i've never heard of the game except maybe the name in passing but now i'm super interested and i think i'm gonna sink some real time into it. youtubers like this are great at hooking people like me into new games. look at that, yer game is on sale too. frabjous day
Zombies aren't scary because they're fast, or big, or strong. Zombies are scary because the horde is endless and tireless, they will never sleep, they will never get bored, they do not feel pain (or at least aren't inhibited by pain) and the infection itself has killed so many that a military response won't help because the military have already been infected and reanimated. Project Zomboid is one of the few games to understand that.
I read some of the radio and tv transcripts that follow the early outbreak events, and my gosh do they give a really believable story to the overall game and progression of the infection. I really wish more zombie media was able to give us good stories of early setting zombie outbreaks
@@mertarican5456 Probably. Zombies are pretty popular. State of Decay is another zombie survival simulator, albeit probably not on the level of Project Zomboid (I haven't played it in like, forever). I do remember it's less focused on your individual character surviving and more keeping your small community of survivors alive. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is a weird example. It both goes even harder into realism and much harder into fantasy. On one hand you don't just have to worry about keeping fed, you have to worry about eating healthy. On the other you can play as a literal catgirl (with the right backstory and perks) and monsters don't just include zombies, but malfunctioning robots, Mi-Go and dragons depending on your settings. Basically, Project Zomboid is a realistic Romero Zombie Survival Simulator, Catacylsm: Dark Days Ahead is more like a realistic Heavily Modded Old school Resident Evil game simulator. It's still primarily about zombies, but you've got other monsters to worry about too. And those monsters can be Skynet killbots, Left 4 Dead's special infected, aliens, Triffids (ideal neighbours as once killed they leave vegitable matter you can safely eat with no preparation) and with PK's Rebalance the forces of Hell itself and Shia LeBeouf. You need to have the right settings and/or mods for a purely Romero Experience. Thankfully Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is free and only requires a download. It's got less graphics than Project Zomboid though.
@@DarthMcDoomington There's No More Room In Hell, which also features the classic, slow-walking Romero zombies. It's like a more slow-paced, strategic version of Left 4 Dead.
Sort of reminds me how humans managed to hunt fast prey animals by being persistent. We aren't faster than a deer but we can stalk a deer for a long period of time till it's too tired to run away.
@@keckingrabbit354 zombies in this are the definition of persistent tho? also its mainly agreed upon that the virus has a airborne strain, meaning that if animals could be affected they already would have been. note that you are immune to the airborne strain in zomboid but not the main virus(that travels though fluids)
I think you're spot on. Zombies sometimes aren't even the main threat- but combined with everything else, they do exert continual pressure on the player. It's a very atmospheric game, I think- I've always found the radio and TV stations to be particularly well done.
Now that i think about it, it's ridiculous that a zombie can be stronger than people while their muscles are rotting away. It makes sense that they'll have the same strength or lower
@@stellviahohenheim zombies wouldn’t have the same mental block that we do when it comes to using their full strength. They will bust their body to the bone to break down a door. You wouldn’t.
@Stevia hoenheim zombie aren’t stronger, they’re more relentless. Humans feel pain, humans get tired, humans feel fear. Zombies have none of those restrictions. They will never stop coming after you and they will effectively kill themselves just to get at you. Even if every part of its body is destroyed, as long as the head remains it will come for you.
@@detritus3676 Zombies in some media are strong. It sounds like you're talking generally. But a strong zombie would add an uncanny element that fits perfectly into horror. It brings the zombie question back to supernatural horror, whereas American media has shied away from that depiction... partly because the disease element is interesting, but also I think they're appealing to evangelicals who would be truly horrified to think about the dead being animated by spirits. Modern zombie media isn't out to shock people, it's to sell cool action movies, etc.
I love that the artystyle is this uncanny Sims pastiche. It makes it more "real" in the sense zombies are intruding upon a continuous living world. As opposed to grimdark zombies being a drop in a grimdark ocean, filled with fallout/mad-max style desolation that has been done in a million games already. Where most horror games are a black studded jacket, Project zomboid is a freshly washed white shirt, with a small bloodstain on the shoulder
Interestingly, after 100 in-game days the buildings begin to be overgrown with plants and the roads start decaying but the concept of being at ground zero for the end of the world, surviving it, and then effectively outliving the end of human civilization is compelling.
I forget where I read it, but someone equated the zombie with the eventual death everyone is promised. Slow and avoidable if you’re careful, but unceasing, relentless, and will chase you forever. Eventually it will catch you and you will die. Period. BTW, great video, have a sub.
Zomboid definitely knows how to ratchet up the tension. Being pursued by a conga line of zombies is scary, but then you lose them in the trees and all is well. . . or is it? Next time you approach those dark, spooky woods, you know they're gonna be chock full of lost zombies.
@@DarknessXER I usually just walk past later when I've got good weapons and have my character scream at the top of his lungs. The gunshots usually draw out the rest.
those condos in Louisville, they’ve got fences that span the little backyard but living out of them is absolutely harrowing when you’re constantly living ten feet from wandering zombies.
I describe Project Zomboid as "The Sims with zombies" and "A game that is constantly looking for any excuse to kill you... Literally any possible excuse".
@@helldronez I mid-key love making fancy palaces and hip pads. The Zombies make it much harder, and somehow more meaningful? Not being limited to lot sizes is absolutely fantastic. If the NPCs let us do things like give them houses? I'll be pretty psyched.
“You can never be too powerful…” that basically sums up the game. You will die, you will get careless. You just looted an army barrack and walked out with so much ammunition and weapons, and you start thinking you are safe, you beat the game, you open the door and walk into a herd…
@@TemmieContingenC I got you.. Died several times doing that... Now ingame 4 month passed, never been more careful when confronting them.... There's no better option than taking them one by one, even with shotgun...
@@mrboleus8240 yeah it sucks but I can’t hold back just clobbering zombies bevause I have 3 levels in long blunt and 8 strength points. My character is a testosterone filled army vet with a gun so the grind is real not to go sicko mode while on a looting run
Hey yo, this is for anyone who gets stuck in a car with a horde. Swap seats, roll down the window and start swinging your melee weapon for a chance to stumble the group. If that happens, it’s your one and only opening to make a break for it. Best of luck and hope this saves at least a few characters!
