Missive X - The Stash + Development Update

Beyond the blood and mud of the Expeditions, there must be a place where what you’ve earned can rest - a place untouched by chaos. In Hunger, that sanctuary is your Stash.

The Heart of the Chateau

The Stash is your stronghold of security within the Chateau, accessible by speaking to Louis in the Outer Ramparts. It functions as the primary point of storage, loadout preparation, and post-Expedition resource consolidation.

All items and currency you wish to protect are stored here, away from the dangers beyond the walls. Each character you unlock maintains their own unique Stash.

When you return from an Expedition, your funds are automatically transferred to your Stash - safely stored within its dedicated currency slot. From here, you can deposit or withdraw items as you prepare for your Expedition.

Expanding Your Holdings

Louis, your young and eager Stashkeeper, provides a modest starting space - fifty item slots, ten weapon slots, and four expansion slots. It’s enough to survive, but not to grow complacent.

As your reputation with Louis improves, he will grant you access to additional expansion slots. These slots can hold bags, found or purchased during your travels, each designed to expand your Stash in a different way. Some are built for items generally, others specifically for weapons.

The bags you choose determine the shape of your stash, and every bag used to expand your stash is one less bag you can take with you on Expeditions to collect more valuables. Choose carefully, and you’ll find that even within safety, strategy still matters.

The Vault

As you progress through the Chateau, your higher level characters will be able to access the Vault - a Stash that is shared across all characters on your account.

Development Update

It's been a little longer than we originally anticipated since our last major testing milestone, and we wanted to provide an update on where development currently stands.

First, we'd like to acknowledge that Tech Test 3 has taken longer to arrive than many of you expected. While we know waiting is never particularly exciting, the additional time has allowed us to complete a significant amount of foundational work. For a game like Hunger, it is critical that server stability, matchmaking, and backend services are as robust as possible before launch. Taking additional time now is far preferable to encountering preventable issues later.

If you're interested in participating in future testing phases, make sure you've joined the GOOD FUN CORPORATION Discord. The majority of testing announcements, key distribution, and sign-up information will be communicated there, and we don't want anyone to miss the opportunity to participate.

Backend Infrastructure & Matchmaking

A large portion of development effort over recent months has been focused on systems that players rarely see directly but which are critical to the game's success.

We've continued building and refining our backend infrastructure, matchmaking systems, account services, server architecture, and supporting technology. These systems form the foundation that will allow Hunger to scale reliably as player numbers grow and will play a major role in ensuring a stable launch experience.

While this work may not always be visible in screenshots or gameplay clips, it represents some of the most important development currently taking place.

Gameplay Progress

Alongside infrastructure development, progress on the game itself has continued at a rapid pace.

One of the largest milestones completed during this period has been the implementation of our anti-cheat solution. Maintaining fair and competitive gameplay is a major priority for us, and having this system integrated well ahead of launch gives us a strong foundation moving forward.

We've also completed substantial balancing work across the game's combat systems. Weapon balance has been revisited, weapon attributes have been adjusted, and we've continued working to ensure every weapon occupies a clear role within the sandbox.

Melee combat has received extensive iteration, including improvements to responsiveness, hit registration, weapon feel, and combat flow. We've also implemented our new dismemberment system, adding additional impact and visual feedback to close-quarters encounters.

Movement has continued to evolve as well. We've introduced a stamina-based dodge system that provides players with additional defensive options while preserving meaningful decision-making and resource management during combat.

Outside of combat, we've implemented drag-and-drop functionality throughout key menu and inventory systems, significantly improving the usability of item management.

Optimisation & Performance

Performance has been a major area of focus.

The team has completed a substantial optimisation pass across the project, improving performance across a wide variety of hardware configurations.

As part of this effort, players can now disable Lumen and use Screen Space Global Illumination (SSGI) instead, providing an alternative rendering option for those seeking higher framerates.

Tutorial & New Player Experience

We've also completed implementation of Hunger's tutorial experience.

New players will now be introduced to the game's core systems, mechanics, and Expedition flow through a structured onboarding experience designed to make those first hours significantly easier to understand.

Bug Fixing

In parallel with feature development, the team has continued resolving issues across all areas of the project.

To date, we've fixed thousands of bugs ranging from minor visual issues to major gameplay, networking, performance, and stability problems.

And, as always, hundreds of smaller improvements and quality-of-life enhancements continue to be delivered every sprint.

Looking Ahead

Our next major milestone remains Tech Test 3.

Once Tech Test 3 has been successfully conducted and we've validated the systems and infrastructure improvements we've been building, we'll begin opening registrations for our larger-scale public testing phases, including our Open Beta plans.

For now, our focus remains on ensuring that Tech Test 3 delivers the information we need while providing the best possible experience for participants.

Development continues to progress well across both the game itself and the technology supporting it. Hunger is significantly more polished, stable, performant, and feature-complete than it was only a few months ago.

We look forward to sharing more details about Tech Test 3 in the near future. From there, we will have a greater sense of our timeline to an Early Access launch. Once again, we thank you for your patience.

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The Lore of the World After the End

In continuation of sharing the lore that underpins the World After the End, we present the following excerpt from De Bacterium.

These fragments form part of the surviving accounts that attempt to understand the calamity that befell the old world. We hope you enjoy.

The Erosion of Conscience

De Bacterium Volume I - How the Hunger's Cruelty Altered the Temperament of Man

Set Down in the Year of Our Lord, 1815, by One Who Watches, Nameless

In the months following the first great outbreaks, observers began to remark upon a curious alteration in the temper of men. One might have expected that the spectacle of such cruelty - the Hunger tearing open the living, the streets made slick with blood, the dead left half-consumed where they fell - would have driven the populace toward greater restraint. Yet the opposite seemed often to occur.

Familiarity with slaughter did not sharpen the conscience. It dulled it.

Those who dwelt long in afflicted districts grew accustomed to sights that would once have unmanned the stoutest soldier. Viscera ceased to shock. The opened body, once an object of horror, became merely another feature of the day’s ruin. A man who had watched the Hunger feed without number found that the threshold of his own disgust had been quietly eroded.

From this slow erosion arose behaviours that earlier generations would scarcely have believed possible amongst the living. Acts of violence grew theatrical in their severity. Prisoners were not merely killed but flayed. Bodies were opened in grotesque imitation of the Hunger’s work. In several recorded instances, cannibalism appeared not as starvation’s desperate last recourse but as something darker: a deliberate trespass across the boundary that once separated man from the thing that devoured him.

No satisfactory explanation was ever agreed upon, though several physicians offered conjecture. The most persuasive held that when brutality becomes the ordinary condition of life, the scale by which men judge violence must necessarily shift. What once sufficed to terrify or to dominate another man ceased to carry its former force.

If a killing was to shock, it must now be done with excess. If terror was to be instilled, it required spectacle.

Thus the cruelty of the Hunger did not remain confined to the creatures themselves. It seeped outward, corrupting the conduct of the living, until in certain places the distinction between predator and victim grew disturbingly thin.

Wishlist Hunger to follow the journey and join our upcoming tests.

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