Project Zomboid

Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse

For anyone who’s wondered how they would fair in a zombie apocalypse, this game can answer that question. You start out with a choice of former profession and set of traits to choose from. There’s a lot of variety in the character creation that keeps playthroughs feeling fresh. For example, you can be an overweight burglar who drives too slowly and needs a cigarette every now and then. All your starting choices have an impact on how your life in the apocalypse will play out. When you spawn in, you will be in one of a few spawn locations dotted across Knox County. This is one of the more impressive aspects of the game. Knox county really feels like a real-world county in scope. This map is huge and designed with a sense of realism. Take the below screenshot for example. The highlighted region is a small cabin that is buried in the thick of the wilderness. Imagine being desperate and coming across this needle in the haystack. This is an aspect of exploration that makes it so daunting yet potentially rewarding. I made the mistake in one of my first playthroughs of escaping a hoard by running into the woods. By other games logic, I was expecting to come across some other points of interest instead I got lost in a dense forest and slowly died of starvation. There was a one in a million chance I came across that cabin, but regardless my decision was not the smart one. This is not to say survival in the woods alone is not an option, it was just not something I or my character was prepared for, therefore that was the end of our apocalypse.

A True Sense of “Real-World” Scope and Size

Forest, fields, and distances between towns all act as “soft” barriers to further exploration that is only opened up when the player gets their hands on a working car. However, before safely getting your hands on a car the players first priorities are some more immediate concerns: food, water, shelter, and self-defense. The latter of which being the most pressing and critical. Food, water, and shelter are plentiful initially. There are vacated buildings everywhere and with some caution and a little remodeling, a safe domicile can be sorted out before nightfall. An experienced survivor enters a house and immediately begins assessing the safety risks and viability for an overnight stay. The mockup below mimics this thought process. I love how this game promotes a player’s ability to troubleshoot and prioritize tasks on the fly. It’s freeform but not too far off from reality, meaning a little “real-world” ingenuity can translate to the game.

Food and water are relatively plentiful to start the apocalypse, the bigger question posed is, what are the players long term solutions to these humanly needs. Self-defense however is a major concern, especially if in your former life you weren’t trained in combat or physically in shape. Zombies in Project Zomboid poise a serious threat on their own but even more so as a group. This makes engaging zombies in combat always an important choice. Careless decision making can lead to a situation spiraling out of control.

A Day in the Apocalypse

Take this situation as an example:

• It’s your first day, you start in a small home
• you’ve searched the premises for supplies, peaked through the windows, shut the curtains
• you’re in a rural area surrounded by forest and fields, you may be able to may be able to make out a neighbor’s property to the north
• You spot a single zombie shifting around in the driveway, with a kitchen knife you sneak up and kill the zombie
• You turn around to see a hole in the fence that you hadn’t spotted before, a group of zombies heard you and begin to shuffle towards you
• Confident in yourself, you backup while taking stabs at the zombies, one falls, then another, but on the third your knife breaks
• You panic for a second but refocus and push over the closest zombie, then jog around back of the house hoping to lose the group
• You take a sharp turn around a corner and nearly run into another zombie, what happened? he wasn’t there before, must have stumbled out of the forest
• You hop through a window, there must be another improvised weapon lying around
• The zombies begin to bang on the windows and doors, attracting more to your location, nearly every exit is blocked but you haven’t found a weapon yet
• So, you jump out of the last open window and dart into the trees then onto the main road, this is when you realize the sun is going down

So, you can see the small chain of events that can naturally occur when you step out into the world and bite off more than you can chew. Zomboid is full of these occurrences. Sometimes you’ll go down gun a blazing held up in the local tavern, other times you’ll just lose focus and make a series of seemingly minor slipups that end in your demise. The cool part is I could see this being how it would end for me in a real zombie apocalypse.

Verdict

★★★★1/2

Project Zomboid is the ultimate zombie survival sandbox experience.