I usually wait for my car to stall and when the horde stumbles that's when I'll get out and run, usually I'll trip over a zombie and pop right out of the horde.
@@HansBotMaker Not at all. There is no way I am swinging a bat and making a clear connection with 5 zombies at the same time. It's just not realistic and makes the game way too easy. I don't even have to strafe around. I just have to stand in one spot and swing over and over until the zombies are dead. Single his is absolutely how the game was intended to be played, but they've added these options to lower the difficulty for people who'd like to opt into them.
This is how I realized that the zombie clichés are real like thinking you're safe when suddenly a zombie comes out of nowhere and takes a chunk of your neck. It's not that the character is stupid, but lowered his guard for a second that gets them killed. (But most of the time it's bad and lazy writing in movies)
I've died by simply forgetting to shut a door behind me when looting and suffering a zombie back attack!...that is after looting a dozen houses previously that day and closing all the doors - Just one slip, error or act of laziness is all it takes for this game to lick its lips and pounce on you.
Makes sense really. In an apocalypse you aren’t likely well rested, you’re going to be tired, hungry, and burned out. It’s incredibly easy to miss obvious things, and if you are focusing on one thing you can get tunnel vision.
I played multiplayer before and the realistic ways we died made more sense than dying in a blaze of glory. Buddy of mine fell through a tile in our house while doing renovations and crippled his legs. I try to grab him and perform first aid on his leg and boom, a jackass on top of the tile falls down, calls his friends and now we’re getting eaten in a tiny crawl space under a flight of stairs Love this game
I cleared a house, went back to it three different times after, on the third time I realized there'd been a zombie in the closet the entire time. Never made a sound before I opened the door, just lunged out and yep ended my run with one bite to the neck. Now even when I remember to knock a part of me is always expecting that zombie to lunge at me when I open a door. That's called terror and project zomboid does it better than any other game I've played.
I think it goes even further. Because in movies and tv shows you are not the character and you dont have any control, stuff happens and you dont have any say on how the characters react. But in Zomboid, you are the character, your reaction is what determines the outcome and that adds so much more than a movie could.
This game is quite fun in my opinion, but any new players should know that there are a couple main issues right now: 1) Late game is straight up just skill grinding. Once you know how to survive winter, there are no more obstacles to get around. 2) It's tons more fun in multiplayer, and usually with mods. 3) There is probably no game more hsrdcore and punishing, as you can put 300 hours into a single character, only for then to be scratched once and catch the zombie virus. 4) The next big updates they have planned are animal, and then human NPCs. This will hopefully help the late game.
I never understood why surviving winter was such a problem for so many players. I always made sure to stock up on coats and hats for winter, and I hoard canned food to the point most of my bases have 5ish crates full.
@@thelordofcringe For me it's not as much getting through it, it's getting to it. Unlucky drops, lack of time to watch TV so you can't reliably grind carpentry, other hindrances along the way and you might have a very rocky road to even see that first snow. That being said I am not very good at this game.
Lol i have no idea how but I got in the situation which led to 4 scratches and 1 wound given by zombies but.. somehow my character didn't get the infection.. Is that even possible? I don't remember touching the infection system in the sandbox
@@nyxlanders How to tell an MF wasn't here for the two year drought waiting for the B41 update to drop LMAO. In all seriousness tho they made the update and I'm sure their update schedule will speed up.
This game is so immersive, time-consuming, and realistic that I've literally gotten a lot better at organizing and cleaning my house as a result lmao. And now, I have the urge to buy seeds and start a garden in my backyard. Yes, in real life.
The mod who adds a small chance of faster zombies spawn is one of my favourites, having them all run is very overwhelming but only a select few being fast shamblers makes for a lot of tense and interesting situations
I think it was one of the producers or special effects artists on The Walking Dead that mentioned Romero's zombies being the scariest type in all of cinema. They're slow, encroaching, and will never stop. Just like death itself. Even if you're fine, it's always around the corner. He also said they were scarier because if you're trapped, the slow zombies give you much more time to think about your demise as they slowly rip you apart. Anyway, good vid.
I dunno man I think I'd be scared of that, but seeing a horde of world War z type sprinting undead would make me shit myself way more than a bunch of shamblers
@@danielwoods3896 The problem is you need sleep, food, water, you get exhausted and NEED to rest. They dont. Every time you stop to sleep for 8 Hours, to eat, drink, hunt for food, sit down and ease the ache in your feet, shit, and so on. They'll be gaining on you, assuming you DONT walk right into a second group's area fleeing the first. Think of it as the Immortal Snail concept, it's slow, you can EASILY outpace it rapidly, but it WILL catch you someday, and it only takes one mistake...
@@higueraft571 bro literally just get to the first second floor of a two floor house you can find and block the stairs off with a couch. Easy as fuck. Build ladders to the windows. Easy
When this game picked up again (about a year or so ago) it made me so happy because ive owned the game since 2014 and said it was gonna be something to stand the test of time, and the DEV's are incredible
Soo, I was just recommended the video and I was genuinely shocked to see less than a thousand views. I automatically assumed that You're a really big channel given the quality of material and it was only when i was about 80% done with the vid i checked the comments and boom.
Something I noticed is that it's easy to lull yourself into a false sense of security thanks to the zombies' slow movement and relative weakness. The problem is that they're _everywhere,_ and they're surprisingly good at catching you by surprise. All it takes is one small lapse in awareness for one of them to come quietly shambling out of some of some nook you didn't notice and grab you, and it's even worse in-doors where you can suddenly find yourself cornered by a large group of them, thus negating both of your advantages over them. No game makes me paranoid like PZ.
yeah the amount of times I have seen like one or two zombies and was like yeah i can take them out only to be blindsided by zombies that heard the other two dieing
Dead corpses sprinting its just ridiculous Alive infected now thats something After long enough you outlive them Mess up once in any way before then and youre dead
I'm genuinely shocked you only have 300 subscribers- this sort of content seems extremely professional and well done, and your analysis of the game is absolutely amazing.
