I had a coworker describe this as "oh, it's like Day Z meets The Sims" and I guess that works? Really, I think the best point of comparison is NEO Scavenger, but that game gives me the impression that its fans use command-line web browsers, and Backloggd probably doesn't look great on those, so I'm assuming there's not very many of you here.

I normally despise survival games, and I think it's because for most of them, the "challenge" in surviving is that you have to run around for a long time before you can find the right thing to press E on to fill whatever bar is currently low. If you've only played a couple hours of Project Zomboid you'd be forgiven for thinking that it's similar, since you can survive pretty well doing just that for the first few in-game days. Food rots quickly, though, and canned food is finite, so you'll need to find a food source that isn't just "my neighbor's refrigerator" pretty early. Survival requires real planning and investment in Zomboid, not just reacting to short-term needs. And given that a single mistake of basically any kind can cause your death on standard settings, setting and achieving a goal (or even just surviving a week) feels like a real victory, no matter how small the ambition.

The early game of NEO Scavenger and PZ are pretty similar, although in my experience you escape "early game" much faster in PZ - unless you chose the "starter kit" option, your earliest moments in the game will be defined by running around the map with whatever you can cram in your pockets/hands: a bag of some kind (probably a trash bag), some vaguely weapon-like object, a couple ready-to-eat food items, and the most portable water receptacle you can get your hands on. If you survive long enough to set up a secure-ish base, you're probably set until the power and water cut off. After that, your next big difficulty hurdle will be to do all of this in the winter, with all that entails.

Big flaws? It's survival for its own sake, there's no endgame, and the developers have indicated that they have no interest in adding an end other than death for the player. If you can survive the winter and have a sustainable food source, only respawned zombies (on by default) will still pose a threat, meaning that the player will have to come up with some additional goals that aren't survival-related to keep things going. There's also the matter of early access - as things stand, the level of detail present in the game can lead players to make some misleading conclusions. In a game where you can die from cuts acquired while walking without shoes, you would assume first aid is a useful skill - wrong. Levelling carpentry or foraging will radically change your capabilities when interacting with those systems, but some skills (first aid is just the worst offender) function as noob traps, something that you should never go out of your way to improve. For the impatient, this game is also updated slowly - every new system added has comparable levels of depth right from the start, so while the devs post about upcoming changes constantly, no major content has been added since their (massive, overhaul-level, and yet remarkably stable) Build 41 update 7 months ago.

PZ seems to be one of the great success stories for Steam's Early Access program - you could release this game as-is and I don't think people would have much to complain about, so it's exciting to see that the devs are still feeling ambitious - NPCs, animals, an overhauled crafting system, etc. I think I've given somewhere in the range of 10-15 copies of this game since it first arrived on Steam 9 years ago, so I'm probably not the best suited to an impartial evaluation of this product, but $20 seems like a no-brainer of an investment for a product that has steadily improved this much and maintained a consistent level of stability/polish along the way.

Jogo de apocalipse zumbi mas focado em sobrevivência. O jogo é bacana, porém é do tipo que você deve jogar várias vezes para pegar o jeito, o objetivo é sobreviver e o jogo vai fazer de TUDO pra te matar. Quando digo tudo, é tudo mesmo! Você não pode ficar muito tempo em uma safehouse que logo o jogo gera um evento e mobiliza zumbis pra sua casa. A parte mais chata do jogo é que ele tem muita coisa "The Sims", o personagem precisa beber água, comer, ler livros para aprender habilidades (que demoram muito pra encher). A questão da exploração é bacana, mas há mto lag nas ações de abrir portas, janelas e até realizar ataques, pois o objetivo não é sair atirando nos zumbis, mas fazer eliminações silenciosas.

Se você está iniciando é interessante procurar vídeos para jogar na Sandbox com recursos ilimitados e dar uma nerfada nos zumbis (porém, mesmo no fácil achei q eles estavam bem apelões). Se quiser uma experiência mais realista, jogue o jogo sem ver tutoriais no YouTube, sofra como um sobrevivente. Mas, se quiser a experiência mais completa, passe boas horas acompanhando tutoriais de outros player que vão te dar dicas.

A minha experiência de gameplay foi bem frustrante, qualquer coisinha você já morre e perde tudo (a menos que você mate o seu antigo personagem que virou zumbi e pegue os itens de volta). Tenho certeza que é essa proposta do jogo, se você gosta dessa temática e deseja gastar um bom tempo melhorando seu play. Eu talvez jogue mais a frente, acabei meio que enjoando de ter de fazer sempre as mesmas coisas.

