Swamp, a zombie FPS overview

Swamp development and activity

Swamp is a game fully developed by Jeremy Kaldobsky, or as he is also known, Aprone. In the past The game has not been the most actively developed game, but recently Aprone has performed some server magic and has his old code back and is actively developing the game again. There has not been an actual client update in quite a long time, but Aprone has been actively working on server updates with the goal of releasing a true client update again. even without a new client update there are still random things that happen on the server to hold everyone over while they wait. The random server wide events for holidays, along with random days picked by aprone add a bit of change to the normal day day activity of missions and killing zombies. If you are looking for a game that has a update every month you will be disappointed, but even without it swamp is still the best audio first person shooter, the closest competition is not even close. If an update is actually released then who knows where the game might go.

free vs paid

the offline mode for swamp is fully free and there is nothing you have to do to play it except download the game. If you wish to play online you need to pay for a Kaldobsky gamer account. This cost $24 a year as a first time payment, but after you have your account you need only pay $12 for 6 more months. This was to stop all the cheaters and hackers from ruining the game, and overall $2 a month is nothing to complain about. And for me, it is well worth the price to play online, offline is okay, but online is where the game is allot of fun.

Game activity

swamp is a first person shooter based around leveling up, and getting skill points to spend to make your character better. when you start you are naked and have 1 point to spend on your character. for your first 500 levels you get 1 point to spend per level, then from 501 to 1000 you get 1 point to spend on your character every 2 levels. from level 1001 to 1500 you get 1 point every 5 levels, then from 1501 to 2000 you get 1 point every 10 levels and so on. this ensures that you have to both get levels, and get better at the game, not just increase your level and become invinsible. there are allot of things to spend your skill points on, ranging from armour, to health, to speed, to bettering weapon classes and specific weapons, depending on your style of playing you put your points where you want.

There are 8 main maps in the game, all with different difficulty levels. there are multiplayer maps 1 through 5, these are the main big maps. then there are what everyone calls the Subs, 1 through 3. The subs are smaller maps with allot of zombies, but also with allot of loot.

The main point of the game is to go onto the maps and kill zombies, you get both experience(XP) and reputation(rep))for doing this. XP is what determines your level, and rep is what you can use to purchase items from the safe zones. The safe zones are a place where you can sit which is protected by a NPC guard, zombies cannot get into the safe zones. Certain weapons give better XP and rep for killing zombies, and the harder the map you are on the more XP and rep you get for each kill. while you are out on the maps killing zombies there is loot scattered across the maps, it is signified by a fly sound. these are the dead bodies of others which the server randomly generates for you to pick up. each piece of loot could be ammo, a weapon, armor, or Diesel fuel which is used to lead missions.

missions are when you alone, or a team of people go to a warehouse which is another map to collect supplies to bring back to the safe zones. these range from easy with 10 crates and 40 normal zombies, all the way up to 200 crates and 180 death bringer zombies. the xp and reputation you get from the mission is scaled to the warehouse you choose and the difficulty and size of the mission. these range from easy to holy shit i feel like i am about to die every second. most of my personal fun from swamp comes from missions with a group of friends on team talk.

Aside from what is listed above there is also other stuff to do like quests, trying to get titles from looting via loot points, and of course playing hard core. hard core or HC is a completely different style of the game. Hannibal was kind enough to write up a full description of hardcore and all it entails, You can read that here.

the swamp community

Overall the swamp community has gotten allot better. there was a time when the people who played where annoying and so immature. but my recent experiences on the game have all been positive. I don't have anything negative to say about the players now, of course there is always one person on every game that everyone seems to really dislike, and swamp is no different, but overall it is a good playerbase. There have been some bad apples like sir badger AKA Mellivora who have cheated a lot, but other than that you should have a good experience.

what makes swamp unique

my favorite thing about swamp is the game mechanics. Aprone is fully sighted, and because of that he made a game that is an audio game yes, but it has main stream game mechanics. you have to use a mouse to play, I know allot of blind people are so scared to use a mouse, but that is their own stupidity. A mouse is how normal PC games work, and using a mouse to play is really quite amazing, it allows for a much better gaming experience then spamming arrows which is just stupid. if a game is a first person shooter it requires a mouse, without full mouse support it is not a first person shooter. with the mouse the right mouse button is to run, and the left mouse button is to fire. there is also a keyconfig file so you can fully customize your mouse and every other key combo in the game to however you want it to be.

swamp also has the option for basic graphics in a variety of different color schemes. they are not anything exciting, just basic graphis which people with low vision can use to help them, but in my experience those who play with only audio seem to be faster in the game then those who use graphics and audio.

bugs and issues

like every game there are bugs, but for the most part the bugs in swamp are not going to ruin your experience. every so often you will have stuff randomly disappear out of your inventory, but it is nothing too terrible. everyone deals with the same things, and if you know what to expect then it is not too bad. overall nothing is going to ruin your playing experience, if that was the case i would not be playing the game or writing all this on the site.
2019 update: there have been some worse bugs which have popped up. people can cheat to take forts and crates don't drop properly in missions. These can have a negative effect on your game play, but how much is up to how angry you get when it happens to you.