I am fine with the base game vision. That said my friends and I set up a game where, our goal was clearing the map of zombies, with the help of mods, we made it so. It was a blast as it became a game of logistics and attrition with the horde. And despite having military gear. The horde never lost its danger. One wrong step and we'd die, and we did so a lot. I think that speaks to the vision of this game the most, that even with mods changing things the core of it never changes. The Horde will get you, it's only a matter of time.
The closest comparison you can give is The Long Dark, both games focus on long-term play, and both games (usually) also slowly kill you due to poor decisions.
Zombie guts disguise is honestly a good idea. It could incentivize players to make a trade off between their own health and survival. Hygeine too. Imagine if tooth decay were the biggest killer. This would be great for a hardcore mode.
That's what happens with what I call framework games like this. The Devs make a good or great base game but make it easily modable with steam workshop access. And so the game lives on past where vets get bored or cases where the base game rubs a player the wrong way. Rimworld is like this. I and a lot of other vets regard the base game as lame, but as a customizable framework of whatever colony sim experience we want it's amazing.
@@jakkuhl6223 I still can't find a mod that lets you SPECIFICALLY so no zombivixir or medical cocktail, SPECIFICALLY let's you treat the zombie infection with antibiotics and resting, because in George Romero's movies, the zombies aren't caused by a virus, it's caused by an unknown phenomenon, and the reason why bites are fatal, is because a corpse full of God knows what diseases, just bit you
Great video that describes the game play perfect! I love this game. The jump scare sound still gets me every time. I bought it a about three weeks ago and already have over 100 hrs of play. Best $20 I ever spent.
One of my favorite moments was just...walking to town. Lonely on a road and with a nebulous objective in mind. Very, very atmospheric. Other games claim to be atmospheric, Project Z masters it.
"an ever present danger just waiting for you to slip up" percently captures the tension + fear i feel almost at all times playing this amazing game! (except for when i'm safe hiding in my base, my character developing clincial depression)
@@Cacowninja sortof, but boredom and sadness are two different meters. boredom fills up when inside and goes down when outside. sadness fills up from eating yucky foods, being too bored, or a few other things iirc, but it does NOT go down on its own without modded traits like Blissful. so you can *prevent* it building up by touching grass but once you get the sadness you can't *cure* it by touching grass.
@@fractalgem You cure the sadness by doing things that improve your happyness. Either using anti-depressants, drinking (ironically considering alcohol is a depressant) smoking, reading fun things like pornos or magazines, or watching entertainment.
@@kalreynolds5829 well yes? And eating food can be one of those activities. Prepared food gives 5 happiness per unique ingredient, with possible penaltiesforoverusing an ingredient. (So don't put bournon or wine in, itll give less happiness that way)
As a PZ veteran I started to heavily mod my game. One of them allows you to change the % ratio of all zombies and you can modify it in real-time. As much as I love base zombies recently I started to spice my game up by adding 10% sprinters and I can go higher than that if I want.
I got the game a few weeks back. Hardest part isn't losing a character But progressing one from the safe spot you left him at. Found the ranger station and have begun to secure it and set up water collectors along with the pots I brought along. Yet I haven't found any seeds or much in terms of axes and I know I have plenty of time for winter to prepare but I am terrified none the less to hope back in and lose that progress. Yet the moment I do I have no issue starting over.
Firestation. There's one in whichever town is on the south side of the map, west of Muldraugh. If you choose firefighter profession and start there, you sometimes will spawn in right inside the station. It usually has about a dozen or so axes, and there's a police station across the street. The down side, is there's a lot of zombies in that town, but if you're careful you can get all the gear you need.
@@Dman6779 I start in riverside so I can loot the supermarket, police station, all the various convenience stores and usually there's one or two prepper houses in the city which get you nice starting weaponry. Once I get that stuff all moved over to the supermarket since it has enough coolers to keep stuff for a while I start to ferry it down to the country club housing where I make a more permanent base. From there, it's a pretty short car ride to loot the town south of there with it's gun store, doctors office, farm and tool stores. After that, a couple days to get to hit up Rosewood for the police station and fire department, but the town is usually pretty overrun making it too dangerous to go for the stores in the center. Quick jaunt to the secret base to the west to get military backpacks and then it's off to Muldraugh and after that, West Point and Lousville. By then, maxxed all the skills and pretty secure in the golf course base, I restart because surviving is too easy at that point.
I would say it’s the fact that you are driven towards them that makes it for me. It’s like you are stuck in a room that’s full of fire, you have a safe zone but after a while the wall will start pushing you toward the fire. The trick is that you have been given a bucket full of water and a heavy flammable oil on the bottom, you can use the water to help clear a safe path but use too much and you risk spilling the oil as well spreading the fire, the more water you use the more you have to tip the bucket and the easier it gets to make a mistake and spill the oil. You are driven towards the fire and are encouraged to go into it earlier than you would like.
Honestly, Project Zomboid is pretty much the other side of the coin of the zombie experience to something like Left 4 Dead. Both games carry the omnipresent threat of the horde and the melee-centric zombie gameplay, but they approach it in entirely different ways. In PZ, even a single zombie can be lethal in the right circumstance. In L4D the specials are the only ones that applies for, with regular infected only really being dangerous in large groups, and given your footage I don't need to tell you what happens with large groups in Zomboid if you get too close. L4D is all about the short game. About getting the hell out of a place where you're never going to survive for long. It's all guns blazing, slaughtering zombies left and right. By contrast, PZ is all about the long game. It's fairly rare that you are "in a hurry", so to say, but there's a lot of long term pressure and risk management. The zombies are a genuine threat, but they're not jumping out at you all the time. If you're careful you can almost avoid them entirely, and indeed you can reach long-term success by just settling down to farm and fish in the middle of nowhere. At the same time, all too often you will find yourself needing things from the civilized world, loot which necessitates putting yourself at risk, so half the time you're the one choosing to encounter zombies. It's loot that L4D just gives you as you run along, because in that game there's really not much of a choice. They're different, and that's not a bad thing. Slow zombies don't work well in an action-focused game where outrunning them could just remove the challenge, and being constantly under attack from fast zombies makes it difficult to put the idea of the long term into practice. Nonetheless, they're both important parts of the greater zombie whole.
