Project Zomboid

Wonderful game, wonderful developers. Project Zomboid is likely the most faithful video game portrayal of Romero's Americana zombie fiction, it also shares a similar ambiance to I Am Legend, the daily routine of a seasoned survivor being not too dissimilar to that of Robert Neville. You are pitted against hunger, thirst, mental deterioration, fear, time, exhaustion, erosion, weather and more, then along with all that the neighbours want their pound of flesh. Currently zombies are the most prevalent threat, you'll soon learn to be quiet and keep out of sight if you hope to see the next day, Project Zomboid's infected lumber around on their own until their attention is aroused by the player, other zombies or the world itself, a gun shot may fire in the distance and very quickly a herd will form, tearing and beating down everything in their path, one look at the mall and you'd think the outbreak hit on Black Friday. You can choose to play online with other people and at some point down the road we'll also be surviving alongside computer controlled survivors. The game starts with a well fleshed out character creation system where you can choose from a large selection of perks, professions and aesthetic choices. Then YOUR story begins. When you first play you'll think about the immediate problems and you'll likely die reacting to them. This will happen a few times, then you start to work out how to make it a few days or a week. You're now barricading a nice little place to call your own, you have a baseball bat and enough pie and ice cream to last two weeks, you'll likely die over something silly like rushing or not sneaking into a dark room. But now it's clicked, you know how eat, sleep, drink and put a wall between you and them. Each time you go back you survive a little longer, until eventually you're planning 2-3 months ahead, you're growing tomatoes and corn out front and you have a bug out bag by the back door, just in case...

I spawned in the well appointed kitchen of a large house and immediately found myself surrounded by half a dozen zombies, all wearing party hats. Apparently, they were wishing me a happy B-day. Before I could leap out of the nearest window, I was beset by the ravenous guests, my flesh ripped apart as an appetizer. What a game!

I've been playing this game for over a month now and have found it both very entertaining and frustrating. It will suck you in and 8 hours later, you're still playing. When the opening says, "This is how you died", they mean it. If you are looking for a challenge, here it is. As a fan of "The Walking Dead", this game captures the essence of a world in the grip of the zombie apocalypse. You're outnumbered, food and clean water are worth more than gold and diamonds, and help is not coming. The game starts you in a random house with random items and it is up to you to either stay there and try to build it into something that can withstand the apocalypse or leave and find a better place, all houses are not equal. The starting skill tree gives you 10 points to distribute or you can choose a predesigned skill set. If you go over the 10 points, you must take a negative trait to balance it out to zero to begin. You have skills you can increase such as farming, cooking, and trapping that you can boost through reading books on each skill. Other skills such as blunt weapon, you increase by swinging for a home run on a zombie. Also, guns are not your friend as the noise attracts your flesh hungry neighbors. Houses with intruder alarms aren't nice either, so run if you open a door to loot a place and the alarm goes off. The Flaws: This is a game in development, so this stuff could change. Cooking take too much time in the game world. Making a sandwich should not be an hour long process in regards to the game clock. The boredom factor for your character needs to be highly reworked. You spend far too much time holding off boredom for no reason, even if your character is actively doing something such as building a fence or reading a skill book. A zombie scratch seems to be 100% infection rate, instead of 25% like it is supposed to be, no matter if you have medical supplies on you. Despite these things, I highly recommend this game,

I bought this game for only 10$, and I discover a masterpiece, i now have more than 50 hours in the game and I still find a lot of things to do, you can customize the zombies to make the game harder, you can add new maps, objects, cars with the mods, and it's not even the final game, the crators will add the multiplayer in 6 months (you can play in multiplayer but it's not the last version of the game), they'll add animals, a story mode, and they encourage modders to improve the game as they wish, this game is really really good, way better than a lot of AAA, if you like to survive and create your own story this game is perfect, but you have to accept your death, because it's the only end of the game, it's the story of your death, not the story of an invincible man, you're like Will Smith in I am a legend. And if you don't like the vanilla game there is thousands of mods which can make the game as you wish, it's the best time to buy the game, because a game like that should be worth at least 50$.

This game has signs of potential, but it's been in early access for ages, and still feels extremely rough. In particular the controls and UI for interacting with the world are over-complicated and clunky. It's also worth noting that it's a dying simulator, success is not an option. I'm not exactly sure why anyone would want that, but if you do, I'm sure you could find a better one, at least until this is finished.