Board 8 > I've been playing Project Zomboid lately and I want to talk about it

(+) Yeah! (+)

Not sure if anyone else here has even played it, but oh well. I need to praise this somewhere. It's an amazing game with a lot of depth, and it's also probably the best simulation of what trying to survive a zombie apocalypse would be like.

For anyone who doesn't know, it's an isometric survival game. It's also an unforgiving experience where you're always only one tiny mistake away from permadeath. On default settings (which can easily be changed, there's a sandbox mode with tons of options) you aren't even guaranteed to find a weapon in your starter house. You need to venture out into infested towns for resources, collect water before the utilities shut down, and secure a food supply before winter sets in. Meanwhile, all it takes is one bite and your character is dead. Permadeath, and no way to reload an old save (unless you manually backup the save folder yourself). I recently had a 30-hour character who'd killed thousands of zombies. I loaded up a car with all my best supplies and gear. I drove to Louisville, the biggest town on the map, with grand plans to conquer one of the multi-story apartment buildings as my new base. Then I was caught out of position and eaten alive in the army checkpoint at the edge of the city.

I won't lie, it hurt to lose something I'd invested so much time into. In most games I'm a big fan of save-scumming. Project Zomboid, though, is the kind of game where I quickly got over it and started a new character. Each run is different and winds up becoming its own story. There are also several different game mechanics, and even after over seventy hours there are some I still haven't figured out. In most games, injuries are healed with a health pack. In Zomboid, you need to disinfect the wound, wrap it in bandages, and then keep an eye on it in order to change the bandage if it gets dirty or take antibiotics if it gets infected. Fixing a car means opening up the hood and tinkering with individual parts using items scavanged from other wrecks. You can forage for sticks and stones to make spears or axes. There's fishing, animal trapping, and farming. You can barricade existing buildings or build an entirely new one using carpentry and metalworking. I still haven't even touched the tailoring system, but I know it's possible to sew leather patches onto clothing for armor. It really just amazes me how many different things the game has going on in it.

Now, it isnt perfect. The complexity means there's a steep learning curve. My first several runs ended in the first few days, which were spent being overwhelmed by everything until I eventually died to a small group of zombies. I'd get scratched a few times and try to run away, but there were just more zombies everywhere I went and eventually they'd catch up after I ran out of energy. But, like I said, each death taught me something new. I learned I didn't need to run, the walking speed was enough to keep ahead of them while saving my energy. I learned how to lose a horde by cutting through a house and hopping the back fence while they were still bashing down the front door. I learned what loot to prioritize so I wasn't weighing my backpack down with junk after every house.

I also tinkered more with the sandbox options to find a game mode that was fun for me. I started with more plentiful loot, no power/water shutdown, and a starter bag with a baseball bat. After each run, though, I ticked things closer towards default. Now my only easy-mode changes are no zombie respawn (which I balance by having peak population on day 1 rather than it slowly ramping up until day 28) and multi-hit, which means melee attacks can hit more than one zombie. Fighting a group is a tedious grind otherwise. I love how there's always something to do. I love clearing out city blocks and looting each individual house on it. And I love how the zombies are a fair and predictable threat who still need to be taken seriously because all it takes is one tiny error to lose everything.

I hope this topic doesn't sound like I'm trying to promote Project Zomboid or something, because that isn't really my goal. This is a game where I think people will know right away whether it appeals to them or not. I've always been a big fan of this type of game. The Dead Rising series, 7 Days to Die, and Contagion are all zombie games I adore that reward exploration and being methodical. Project Zomboid simply takes a lot of elements from those other games and puts them together into the perfect zombie apocalypse sandbox.

I first tried the PZ tech demo way back in 2011. I thought it had potential to be great once it was finished. Now here we are over a decade later, and... it still isn't finished. It is living up to its potential, however! There are some janky systems, like why is there a crafting menu if most crafting is done by right-clicking relevant items in your inventory? Still, crafting is apparently one of the big things they plan to overhaul in the future, along with other big additions like human NPCs. For a game as fun and addictive as this, I can forgive the rough spots while looking forward to future polish.

Anyway, thank you for letting me gush about one of my new favorite games. My current character is only a week in, but she's cleared a few blocks in Muldraugh and is currently holed up on the second floor of a small clinic. If I can find a working car and some more crowbars, I'm planning to make the drive to Louisville again to see if I can make it past that damn military checkpoint this time.

This is pretty fortuitous of you to have posted now when you did! I swear I had never heard of Project Zomboid before - or if I did I really had forgotten, but I really really thought I never had, to the point that after I looked the game up and how it was released in 2013 I was wondering how i had never heard of it before. I thought it was new.

But anyways, I had never heard of this game before the youtube algorithm dropped this on my youtube homepage maybe a week or so ago? Ideally you'll get a kick out of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1mU1u6gbRM

Definitely seems fun and your hypepost certainly hypes things up (even if that wasn't your goal!), I might give it a look sometime. I'm currently save scumming in Diablo II and constantly getting swarmed and killed so that also hit a chord with me, lol...

So you mentioned a couple of cities, how "big" is the world? Is there a win condition or is it just "survive as long as you can"?

Yeah it's pretty fun. I can't make myself play it unless I'm with friends though

MartinFF7 posted...

Is there a win condition or is it just "survive as long as you can"?

Survive. Make a cool fort. Max your stats

MartinFF7 posted...

So you mentioned a couple of cities, how "big" is the world? Is there a win condition or is it just "survive as long as you can"?

I'll check out that video when I get home from work, but thanks for linking it! As for a goal, there really isn't one other than survival. I have hopes a future NPC update will add some stuff, it'd be fun to rescue people and build a community or something. For now, though, you have to make goals for yourself. My 30-hour character had fortified a school, had a rooftop garden for food, and rain barrels for water. I probably could've stayed there indefinitely. But I wanted to live in a giant apartment building in Louisville so instead I got eaten...

As for the map, it's pretty big. Here's a link to it, and I know they're still adding locations (which is what I assume some of the areas with streets but no buildings on the edges will eventually become)

https://map.projectzomboid.com/