4:53 - I once escaped an entire horde in the city while at minimum movement speed and too exhausted to fight. A lot of the chase was at night, too. It was difficult and took about 15 - 20 real life minutes of careful movement and clever traversal of the world, but I did it, and I somehow managed to sleep my character's exhaustion away. No scratches, no bites.
Using walkto to get through a forest is the easiest way to lose a horde and i managed to sleep in one and survive after being chased by a 2.5 zed pop louis horde Almost bled out due to scratches after jumping through windows in louis tho
heres a tip for escaping large hordes if you're reasonably far from them, use the "walk to" feature in context menu (click to walk) and then put the speed on two, you can still control where you go but it's faster and you can make quick decisions and it also janks their pathfinding AI slightly
This game reminds me of RimWorld. -Managing your characters mood, hunger, and supplies while hoping you don't get attacked by a horde. -Amazing customization. -Permadeath -A new story every time you play. I love it!
What do you mean there is no cure in game? The tutorial teaches you that if you get bitten, you can administer the cure by pressing Q. *If you know, you know.*
@@brodyrichter8113 It was patched around build 40, meaning if you drink bleach you will die painfully and reanimate, except without a trachea. And yes it used to be able to prevent zombification as you died to the bleach instead
I just wanted to thank everyone for all the support this video has gotten. It's done way better than my videos generally do by a pretty wide margin which is super exciting! I want to keep on putting out more videos, so if you're interested in more content please consider subscribing! I've already got the first draft of the script for my next video finished, so I think that one should be ready soon enough. Thank you all for watching!
I really like project zomboid for its fantastic portrayal of the apocalypse progressing. You can listen to the TV and radio and learn how it goes from quarantine to discovery of the nature of zombies to the broken quarantine to the world being devastated by both the zombies and the airborne virus to the end of all outside media. Especially how it affects gameplay like with the early on helicopter event mentioned and utilities like water and power being shut off, even the world slowly being overgrown and the zombies decaying.
I cant believe its only been a year since multiplayer released. It feels like so long. Cant wait for the NPC/animals update as well as the next crafting overhaul.
@@nicz7694 oh snap dec of 2021 theres an article about it. Ok so it has been over a year that makes WAY more sense. Had weird Timelapse Vertigo for a second
@@LargeBlueCircle ah ok since I can remember that MP was ingame WAY earlier than that. Around 5 years ago when I bought the game for some friends. I remember since Cars where new. I guess it was more like an rework of some functions. Car update was the first when friends joined and I played with them together. Was pretty nice!
@@nicz7694 yeah exactly! They had taken it out, did a lot of rework, and added it back in. Same with NPC's- except for adding it back in. Really love PJZ the devs always seem to take their time and when they add functionality it always seems to be like how AAA games should be- works well and not a broken mess of bugs held together by chewing gum, rubber bands and paperclips :/
Pretty cool video fellow survivor. A little tip, while walking through dense forests right click and choose "walk to" this way the pathfinding feature will take over taking the shortest, more silent way possible reducing the chance of getting scratch with tree branches, while maintaining the options of crouching or running. Very effective to outrun zombies because makes you very quiet.
I can back the zombie guts and I can think of a way to balance it, too. You smell like a zombie, you're moving around makes zombies move in the direction they saw you move in. Kinda like cattle in a herd. If they're not aggressive towards you, but they're following what they see as a 'leader'
@ChefBrownSauce you're walking along and it's just the calm music, it starts raining and the music goes 0 to 100 instant high version and all of the zombies just slowly magnetized towards you
God this channel just gave me the feeling of finding $50 in a random pair of pants! What an informative , fun and well edited video ! Im Subscribed Yimothy .
Its my opinion that Zombies are at their best when they're slow and weak, but there's a FUCK TON of them. You CAN kill them, you CAN outrun them, but you can NEVER outlast them.
Love this video. Your play-by-play of how drinking got you killed was a stand-out segment of the video. Uh, I don't really have a conclusion... ok bye!
i remember buying this game in 2020, never playing it cause it didn't have multiplayer at the time, i ultimately played it solo one day, about a month after buying it, loved it, kept playing, and basically never stopped. here i am in 2023 surviving with friends, i really hope this game keeps getting the love it deserves!
I love Project Zomboid because it has a mood no other game has captured. You WILL die, there is no cure, there is no one else out there, help isnt coming, your story ends with you dying. Whether its turning into a zombie, dying from starvation, cold, a car accident, or even walking through a bush and dying from a cut if you have no way to bandage it. That list of Big No's are pretty much all features that break that vibe and I love that the devs refuse to add them.
My most tragic story is losing my favorite character to burnt fish, me and my friends had a game running in Louisville where we had a shelter and a really good set up. We were low on food and I ended up eating some bait fish that I’d found in the fishing net. My friends left the fish to long on the campfire and all 7 of them burned. I was desperate so I ate them. My character got sick and died in an hour of eating the fish. My friends will never let me live that down
Good video. Been playing the game for a couple of weeks now and watching as much content on the game as I can. PZ is the zombie game I didn't know I needed but it's become my favourite zombie game of all time as it allows me to live out my zombie apocalypse fantasy and show me how quickly I would die
Slow zombies are scary because they lull you into a false sense of security. You go from thinking about how slow and stupid they are, and how easily you can outmaneuver them, to being thrown to the ground by one and getting your throat torn out in a frantic, chaotic, spiraling burst of helpless violence as you desperately panic trying to stay alive. Fast zombies and "special" zombies are just always a threat and never give you that false sense of security, so it goes from being scary to just being predictable when one gets you: they never get that sudden and guttural horror you feel when the creature that's not a threat suddenly becomes a gigantic threat.
Great video. I am definitely with everyone with saying that your work is underrated. Becoming decent at Project Zomboid requires a transformation of your mind and habits. It is really something.
