Why hello there! If you don’t already know, we made a janky little hacking game called Zero-Day for the GMTK Game Jam. Problem is, when we say janky, we mean really extremely super very janky. There were bugs, to say the least. So we decided to put together a patch. We changed a crazy amount of stuff and fixed a crazy amount of bugs. Unfortunately, we didn’t exactly keep track of all these changes, so this here is just a highlights reel.

Major Additions:

• Added levels. That’s right, levels with an s. There’s eight of them now instead of one
• Also, added a level selection screen. To, y’know. Select the levels

• Added simulation (sandbox) mode. Now you can concoct whatever monstrously difficult challenges your cold black heart desires. Or you can make something easy, I s’pose

• Added pass-and-play multiplayer. Tick the checkbox in the simulation setup screen, and you’ll be able to play with another human bean by passing your computer back and forth! Or by passing your butts back and forth if you use a desktop
• Added oodles of new trash talk for you and the counter-hacker to hurl at each other. Also made said trash talk more responsive. Nothing crazy, but you don’t call your mentor a corporate bootlicker anymore, which you briefly did after we added her as a tutorial opponent

Minor Additions:

• Added a bunch of visual feedback
  • Attacks shoot little missiles at your opponent. Pew pew!
  • Thread-mutation commands play animations on the threads they mutate
  • Encrypt, System Scan, Opsec, and Clean System all play bespoke animations
  • The detonation of Logic Bomb has an animation too
  • There’s an animation when your countdown, uh, counts… down. It plays when it counts up too!
  • The system healthbar has animations
  • Both the system healthbar and your countdown timer shake in response to damage. Look at them go!
  • Some other flashing and shaking and blah blah blah you get the idea. The whole thing looks better now

• Added sounds
  • I can’t be bothered to elaborate, you’ll hear them when you play
• Added new end-screen text for each level. There’s like, a bit of a story now!
• Added a button to skip the intro. You monster.
• Added the ability to sort commands in the manual page
• Add highlighting in the manual page. If you have a thread selected (yours or the counter-hacker’s) the manual page will show what commands could be executed with the current packet-string
• Added keyboard navigation options for the battle screen (and elsewhere, but we had some of that before)
• Added our dope and awesome playtesters to the credits. Look at them. LOOK AT THEM!

Balance Changes

• The game is now balanced
• Probably
• Buffed some of the more niche commands
  • Spoof has a duration now
  • Opsec and System Scan both last forever. Or until you get hit by Clean System, actually. Or, actually, they technically run out after 1000 turns
  • The non-Sleep thread mutators are shorter and/or easier to chain
  • Brute Force now hits like twice as many trucks as it did before
  • Maintenance is shorter
• Nerfed some other commands
  • Sorry, but spamming Exploits isn’t actually very fun. Kiddie and N00b Exploit are now harder to chain and a little less powerful
  • Logic Bomb takes longer to detonate and is a little harder to chain
  • The bot was a little, ah, Sleep-happy, so Sleep no longer chains into itself. No more Sleep spam!
  • System scan is more difficult to execute (relative to OpSec)
• Added infinite damage and invincibility loop via N00b Exploit -> Worm -> Virus Scan
• Removed infinite damage and invincibility loop
• Load backup is less redundant. It now stops the countdown, but it doesn’t prevent damage. And we gave it a duration. As a treat
• Patch includes a Sync packet, which makes it a little harder to execute, but now it benefits from the Sync bonus
• Same thing for Brute Force, which now ends with Sync
• Privilege Escalation also has a Sync packet now but it doesn’t benefit from the sync bonus. I mean, how would it? Stealing two threads at once would be a bit much, right?
  • This should maybe be in the nerf section, but… y’know what, I don’t need to justify my patch note decisions
• The bot was dumb as rocks before and now it’s much smart--dear lord it just hit me with doubLE BRUTE FORCE! AGAIN!

Other Changes

• The battle screen has been rearranged. Now, the manual page and chat box are on the left, meaning you don’t have to look quite so far from your threads when checking your commands. Huzzah!
• The maximum thread-count indicator is no longer a number stuck down in one corner. Instead, it’s a bunch of fun icons smack-dab in the middle of the screen. And it shows who owns each thread. You’re welcome
• You can now actually click the links in the credits

Bug Fixes

• Oh my god so many
• Thread mutators, uh, work now
• So do loop threads
• Also Privilege Escalation
• The bot no longer forgets what it’s doing every three turns
• It also figured how to put packets other than Sync in its loop threads
• Status effects stack properly now
• You shouldn’t be able to break the target number indicator using 1337 Hacks anymore
• Added a bunch of bugs during development but shhhh. They should be fixed too mostly

And there you have it. With any luck, Zero-Day will now be more fun and less confusing. Give it a go and let us know what you think! Oh, also, we’ve put the soundtrack on itch.io. It’s just one song, but y’know. It’s there now, free for listening and whatnot (don’t use it in your own projects without our permission though). Anyway, bye!

- Basil Games