Project Zomboid is one of a rare breed in horror gaming that answers the question ‘could you survive this in real life?’ with a gleefully mocking ‘of course not, you stupidhead’.
First released on Steam Greenlight back in 2013, Project Zomboid has grown into a ridiculously deep hardcore zombie apocalypse survival sim where death is inevitable, it’s just about how long you can keep it from crashing through your door. It’s best described as The Sims by way of classic cRPG, with an apocalyptic seasoning.
Each run sees you start as a random, customizable citizen of Kentucky, plopped into the midst of a burgeoning zombie outbreak, with all manner of possible opening scenarios starting from your homestead. The player is able to pick ‘classes’ that range from the likes of lumberjacks, doctors, burger flippers, to the habitually unemployed. Each of those classes brings their own particular skills for surviving (no prizes for guessing what a lumberjack is handy with). To keep them alive, not only do you have to scrounge for food and supplies, seek safe shelter, and avoid/tackle the undead, you must handle your character’s, boredom, mental health, and hygiene along the way.
While there’s plenty of the looting and shooting you might expect of a post-apocalyptic survival game, it’s deep and absolutely fraught with deadly danger. If a zombie so much as glimpses you, it will pursue. They’re the relatively slow kind, but Project Zomboid puts its stamp on the panicky paranoia of trying to lose the interest of even one undead without walking into another. You can only ever see what you’re supposed to, so behind closed curtains, doors, and corners, there’s almost always a chance for an unpleasant surprise.
You could find a nice house to crash in for a day or two, filled with fresh water, food, medicine, and reading material. It’s a delightfully dull kind of bliss having nothing to do but sit watching whatever crap comes on television, thumbing through magazines whilst guzzling beer, and snacking on canned veggies. Yet a casual look out of a window after opening the curtains at the wrong moment can end your somewhat comfy existence when a small group of zombies comes battering, and attract even more with the noise. Now you have two choices; cower in a dark room with the door closed, hoping they lose interest and wander in the hope of keeping your precious stronghold a bit longer, or gather all you can and sneak out the opposite way, once again searching for relative safety.
The beauty of Project Zomboid is that despite a languid pace, there’s an unnerving, creeping realization that time is progressing in the game world and those fresh supplies and quiet, safe areas are dwindling. It requires more and more to survive each day, and just one bite to doom you. It’s rare that you see a heroic death in Project Zomboid. In fact, you’re far more likely to die alone, in an outhouse, surrounded by the undead, as you bleed profusely because you decided to jump through a broken window to escape from a dicey situation.
To me, this is exactly what appeals. There’s an exquisite, embarrassing comedy to death in Project Zomboid. It loves to make you feel like every choice you make is a stupid one that’s gonna get you eaten. There’s something deliciously absurd about the idea that unlike say, a Back 4 Blood or Dying Light, where you can triumphantly fight your way out of a horde by outmaneuvering them with speed, power, and a casual ability to shrug off multiple bites, in Project Zomboid, you can end up absolutely fecked because you ran at a fence to hop it and fell flat on your backside as three eager husks stagger ever closer to your prone, tasty body.
That’s just solo play, the multiplayer aspect further encapsulates the essence of a zombie apocalypse, where other people’s sincere (stupid) choices can get you killed and vice-versa. Even here there are lonely stretches, but they come with the possibility of meeting someone who might not be out to murder you, and all that brings with it. Uplifting team-ups, frustrating betrayals, and devastating deaths being thrown into the mix just make the fear of being alone again an intense maelstrom of emotion.
The punishing world of Project Zomboid makes even the smallest positive actions into grand triumphs, and the most trivial decisions into horrific disasters and gives the mundane a compelling anecdotal quality. This is a world of heavy consequences, where your continuing survival is an act of stubborn defiance. That, to me, is what a zombie apocalypse should be.
Project Zomboid is out now on Steam in Early Access.