One thing I find super cool is when you die, you can come back as a different person and find yourself as a zombie and your impact on the world. I find that super interesting.
Also, Terraria and Project Zomboid has some of the most dedicated fan bases there are, they tend to be oddly kind communities. So they both honestly deserve the Labor of Love reward IMO.
very well said. ill be showing this to anyone thats curious about the game when i bring it up. the multiplayer really kicks this game up a notch and it makes it so much more enjoyable in my opinion. you slip into sub consciously roleplaying wether you like it or not even more.
I fucking love sprinters. Ironically, I survive way longer with sprinters on average because I don't get bored and do something suicidally reckless. I remember when I played with sprinters, and forgot to turn off the TV in my bedroom before I went to sleep. It just so happened a horde was standing outside my boarded window at 6:00am and ripped me apart to the sound of pancakes
The fact this game is perfectly playable and challenging even if you play a custom game with ZERO ZOMBIES says a lot about how great this game is. And playing with friends makes everything better. I'm playing with three friends who were all newbies when they started with me as the grizzled experienced player trying to guide them. We play on very easy settings - low zombies, no bite infections, moderate loot and car spawns. And even then we've had losses. I died once to an infection (before we turned it off), one friend died due to catching a fever that took over a week to claim him because we just couldn't find antibiotics, and another friend has died about a dozen times due to lack of situational awareness (to the point I'm now babysitting him since he's the team mechanic and I'm fed up of not having those skills available to us). One friend hasn't died at all yet - but has had two really close calls, once when he got a deep wound on his neck and was saved with barely any health left by me performing emergency first aid in the back of a car as we were exiting a complete mess of a situation and recently when he accidentally fell off a balcony and broke his leg in the middle of a zombie infested mall (being saved by the first friend in the nick of time with the last of his shotgun ammo) and only barely managing to make it to the car to get back to base for proper medical care. And winter is just around the corner and we don't have enough food for the four of us. I love this game.
Oh boy i love my Joshua Graham character, the only thing i really have to worry about is maintaining bandage and disinfectant supplies for the full body 3rd degree burns.
@@enclaveofficerz3245 That sounds familiar, but besides that’s pretty neat. I never heard about the Canyon biome in the 0 seconds I put research into the game. Did I miss an update or DLC or something?
@@numberstheidiot There is no canyon biome, Joshua Graham is a character from Fallout New Vegas they're referencing. As for the full third degree burns, probably a bad molotov or something.
I've heard something about that not being the case. Someone tested whether it was true or not but I don't remember. Something something game mechanics.
The zombies are done perfect. They have hit the sweet spot on everything. They can hear you but its not that if you make any noise they can hear you from miles away. Their sight is also good. They can see you but again its perfectly balanced where it doesnt feel like they will spot you always but they arent blind eighter. Also their path finding is perfect. They will chase you but to far to a point where its impossible. Also you can distract then by walking past windows. Its also perfect where sometimes they go for the door and sometimes they go for a window. The zombies arent that smart but also not dumb. Everything about the zombies feels perfect. I also love it that zombies have random weapons on them. They have unique clothes. And there are like tons of different zombies. And if you dont think it has enough veriaty there are mods what makes zombies even more unique. The survival aspect of this game is also very good. You dont need to mutch food and there is enough. Yeah you need to worry about it from time to time and hoard a lot. Buts not like every session is looking for food. The fridges and freezers also last long but eventually everything will spoil. You character is also very balanced. You will never get to strong. Yeah you can get very strong and 1 shot zombies but it will take high skills and tons of grinding. But even then when you get tired or exausted you will struggle from regular 1 shots to taking like 6 swings. And when you get injured it doesnt matter how long you have survived or skills are you will need to take a break. The injuries dont last to long but they are annoying and force you to take it more easy for a few days This game also has the perfect scenery. It feels fresh but also overrun. Its amazing that overtime the world will grow more. Trees will start to grow. Windows that were broken stay broken and it makes a town over time become more wear down. And you have so many side stories/random events. You find party houses, baricated houses and wrecked cars. They all leave you wondering what happened. Also they did a great job with the loot spawning. It feels so natural. You find food in kitchens and nails in garages. Its also amazing that you might find a carpenter house and it has more base building supplies. Or you find a mechanics house with a nice car and some car parts. All houses and loot places are very well implemented. I if you think its a logical place to spawn it 95% of the time does. I have played games where its all random and you find a m16 in a kitchen and that doesnt feel realistic (ofcourse you still can but its usually a survivor house or something) This game looks simple but once you get playing I was amazed at detailed it is. Its very impressive
Project Zomboid is a game where you can make the experience as close to how it would probably be in real life as possible, even disabling the respawn, and yet the game does not lose it's challenging aspects.
I think an added benefit of slow zombies is that they're surprisingly hard to lead away from a location. The zombies will oftentimes lose interest in you if yet get too far away. I've found that whenever I try and get the attention of a horde of zombies to lead them away from a location that I want to search, there will ALWAYS be stragglers. They're so slow that they'll usually lose interest in you when you run away. Instead of leaving the area that you're trying to search, they'll spread out, linger, and pop out at you from behind a corner when you're not expecting it.