Super wide coverage of gameplay mechanics, but they're all so shallow it almost feels like it doesn't matter. Like, sure you can disassemble an entire car, or manually check the individual wind resistance of different parts of your body, but to what end? What do you gain from doing that? Usually, nothing.

This raises an interesting question when contrasted with Zomboid's explicit insistence that your life will not last. Is the game really shallow because lives are too short to get that deep into the mechanics, or are lives short to hide the fact that there are no mechanics that are deep enough to get into? And if it's the first one, why bother making the game so big?

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (CDDA) is an open-source community-driven and developed post-apocalyptic roguelike. It's also my favorite game. However, every time I show someone CDDA, I can feel them recoil. It's a game with a harsh barrier to entry. It's extremely systems-heavy, and does basically NOTHING (outside of a selection of graphical tilesets) to onboard the player. If I hadn't gotten into CDDA in high-school, where I had more time and patience for obtuse games, I doubt I would've ever fallen head over heels.

Project Zomboid, on the other hand, feels almost-intuitive, by comparison. It's a post-apocalyptic survival game with actual graphics. It borrows from CDDA in several ways, but rather than relying on the player to remember a keyboard's worth of shortcuts, you've got radial menus and mouse support – what a concept!

While Zomboid doesn't have the same world (and run) ending special monsters and cosmic horrors as CDDA, it still maintains a similar level of lethality and difficulty, especially when played on 'Apocalypse' - the difficulty mode which really gives the game its legs, imo.

Zomboid never strays into power fantasy territory - even when you're at your strongest, several months in with hoards of stockpiled ammunition and military equipment, your run can be over in an instant if you get sloppy. Forgetting to check corners or charging through unexplored doorways is an easy way to become a zed's dinner, and an easy way for you to lose hours of progress.

I typically don't like this approach to knife's edge difficulty, with every action feeling like you're risking it all. But I think Zomboid gets away with it because the early game, where you're struggling for EVERYTHING – is the best part. I don't mind when I lose a super-successful run, because that means I get to go back to the gameloop where I'm excited to find a duffel bag or a crowbar, and not yet-another automatic rifle.

I am SO excited for the future of Zomboid's development, with future updates promising to bring more features over from CDDA

At least for me the best way to play is with friends and it's hilarious and fun, there are many options to create a world to your liking and difficulty.
The game has lots of little details which makes the game more realistic but sometimes tiresome when you have to take all your clothes off because the character sweats too much.
The problem i face everytime is when you get enough weapons, food and shelter there is basically not much to do, and usually the only thing left is die fighting the most amount of zombies possible.
And the amount of guns and objects in general its not very wide, and of course im talking without mods but the fact that the mods are actually are supported is great.

Why have such a vast variety of systems and subsystems when the games calls for no circumstances where they culminate in any sort of cohesive way?

Why make a sandbox if players will be punished for attempting to experiment in it?

Why add even more mechanics when the existing ones feel terribly unpolished?

Ultimately, Zomboid managed to design a game that spites you for the mere act of playing it. It's a huge box full of silk calling itself a web.

I woke up one morning after a dream. A dream of a perfect zombie game. A huge map with cities to explore, construction to build your own bases, surgery mechanics like metal gear solid 3, and total freedom to survive in the apocalypse in whatever way you want. But most importantly I wanted people and characters that you could invite to your group, having to make tough decisions and have arguments with them like who gets how much food or who needs medicine the most. That very day, I was looking for a game like this and zomboid fit the bill pretty much to the letter, excepting my last wish for the NPC friends. It's a zombie survival game that's been in early access for almost 10 years. These words should be like sandpaper to my brain. But I played 12 hours of this bad boy in 2 days and I am impressed. The sheer depth of every mechanic and how it doesn't feel like you can't do what you would do in a zombie apocalypse. You can pretty much do anything you can think of. Collect rainwater, but you have to heat it up to clean it. You could use the oven but one day the lines are gonna get shut off. Same with the sink. One day canned food will run out, so you better take the time you have to learn to fish or set up a farm. A huge chunk of my playthrough felt more like stardew valley, so when I went into town for more supplies and I saw a zombie I was like oh right. So it feels like you can safely get away from zombies with proper planning. But the zombies aren't a joke. If you make a SINGLE mistake then you're pretty much dead. Saw a fancy car I wanted. Didn't check my corners and boom, zombie. I panicked and broke the glass window of the car and got in. Deep wound, glass stuck in there. I had to hotwire it, and drive away from the horde of zombies while doing hand surgery on myself in real-time. This shit was so intense I think I lost a few years off my life from stress. I'll see you guys in heaven at 77. But anyway, you don't know shit about these zombies. You don't know how they work. Sure, you can customize them in sandbox mode but you don't know if they're drawn to corpses of other zombies or if they can smell the blood on your shirt. The game won't tell you, but if you're paranoid or cautious you can get rid of zombie corpses and wash your clothes and self to get rid of the blood. It reminds me of the early days of the walking dead when they didn't know how the bites worked or if the walkers were still conscious and could come back once the whole thing blew over in a week or two. I dunno about you guys but I like not knowing things. This game is just pure awesome.

