Project Zomboid

Good: Concept, skill leveling system Bad: No real purpose, weird controls and menus I loved Neo Scavenger, so I decided to give Project Zomboid a try. Well, it was a disappointment. Let's start with the positives: the idea of a sandbox world full of zombies in which you have to explore and survive as long as possible looks great. I loved the skill leveling system too (the more you use a skill, the better you get at it). This game has the potential to excel. The game does a terrible job in providing even a bare minimum of sense of purpose. Your character is there, but if you don't spend time looking at some guide online, you'll never know you can get lost very easily (the woods!!), or that you need certain tools to do certain things. And it's very difficult/boring to figure out by yourself: controls and menus are not particularly straightforward. Eventually I ended up doing the same basic things over and over (kill zombie, fix bat, get food...). Not very fun. I was looking for something like Terraria or Neo Scavenger, in which things are not explained at all, but there are certain leads that keep you glued to the screen while you get familiar with the mechanics of the game. I guess some people are just content to go on some online guide and figure out there, but I don't find it particularly entertaining at the beginning of the game.

I'm playing this game on steam, i love survival games. This one is the best in the sense that it's the most immersive. When playing single player... you really feel what it takes to survive and how difficult it is. You can spend 1 ingame month of survival and loose everything in just 3 seconds because you didnt check your back. Easy as that.

Forever early access. Not worth buying

So, yeah, anything I'd write here is biased by the fact that I've played this game for hundreds of hours and probably put just as much time into modding and other related projects. In this game you play as an average person, not some one-man-army saving mankind from its peril. You WILL die. You will die A LOT. And yet you will come back, adjust your strategy and survive a bit longer this time. You will learn that trying to shoot something as an unemployed farmer that never held a gun before will not yield the effect you hoped for. You will learn that running around will tire you out and you will need to actually spend time resting to recovery. You will learn that hiding behind a wall for three seconds will not refill your health bar. And you will learn that - just as in real life - things are difficult. And just as in real life, you will come back to learn it, to improve and to manage just one more day. And you will be happy for that. I've played this game since June '11 when it was only available via TIS' own website. I've followed the game to Desura, to Steam and now here. The community around this game is - barring some bad examples - one of the nicest and most helpful I've ever encountered, so long as you aren't a dick to the community yourself. The games development is not really undergoing any big changes at any one time, but there are many small changes going on at any one time and you see it in the changelogs, in the features that are added, in the many small things that change in every release. If you want a game that radically changes with every minor version number, this is not for you. But if you can appreciate lots of small changes in a way that you won't recognize the game three major releases down the road without even recognizing how much it changed in that time, give it a go.

I've owned this on Steam since the earliest builds. There are SO many zombie games along with other mediums of entertainment.. why chose this game? I think this game gives you a sense of agency that isn't quite available in other zombie games. Yes, the game play can be slow, if you let it. Sure, there are some bugs here and there. Hey, the game may not ever be finished, lol! Look how long Terraria and Starbound were in the works! The game offers the kind of flexibility that I always want from a PC game. You can tweak game play settings down to the audio level of individual sound effects. You can adjust zombies so they behave in a variety of ways. Currently I'm experimenting with 'Black Summer' type settings where the zombies can run. It takes some time to read through all the options for a custom sandbox but this is where the game can really take on a personality of it's own. On the other hand, game play can be very grindy. If you've played The Long Dark, you might have an idea of what kind of inventory management you'll be doing. I think that this is actually a central part of the game, though. Once you get used to keeping a go-bag or two ready, you can start looting areas and making stashes. Regardless of how you tune the zombies, it's best to take them on one-on-one. The modding community is superb. I believe the renewed interest in this game is pretty well founded. The developers are clearly in it for the long haul and if they stave it out for another few years, their vision could very well be realized.