I had my first helicopter event about a month or 2 ago. I was about 7 or 8 days into the game, and I kept reading that if I remained within my safehouse and never went outside, that provided the helicopter didn't see me I could stay there and be relatively safe from breaches. Problem was that I couldn't find anything that had the emergency broadcast station, so I couldn't predict when it was going to begin. I went to the Rosewood Police Station in hopes of finding a radio that had it, and I think I may have found it, and then collected a bunch of guns, only for the event to happen the moment I set foot outside. Thankfully I had a car that ran well, so I just drove out of town, waited for a break in the helicopter's sound, and then found a farmhouse to hide in till it blew over. I was playing on pretty low zombie start population, but there were still a lot of them that I saw while driving. It only took about a day or so to really blow over, but that was an intense and fun experience
Project Zomboid understands that it's not the zombies that kill you. It's hunger, thirst, infections, cold, and more, all steadily wearing down your character. It's a game of attrition and preparation. Like you said, it's not about one zombie, it's about the horde. Its patience is infinite, and when you make a mistake it will punish you for it
Zomboid is like Sims meets Day Z, its such a perfect mix of survival mechanics, if you get too good at the game, you become arrogant and can easily be killed by one zombie, if you clear out all the local zombies, you still have food, sleep, water, illness, car mechanics, farming and weather to deal with. I love this game so much and I hope the devs know I do
My favorite moment in PZ involved hunger. I was starving and catching no breaks. I found a frozen burger, but couldn't eat it there, and my mood dictated that it should be cooked. So, I stealthy my way outside, looking for somewhere to cook it. It took a while, but I snuck into a small home, and popped it into the microwave. There's a bump at the front door. It's just one though, and there's a back door. I wait. The microwave hums. The door crashes open, but my burger is not cooked. I wait. The zombie comes toward me, and I push it down, and stand on it. The burger is ready, so I grab it. Another zombie comes in as I run for the back door. I open it, and there are three zombies at the back door.....
"walking away from the game for a while is pretty normal" Ha, i was so pissed when i lost my first character to a scratch. But i kept coming back with "well i know not to do that now" or "ah, so thats what i did wrong! I can get around that now!" frustration fades, and I keep coming up with new solutions.
Been looking for a good review to convince my friend to play, and this is the best one I've seen yet. It really captures what it is that makes zomboid so special. Great work!
I think one of the things I like about zomboid is that whilst they won't add a lot of things and have apocalypse as the base game. Technically they have added unlimited/highly abundant ammo through the sandbox mode. They serve you what they want the game to be, however at the same time they give you the options to make the game what you want it to be with the sandbox options and the accessibility of modding through the steam workshop.
the "negative" traits short sighted (just wear glasses) & conspicuous (if a zombie sees you it doesn't matter if it takes him 1 second more to "spot you") are easy +6 points for free.
An indie game I found that made slow zombies threatening is "Death Road to Canada". It's pretty easy to kill 1 or 2 with a chair but then you get a something like a molotov and now you can suddenly kill 20, The problem is that in "sieges" the zombies keep coming and your ammo, bombs and chairs are all limited The game also has a justification for how the government fell off even though the masses of zombies can be easily taken care of by a car of 3 jerks and a pug wielding a shotgun: They banned *jorts*
![[Live สด] การออกรางวัลสลากกินแบ่งรัฐบาล งวดวันที่ 16 ธันวาคม 2567](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dNTiBBthKgQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Project Zomboid dev here! Thank you for the kind comments, you captured our intentions well :D
You guys have created a classic.
One of the best games ever, pz should definitely win the labor of love steam award
NPCs
Best survival game ever
i've never heard of the game except maybe the name in passing but now i'm super interested and i think i'm gonna sink some real time into it. youtubers like this are great at hooking people like me into new games. look at that, yer game is on sale too. frabjous day
Zombies aren't scary because they're fast, or big, or strong. Zombies are scary because the horde is endless and tireless, they will never sleep, they will never get bored, they do not feel pain (or at least aren't inhibited by pain) and the infection itself has killed so many that a military response won't help because the military have already been infected and reanimated. Project Zomboid is one of the few games to understand that.
I read some of the radio and tv transcripts that follow the early outbreak events, and my gosh do they give a really believable story to the overall game and progression of the infection. I really wish more zombie media was able to give us good stories of early setting zombie outbreaks
Is there any other game that does this?
@@mertarican5456 Probably. Zombies are pretty popular. State of Decay is another zombie survival simulator, albeit probably not on the level of Project Zomboid (I haven't played it in like, forever). I do remember it's less focused on your individual character surviving and more keeping your small community of survivors alive.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is a weird example. It both goes even harder into realism and much harder into fantasy. On one hand you don't just have to worry about keeping fed, you have to worry about eating healthy. On the other you can play as a literal catgirl (with the right backstory and perks) and monsters don't just include zombies, but malfunctioning robots, Mi-Go and dragons depending on your settings.
Basically, Project Zomboid is a realistic Romero Zombie Survival Simulator, Catacylsm: Dark Days Ahead is more like a realistic Heavily Modded Old school Resident Evil game simulator. It's still primarily about zombies, but you've got other monsters to worry about too. And those monsters can be Skynet killbots, Left 4 Dead's special infected, aliens, Triffids (ideal neighbours as once killed they leave vegitable matter you can safely eat with no preparation) and with PK's Rebalance the forces of Hell itself and Shia LeBeouf. You need to have the right settings and/or mods for a purely Romero Experience.
Thankfully Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is free and only requires a download. It's got less graphics than Project Zomboid though.
@@DarthMcDoomington There's No More Room In Hell, which also features the classic, slow-walking Romero zombies. It's like a more slow-paced, strategic version of Left 4 Dead.
Zombies are a threat if they are fast and smart
Sort of reminds me how humans managed to hunt fast prey animals by being persistent. We aren't faster than a deer but we can stalk a deer for a long period of time till it's too tired to run away.
deer has to pant, people can sweat
@@keckingrabbit354 zombies in this are the definition of persistent tho? also its mainly agreed upon that the virus has a airborne strain, meaning that if animals could be affected they already would have been.
note that you are immune to the airborne strain in zomboid but not the main virus(that travels though fluids)
you can thank sweat for that one
Uh oh stinky
@@sawyerschultz6205what?! What's the evidence that it's airborne??!
I think you're spot on. Zombies sometimes aren't even the main threat- but combined with everything else, they do exert continual pressure on the player. It's a very atmospheric game, I think- I've always found the radio and TV stations to be particularly well done.
Now that i think about it, it's ridiculous that a zombie can be stronger than people while their muscles are rotting away. It makes sense that they'll have the same strength or lower
@@stellviahohenheim zombies wouldn’t have the same mental block that we do when it comes to using their full strength. They will bust their body to the bone to break down a door. You wouldn’t.
