After leaving his job of seven years at BioWare, Daniel Fedor founded Blue Bottles Games and began working on his first independent project, "NEO Scavenger". The game is inspired by other games he played as a child, particularly tabletop role-playing games including Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Rifts, and Shadowrun: "I loved the creative problem solving, character creation, exploration, and later, character development and interaction." "PC Gamer"s Tom Sykes compared the game to DayZ but without zombies and with a solitary player. The game uses elements from roguelikes, adventure games, and role-playing games. The developer tried to reduce the dependence on guns which typify the post-apocalyptic genre. Although players need to fend off attacking monsters, situations in the game such as hypothermia or dehydration also require the player's immediate attention. Early versions of the game used a simple combat system that consisted of repeatedly clicking basic options such as "Use axe on looter" until either the looter or the player's character ran out of hit points. This system was replaced with a significantly more complex system that allows for actions such as grabbing an attacker's legs to pull them to the ground if you are already down. The winner of the fight is no longer based on hit points but on blood loss, shock, and other realistic causes. The AI also received updates prior to a preview in July 2012: mutant creatures still act aggressively, but humans are less likely to risk themselves in a fight if the player character has nothing of value to take. Along with a free browser demo of the game, the developer sold pre-orders that include beta access to raise funds to finish development. The game was created using a number of different free programming libraries and tools: Flixel, FlashDevelop, TortoiseSVN, MySQL, Audacity, and Chevy Ray's AssetBatcher. The game was entered in the 2013 Independent Games Festival competition. The game was part of a Humble Bundle Weekly sale featuring games developed using Open Source tools.