So the evolution system for zombies is quite a lot of fun, to be sure, but the recent thread about making the world have easy settings got me thinking. Right now we can globally increase or decrease both monster speed and toughness. This certainly helps out not great players like me enjoy not being brutally murderized within the very first day (as often), but lowering speed in particular takes almost any bite out of most monsters even late game.
I think it could be a very nifty option to be able to set a rising difficulty along with the evolution system. Say for example, you begin with slower speed and monster HP, but over the course of a particular time frame, even those regular zeds will become just as fast as you, perhaps more. The in universe justification I’d say for that is that in the wake of the Cataclysm, the Blob is still ‘learning’ about how these new hosts move, but will refine and strengthen even hosts it does not directly evolve by learning better how to control it. Other creatures, while able to survive in the post Cataclysm, are still adapting to what amounts to an alien environment and need time for their systems to adjust to the new reality.
I suspect there is probably a way to edit both those difficulty amounts in the save file itself, so this could probably be done manually while playing a game, but would certainly be more convenient as an option!