
- You can now separately keybind vehicle movement controls
Changes
- Can now craft makeshift splint, molotov cocktail without a workbench
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Event changes:
- Increased (Doubled) spawns of zombies at abandoned camps
- More abandoned camps have been added to wilderness locations
-
Laboratory changes:
- Increased zombie spawns in the new lab
- No regular zombies will spawn in the new lab
-
Adjustments to melee delay between swings and the swing speed of some weapons:
- Bucher knife swing speed reduced slightly (Slower)
- Dark machete delay between swings slightly reduced
- Knife delay between swings slightly increased
- Tactical Hatchet delay between sings reduced
- Fireman's axe swing speed increased slightly (Faster)
- Baseball bat can now hit 3 targets instead of 2
-
Buffed shotguns:
- Recoil is faster for all shotguns
- Increased base speed of reloading and chambering all shotguns
- Exterminator now shoots 8 pellets instead of 6
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Increased the damage fall off stat roll when finding a new shotgun:
- Benelli M4 -> 15m - 30m
- Pump Action Shotgun -> 15m - 25m
- Sawn Off Shotgun -> 10m - 20m
- Exterminator -> 30m - 40m
- Changes to headshot mode (Only applies to zombies at the moment) - On non boss AI and some archetypes, a headshot is now a 1 shot kill and body shots have reduced damage
- Adjustments to the saving and loading system
- Dynamic random events will not spawn until 4 days survived have passed
- You will see less "dynamic random events" as the time they can be spawned between has been increased
- Max loot refill timer setting has been increased to 1440 minutes (24hr)
- Nails crafting recipe has changed to require 5 scrap metal instead
- Slightly increased sun light intensity
- In the debug menu you now change game time dilation via a slider setting
- Reduced volume of rain, etc in the main menu
- Added a check when saving the game if the slot.sav corrupts/is corrupted (Will tell you to save your game again)
- Wolf damage reduced from 23 to 20, hey now have a hit animation and health reduced from 200 to 150
- Reduced bear attack speed slightly
- AI traders no longer stare at you and will only look at you when you try interacting with them
- Can now place purification tablets in lunchbox & medical bag
- Can now place charcoal tablets in medical bag
- Notification that alerts player that a trader is not accepting items to sell
- Changed name of Battle Ready Glock to Battle Ready G18
- Zombies can now attack wolves and bears
- Weapon firearm sounds have some modulation to them now
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that didn't update the "navigation mesh" to the updated version
- Fixed exploit where you could put large amount of of items into another items via the vicinity menu (For example 1000 rounds in a 30 round magazine)
- Fixed an issue causing terrain shadows to disappear when not looking at them (This was a primary issue during dusk or dawn)
- Fixed debug menu not closing on escape and instead opening the pause menu
- Fixed being able to open debug menu even if disabled
- Fixed Crusher using pistol headshot multiplier
- Fixed an issue that could cause the notepad containing the keypad code to be 0
- Fixed an issues causing POI boss zombies to spawn at a POI even though buildables blocking spawns were placed
- Fixed FN-Fal mag falling through ground
- Fixed issue where breaking into a container, even if you didn't complete it durability would still be reduced
- Fixed an issue with spawning of human AI (Instead of spawning when the player is close, they were all spawning straight away)
- Fixed Utility Truck basically having infinite acceleration
- Fixed ambient audio/music carrying onto play even after exiting to main menu
- Fixed axe container UI icon showing through walls the player can't see through
- Fixed issue where camera would go into vehicle very quickly when entering
Behind the scenes stuff has been busy in real life and with the updates in the next weeks expect the bunkers and start to see the pay off of redoing the player model's "skeleton" allowing for more and better animations now and in the future.
Zurvivor
- Developer(s)
- Zurvivor
- Publisher(s)
- PlaySurrounDead
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- Early Access Release
- June 24, 2022
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Zombie, Survival, Open-World
