The World After Silence [v0.4] By Silent Shelter Games

v0.4 – Companions, Combat Visuals, Mobile Support & More

Companions and Survivors

• Added the ability to recruit a survivor as your active companion.
• Companions can be recruited or dismissed through the resident interaction menu.
• Your companion assists you during combat and appears beside the player.
• Added a companion portrait button for quick access to companion interactions.
• Survivors can receive weapons and ammunition through drag and drop.
• Equipped weapons and available ammunition affect survivor combat damage.
• Armed settlement guards now contribute more to settlement defense.
• Improved survivor relationship mechanics: player actions now have clearer consequences for trust, relationships, morale, and future interactions.
• Survivors can now appear partially dressed or wear damaged and torn clothing.
• Survivor appearances are randomly assembled from the available character assets.
• NPCs now have full-body visualization and location backgrounds that change with the location and time of day.

Character Attributes and Balance
Character attributes are no longer just descriptive text. They now directly affect gameplay calculations.

• Strength: melee damage, carrying capacity, and physical resistance.
• Endurance: energy consumption, fatigue, and damage resistance.
• Perception: loot discovery, danger detection, and critical-hit chance.
• Medicine: healing effectiveness and survivor treatment time.
• Mechanics: crafting costs, construction costs, and work efficiency.
• Scavenging: loot chance, item quantities, and search duration.
• Diplomacy: trust gains, conversations, and survivor recruitment.
• Combat: accuracy, blocking, critical hits, and weapon effectiveness.

Additional balance changes:

• Clothing now has protection statistics and contributes to character defense.
• Backpack and inventory capacity have been increased by approximately 7×.
• Residential buildings now provide 3× more survivor slots.
• Item transfers no longer have to be performed one item at a time—a quantity input has been added.

Inventory and Equipment

• Improved pagination and navigation for item lists.
• Clothing selection displays up to seven items per page.
• Added drag-and-drop equipment management for survivors.
• Reworked clothing, equipment, resource, and loot icons.
• Improved clothing information so defensive properties are clearly visible.
• Removed unused accessories from the game.
• Temporarily removed beards and moustaches from character generation.
• Improved layered character rendering, clothing alignment, backpacks, underwear, hairstyles, and body-part transitions.

Combat Overhaul

• Completely redesigned the combat presentation.
• The player now appears on the left side of the combat location.
• Enemies appear on the right side.
• An active companion is displayed beside the player.
• Combat backgrounds now depend on the current location and time of day.
• Added full-body artwork for all existing enemies, including the Mad Scientist.
• Adjusted enemy scale to better match the player character.
• Replaced text-heavy combat controls with action icons.
• Replaced the unclear attack icon with a fist.
• Added a new post-combat option after defeating a hostile survivor: spare them and leave.
• Cleaned transparent edges and background remnants from zombie sprites.

World and Character Visualization

• Added full player-character visualization.
• Added randomized full-body survivor visualization.
• Added backgrounds to the main character panel for every location.
• Character-panel backgrounds change depending on the time of day.
• Added visualization for the Basement location.
• Added location- and time-appropriate backgrounds to NPC interaction screens.
• Improved character creation preview and general character readability.
• Character appearance can now only be edited during character creation.

Mobile and Interface Improvements

• Added extensive mobile adaptation across the game.
• Fixed location screens that could not be scrolled on mobile devices.
• Improved modal sizing, scrolling, text size, and readability on smaller screens.
• The left and right interface panels remain available across all locations.
• Improved the Character Creation layout to make it less stretched and easier to read.
• Removed unused appearance options from Character Creation.
• Added the ability to expand the event log directly from the log panel.
• Removed empty areas left behind by deleted menu options.
• Improved combat status panels and companion visibility.
• Fixed spacing and layout issues in video and post-combat windows.

Mad Scientist Quest

• The Mad Scientist quest now begins on Day 20.
• Added the ability to restart the quest on older saves.
• After restarting, the quest triggers 20 in-game days from the restart date.
• Added a full-body visualization for the Mad Scientist encounter.

Video System

• All in-game videos now play without audio.
• Intimacy options now use dedicated folders instead of individual hardcoded filenames.
• Any number of videos can be placed inside an option’s folder.
• The game randomly selects one of the available videos.
• Removed internal counters and technical placeholder messages that players were not supposed to see.

Localization

• Performed another English localization audit.
• Fixed Ukrainian text appearing while English was selected.
• Added English translations for newly introduced interface elements and gameplay systems.
• Removed technical development notes and placeholder descriptions from the player-facing interface.

Additional Fixes and Polish

• Fixed companion labels appearing when no companion was active.
• Improved combat log presentation.
• Fixed several mobile overlay and scrolling issues.
• Fixed clothing layers being incorrectly clipped when a backpack was equipped.
• Improved full-body enemy presentation.
• Removed obsolete and unused game assets.
• Added cache updates so new visuals and interface fixes load correctly.