Dark Thoughts: Project Zomboid Free Trial

I don’t know about you, but I sure thought I was just about all zombied out. Zombies have infected (see what I did there?) so many games now that they are even in first person shooters like the Call Of Duty series and I am just getting sick of playing games with zombies in them. So when I first heard about a little PC game called Project Zombiod on a podcast I instantly groaned. I was not looking for yet another zombie game to play, let alone with a keyboard and mouse (sorry, I don’t care for keyboard and mouse). But, as the people on the podcast talked more about it the more interested I became. So I went to the internets and downloaded the free trial of the game. I have to say, this game takes the survival horror of video games to a new level.

The main goal is to survive as long as humanly possible. That meaning that sooner or later you will die in this game. It is about what you do while trying to survive that makes this game so great. Surviving in this game is not all about blasting your way through zombies, which there is plenty of that for sure. You have to deal with starving, sleeping, depression and getting ill along with other things that could happen to you. You can go out as a hero for your family or save yourself. There is no cure, there is no blowing up the evil corporation lab and there is no getting away. This is the apocalypse.

Building is the main way you survive. You build weapons, food or simple barricades in front of doors to help keep the undead out. There is a crafting panel that you use to build or dismantle things to use.

Defense plays a huge part of this game. Unlike most survival horror shooters you can not count on going up against a horde of zombies and expect to come out the other side alive. There is a paradox with the weapons here. The better weapons are those that are loud and will attract more zombies and in this game you can become infected easily, so close range melee weapons are very dangerous.

This game is very trial-and-error centric. Some as simple as going to in neighbor’s house can become costly if something is not done right. Everything that happens is like another move on a chess board and having the other player making multiple moves at a time.

Project Zomboid is a pre-alpha game right now. It is being worked on now and is looking to add more and open up to endless possibilities. If you are at all a zombie fan, I highly recommend trying this game out.

Project Zomboid Blog: http://projectzomboid.com/blog/

Project Zomboid Wiki: http://www.pzwiki.net/wiki/Main_Page