But there is a flaw. Yeah, it's early access and it's still not done. There's just one aspect I really need from this game and that's the human NPC update. If you check the developer's Twitter updates you can see they are working on it and just like everything else in the game it's insanely detailed and ambitious. But unlike an ambitious promise from a game like no man's sky, I totally trust this team that each NPC will have deep memories of relatives going back to their grandparents and can tell you about the time their stepdad fell into the lake while fishing. These guys. That's the one thing that's missing and the part of a zombie apocalypse that I think is one of the most important. Because if you have nobody with you, then you are just struggling every day to keep living so you can survive tomorrow. I'd honestly get sorta bored just not even being able to chill at all. I like that this game has books and CDs and VHSes so our character can pass the time. But I'm adding that extra half-star when this game gets the NPC update.

Systems for systems sake engrosses this visually dated (Which, granted it came out in 2013) survival game that does little to inspire exploration or actually traversing the game's world. Surely if you're someone excited by the scenarios and difficulty thrown at you with menial tasks to do, you'd like this game, but as someone who favors survival games heavy on exploring for nice vistas, beneficial resources, or the joy of finding breathtaking environments (like Minecraft,) this didn't do it for me. I became bored almost instantly, and the person I was playing with was very knowledgable and tried their best to make it a fun experience, but I felt like the game is more of a headache to control, loot, fight, and play than it is fun.

girlfriend and I bought this in the sales, decided to try it out

1 hour in, we finally met up with each other after numerous deaths

2 hours in, we got a safe farmhouse with some basic starting supplies and were ready to explore and see what was about

4 hours in she got infected and I had to shoot her out back of the barn :'(

7 hours in, we have a ton of loot, some crops growing, a good amount of time since we last had any accidents

9 hours in, after finding some actual wood axes and really good backpacks, we get run down by a horde and lose everything. it's late at this point, we're tired and kinda wanna go to bed, it went from being really fun to REALLY stressful

11 hours in, we finally get our loot back and make it home safe. we can now sleep easy knowing victory was hours (after dozens of attempts and fighting zombie versions of ourselves in the process)

10/10 would play and stress dream that night again

The best zombie survival simulator that exists AND is fun

This game will get you thinking of EVERYTHING: from what you’re eating, to what you’re using to bandage an injury, to even how close you are to rotting zombie corpses for long periods of time. You can make the game as easy or hard as you want with settings. Even upon death, if you want to keep playing the same world as a new character that’s built completely different, you can just find where you left your stuff and keep going. Made even better with the community mods and multiplayer, this is a interesting party game for newbs and veterans together.

Project Zomboid vai além do típico jogo de zumbis, te jogando de cabeça em uma experiência de sobrevivência apocalíptica. É como se você estivesse num encontro com os mortos-vivos, sempre entre sustos e reflexões sobre as escolhas que você faz no caminho.

A atmosfera densa e os jumpscares marcam o gameplay, criando um clima onde decidir entre o silêncio e as músicas do jogo vira uma escolha que faz o coração bater mais forte. Cada decisão molda sua própria história, transformando o inevitável encontro com a morte em algo único e digno de contar.

Project Zomboid é como um dueto tenso entre você e os zumbis, com a trilha sonora alternando entre aquele silêncio que dá arrepios e músicas que aceleram seu coração. É um jogo que transforma o "e foi assim que você morreu" em um lema irresistível. Mesmo quando você morre, a vontade de começar um novo jogo e ver até onde você consegue ir sempre prevalece.

Resumindo, Project Zomboid não é só mais um jogo de zumbis; é uma jornada emocionante cheia de momentos memoráveis, que captura a vibe do apocalipse de uma maneira que te prende do início ao fim.

This game will make you install mods, tweak the sandbox settings, all in order to try to avoid the inevitable. Death.

You will be so op, you'll be unstoppable!! Oh wait, what? Why did you trip? Oh f*ck, that window had glass shards. And the house had an alarm?

Stop avoiding the inevitable.