@Stevia hoenheim zombie aren’t stronger, they’re more relentless. Humans feel pain, humans get tired, humans feel fear. Zombies have none of those restrictions. They will never stop coming after you and they will effectively kill themselves just to get at you. Even if every part of its body is destroyed, as long as the head remains it will come for you.
@@detritus3676 Zombies in some media are strong. It sounds like you're talking generally. But a strong zombie would add an uncanny element that fits perfectly into horror. It brings the zombie question back to supernatural horror, whereas American media has shied away from that depiction... partly because the disease element is interesting, but also I think they're appealing to evangelicals who would be truly horrified to think about the dead being animated by spirits.
Modern zombie media isn't out to shock people, it's to sell cool action movies, etc.
@@detritus3676 now you said, this all of my question of "why is zombie more stronger than human" got answered, thx
I love that the artystyle is this uncanny Sims pastiche. It makes it more "real" in the sense zombies are intruding upon a continuous living world. As opposed to grimdark zombies being a drop in a grimdark ocean, filled with fallout/mad-max style desolation that has been done in a million games already.
Where most horror games are a black studded jacket, Project zomboid is a freshly washed white shirt, with a small bloodstain on the shoulder
That's actually an amazing way of describing it 😉
"You got red on you"
And that small bloodstain could be your end
Interestingly, after 100 in-game days the buildings begin to be overgrown with plants and the roads start decaying but the concept of being at ground zero for the end of the world, surviving it, and then effectively outliving the end of human civilization is compelling.
@@jasonslade6259 100 days is the default for the over growth mechanic, you can change it in the sand box to what ever you want.
I forget where I read it, but someone equated the zombie with the eventual death everyone is promised. Slow and avoidable if you’re careful, but unceasing, relentless, and will chase you forever. Eventually it will catch you and you will die. Period.
BTW, great video, have a sub.
Fast zombies can chase you even faster forever lol.
Maybe Terrible Writing Advice? He said something like that once.
Says who? If I turn off respawning and simply bring the hordes of the city out to play with loud enough horns, a campfire can easily solve my problem.
Says who? I've seen people who survived long enough that they would have died of old age. "Zombie death is inevitable."
I have died to weird BS like slightly overcooked ham more than zombies. The zombies are actually really easy to avoid
Zomboid definitely knows how to ratchet up the tension.
Being pursued by a conga line of zombies is scary, but then you lose them in the trees and all is well. . . or is it?
Next time you approach those dark, spooky woods, you know they're gonna be chock full of lost zombies.
Burn the woods to the ground! Smokey ain’t around to stop you! Lol
@@DarknessXER I usually just walk past later when I've got good weapons and have my character scream at the top of his lungs. The gunshots usually draw out the rest.
those condos in Louisville, they’ve got fences that span the little backyard but living out of them is absolutely harrowing when you’re constantly living ten feet from wandering zombies.
I describe Project Zomboid as "The Sims with zombies" and "A game that is constantly looking for any excuse to kill you... Literally any possible excuse".
I ate burnt salami, died after 2 minutes.
@@NevilsicoShard I burnt a strip of bacon. Dead in a day.
i play with my friend and we do decor our base like in the sims 1 redo painting etc lol
Well the devs were quite litterally Sims modders before starting to develope the game. So "The Sims with Zombies" is actually quite accurate
@@helldronez I mid-key love making fancy palaces and hip pads. The Zombies make it much harder, and somehow more meaningful? Not being limited to lot sizes is absolutely fantastic. If the NPCs let us do things like give them houses? I'll be pretty psyched.
“You can never be too powerful…” that basically sums up the game. You will die, you will get careless. You just looted an army barrack and walked out with so much ammunition and weapons, and you start thinking you are safe, you beat the game, you open the door and walk into a herd…
That or you’re refuelling a car at a gas station and one crawls from under the skirt and chomps your shin
@@TemmieContingenC Nah, clearing perimeter before refueling
@@mrboleus8240 my most common deaths is simply overconfidence. Swinging too much or thinking I should take on 29 zombies at a time
@@TemmieContingenC I got you.. Died several times doing that... Now ingame 4 month passed, never been more careful when confronting them.... There's no better option than taking them one by one, even with shotgun...
@@mrboleus8240 yeah it sucks but I can’t hold back just clobbering zombies bevause I have 3 levels in long blunt and 8 strength points. My character is a testosterone filled army vet with a gun so the grind is real not to go sicko mode while on a looting run
Hey yo, this is for anyone who gets stuck in a car with a horde. Swap seats, roll down the window and start swinging your melee weapon for a chance to stumble the group. If that happens, it’s your one and only opening to make a break for it. Best of luck and hope this saves at least a few characters!
You should run through it if the horde isnt huge, don’t recommend it though my best advice is, go 30 mph or less and you wont have this problem
I usually wait for my car to stall and when the horde stumbles that's when I'll get out and run, usually I'll trip over a zombie and pop right out of the horde.
Then you have those of us who don't play with multi-hit. The way it was intended ;)
@@vividvault9285 Disabling Multi-Hit is for masochists.
@@HansBotMaker Not at all. There is no way I am swinging a bat and making a clear connection with 5 zombies at the same time. It's just not realistic and makes the game way too easy. I don't even have to strafe around. I just have to stand in one spot and swing over and over until the zombies are dead.
Single his is absolutely how the game was intended to be played, but they've added these options to lower the difficulty for people who'd like to opt into them.
This is how I realized that the zombie clichés are real like thinking you're safe when suddenly a zombie comes out of nowhere and takes a chunk of your neck.
It's not that the character is stupid, but lowered his guard for a second that gets them killed. (But most of the time it's bad and lazy writing in movies)
I've died by simply forgetting to shut a door behind me when looting and suffering a zombie back attack!...that is after looting a dozen houses previously that day and closing all the doors - Just one slip, error or act of laziness is all it takes for this game to lick its lips and pounce on you.
Makes sense really. In an apocalypse you aren’t likely well rested, you’re going to be tired, hungry, and burned out. It’s incredibly easy to miss obvious things, and if you are focusing on one thing you can get tunnel vision.
I played multiplayer before and the realistic ways we died made more sense than dying in a blaze of glory.
