By this point, private beta testing was starting to become more useful as I had made a primitive tutorial and the user interface became more understandable. I had hoped to have some more people to test the game and give feedback but it turned out to be one or two at any one time. This was nonetheless invaluable to me as they had ideas for improvements I had not thought of.
I spent the next couple of months making the game more dynamic by adding features like starvation, births, job swapping, full day/night cycles, metal scraps, crafting and more unpredictable zombies. While the game functioned as a simulation, it still looked like a few coloured boxes on a screen. It was time to bring in some pixel artwork to the game.
My brother, Ben, had some experience before with art and graphic design so he joined the development process making graphics for the game world and user interface. I clearly should have got him on board earlier because, as would be expected, this instantly made the game much more engaging. We completed the graphics for the game world and after more changes to the user interface, it was ready to be tested by new people.