Project Zomboid

I own this game on steam and I have for several years now. The development on this game has all but stopped and features they promised years ago are still yet to be implemented. I was banned on the Steam forums for pointing out thier lackadaisical pace. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME!!! the developers dont respond to criticism well and they make little to no progress. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!! thank you.

tl;dr: Amazing potential for hardcore survival fans, but unpolished, empty and waiting for updates and features and a very grindy gameplay with little little reward and no room for different styles of play. This has to be the most frustrating game I've played. Not because it outright sucks, but because it has so much potential and flexibility and I love the concept of realistic post-apocalyptic zombie survival. However - the game at version 40 is just so devoid of fun it's unbelievable. Over almost 30 hours and a few plays the gameplay constituted mostly of inventory management, slow, methodical and pointless stomping of zombies and struggling with the cooking interface. Levelling up skills is a slow grind even with supporting traits and books. The wide variety of tools and equipment required combined with their rarity, map size and the conservative play-style the game dictates means it can take in-game weeks for you to even start with most skills, let alone see them be of any use. The lack of any story or even variety in the game means you mostly have to either focus on grinding it out to reach sustainable farming and call it a day, or have a surprise bite kill you in the process. So I decided I suck, and went to watch other people play on Youtube... nope - same pointless grind mostly cut short by glitching stair-zombies or trying anything non-conservative or simply bad luck. Finally I was having consistent issues with lagging at even the minimal settings on my mid-range 5-year old laptop that runs much more demanding games nicely - that definitely didn't help my frustrations.

It will never be finished or even patched to remove most glarring bugs, so just don't bother.

Date of Review: Aug. 15, 2017 First, let me say that I didn't buy this game. However, I did not recieve this game in exchange for a review or as a bribe or anything of that nature. I recieved it from a random prize grab bag that came with another game that I bought from someone other than GOG. I got a code for Steam, GOG, and a link to downloadable installer. At the time, I just used the executable installer, as I was having trouble with GOG Galaxy since it was still in beta, and I don't approve of the early access game regs on Steam. So, I have played only a few hours with the GOG version sometime last year, and only a few minutes on Steam to see if there was any difference between the platforms, which there wasn't. So, why 1 star? Well, the Dev has done jack with the game in 4 years. The UI is still as clunky and practically unusable since the first time I played it 3 years ago, whether in regards to the fact that it is impossible to hit anything in combat, that the zombies apparently see you through solid walls with no windows and hear you when you make no noise at all, or that it's nearly impossible to make use of the inventory and item use system. What has the Dev been doing in all that time? They have added new textures for guns, new sounds, and lots of other things that don't fix any of the glaring issues of the game, despite listing plans to correct them in blogs and forums since the day I got this game. While some seem able to play the game for several hours before dying, I find it hard to believe that when your avatar walks to window on the opposite wall and opens it rather than the cabinet you clicked on, even when they had been standing in front of it. Were other reviewers paid off to give high ratings? I doubt it. More than likely they are simply suffering from the same thing I often do with Mystery and Space Sim games: Rose-Tinted Glasses. They hope for more, they dream of a final version, or they simply enjoy the genre too much to notice it's flaws.

The game was actually better *earlier* in its development. It's been in development for over 7 years. It's time to put this one in ground. Don't buy it. There was too much hype built up around it at a time when indie games were having a moment in the spotlight.