About Rebuild 1

Rebuild is a turn-based Flash game playable on browsers that was created by Sarah Northway. It was first released in January 2011 on twotowersgames.com.

It became popular the following month on Kongregate, where it had been played more than 2 million times until Mid-April and stood with its average score at the top 3 games overall.

As of 31st December 2019, it has generated over 9,000,000 plays on Kongregate and Armorgames alone.

The creator described it as a Sim City during a Zombie apocalypse. A Desktop-version of Rebuild 1 had been released in 2015.

Developement
Rebuild had been designed, coded, drawn and realized by Sarah Northway. Sound effects were licensed on Shockwave Sound, the credits refer to their authors.

During the first days it had been named "Rebuilder", originally planned to release it as a social game on platforms like Facebook. The fact that the number of Zombies raises over time is based on these thoughts.

The development took 6 months overall, with a creative phase of 3 months.

The collaboration with the first sponsor, Twotowergames, hadn't continued after the agreement. Version 1.20 is available there, while the last release of V1.32 is shown on other pages. Rebuild 2 has not been released on Twotowergames.com.

Plot
A previous story is shown while beginning a new game. It says that a virus from the Netherlands was brought into circulation a year ago. The media called it the Dutch Flu and made connections to a tulip-eating cult. A group of survivors decides to settle down again instead of being constantly on the run. This is the point where the player starts.

The player's task is to fight the dangers of the disease and to consolidate the location. The question of origin moves into the background and during the game it turns out that one of the causes is due to the graveyard.

Gameplay


A changing number of undeads wander around outside of unreclaimed buildings. If they are in larger numbers, the fields are outlined in red. Survivors and food rations get visible by by holding the mouse pointer over the corresponding symbols on scouted fields.

Missions often take a day longer than in its sucessor. Survivors who are not on missions must be deployed as guards at the end of each day. Moral always tends to the base-bottom without countermeasures, especially at the beginning of the game where there is a basic risk that survivors will die that cannot be avoided.

Reception
Rebuild had been well-received by players and in game-reviews, often being judged with a score between 8 and 10 out of 10.

It became popular on Kongregate, where it got voted as the game of the month in February and still lingered at their overall Top 10 at the end of 2011. At the time, Rebuild 2 had already been released.

As of the 31st of December 2019, Kongregate users gave it an average score of 4.29 out of 5, still ranked at no. 92 on their highest rated games of all time.

It won the award as the best stategy game released in 2011 at the game review-page jayisgames.com.