Buddy of mine fell through a tile in our house while doing renovations and crippled his legs. I try to grab him and perform first aid on his leg and boom, a jackass on top of the tile falls down, calls his friends and now we’re getting eaten in a tiny crawl space under a flight of stairs
Love this game
I cleared a house, went back to it three different times after, on the third time I realized there'd been a zombie in the closet the entire time. Never made a sound before I opened the door, just lunged out and yep ended my run with one bite to the neck. Now even when I remember to knock a part of me is always expecting that zombie to lunge at me when I open a door. That's called terror and project zomboid does it better than any other game I've played.
I think it goes even further. Because in movies and tv shows you are not the character and you dont have any control, stuff happens and you dont have any say on how the characters react. But in Zomboid, you are the character, your reaction is what determines the outcome and that adds so much more than a movie could.
This game is quite fun in my opinion, but any new players should know that there are a couple main issues right now:
1) Late game is straight up just skill grinding. Once you know how to survive winter, there are no more obstacles to get around.
2) It's tons more fun in multiplayer, and usually with mods.
3) There is probably no game more hsrdcore and punishing, as you can put 300 hours into a single character, only for then to be scratched once and catch the zombie virus.
4) The next big updates they have planned are animal, and then human NPCs. This will hopefully help the late game.
I never understood why surviving winter was such a problem for so many players. I always made sure to stock up on coats and hats for winter, and I hoard canned food to the point most of my bases have 5ish crates full.
@@thelordofcringe For me it's not as much getting through it, it's getting to it. Unlucky drops, lack of time to watch TV so you can't reliably grind carpentry, other hindrances along the way and you might have a very rocky road to even see that first snow. That being said I am not very good at this game.
Lol i have no idea how but I got in the situation which led to 4 scratches and 1 wound given by zombies but.. somehow my character didn't get the infection.. Is that even possible? I don't remember touching the infection system in the sandbox
@@theman20033 Yes. A scratch is 5% chance and a laceration is 25%. Sometimes, you just get lucky.
@@Mustacheoro thats cuz i chose the "lucky" perk)))
Project Zomboid is the exact opposite of what the mainstream gaming industry is.
Agreed. Mainstream gaming today is a joke.
instead of making a new shitty game every year, PZ updates their good game once every 6 years :O
POG!
@@yveltalsea no, they update the game every 1~3 months
@@yveltalsea you are wrong.
@@nyxlanders How to tell an MF wasn't here for the two year drought waiting for the B41 update to drop LMAO. In all seriousness tho they made the update and I'm sure their update schedule will speed up.
This game is so immersive, time-consuming, and realistic that I've literally gotten a lot better at organizing and cleaning my house as a result lmao. And now, I have the urge to buy seeds and start a garden in my backyard. Yes, in real life.
Oh do you also have adhd?rofl
Hey, gardening is a fun activity. Just make sure to read up on the conditions of the soil and for plants.
Damn.
PLANTS VS ZOMBIES YEAHHH
Bro is gonna become crazy Dave soon💀
honestly nothing can beat the sheer panic and horror of hearing your character scream in pure agony as the horde eats you alive
whoever voice acted those screams should get a kiss on the lips as a reward for killing it
It’s more like apathetic frustration after the 200th hour or so but yeah it is pretty freaky when you first hear it
...Quit literally.@@Yimothy
I usually feel... frustration and "really? THREE zombies dragged you down?"
The mod who adds a small chance of faster zombies spawn is one of my favourites, having them all run is very overwhelming but only a select few being fast shamblers makes for a lot of tense and interesting situations
Friend added this when I first played without mentioning it
I think it was one of the producers or special effects artists on The Walking Dead that mentioned Romero's zombies being the scariest type in all of cinema. They're slow, encroaching, and will never stop. Just like death itself. Even if you're fine, it's always around the corner. He also said they were scarier because if you're trapped, the slow zombies give you much more time to think about your demise as they slowly rip you apart.
Anyway, good vid.
I dunno man I think I'd be scared of that, but seeing a horde of world War z type sprinting undead would make me shit myself way more than a bunch of shamblers
@@bofa722 Horror =/= Terror
If you get trapped by shambling mindless corpses moving like molasses that’s entirely on you lol
@@danielwoods3896 The problem is you need sleep, food, water, you get exhausted and NEED to rest.
They dont.
Every time you stop to sleep for 8 Hours, to eat, drink, hunt for food, sit down and ease the ache in your feet, shit, and so on.
They'll be gaining on you, assuming you DONT walk right into a second group's area fleeing the first.
Think of it as the Immortal Snail concept, it's slow, you can EASILY outpace it rapidly, but it WILL catch you someday, and it only takes one mistake...
@@higueraft571 bro literally just get to the first second floor of a two floor house you can find and block the stairs off with a couch. Easy as fuck. Build ladders to the windows. Easy
“You will run. They will walk. You will rest. They will not.”
This needs to be in a note or a wall ingame
Akin to the end is extremely fucking nigh
When this game picked up again (about a year or so ago) it made me so happy because ive owned the game since 2014 and said it was gonna be something to stand the test of time, and the DEV's are incredible
Soo, I was just recommended the video and I was genuinely shocked to see less than a thousand views. I automatically assumed that You're a really big channel given the quality of material and it was only when i was about 80% done with the vid i checked the comments and boom.
Same here my guy
Cause of your comment i had the same experience.
Same. The intro slapped so I was like "Damn who dis?" And then only 666 subs *cough* sorry 667 subs.
I guess Yimothy got what he deserved from the algorithm just one week after your comment! :)
The algorithm said yes.
Something I noticed is that it's easy to lull yourself into a false sense of security thanks to the zombies' slow movement and relative weakness. The problem is that they're _everywhere,_ and they're surprisingly good at catching you by surprise. All it takes is one small lapse in awareness for one of them to come quietly shambling out of some of some nook you didn't notice and grab you, and it's even worse in-doors where you can suddenly find yourself cornered by a large group of them, thus negating both of your advantages over them. No game makes me paranoid like PZ.
yeah the amount of times I have seen like one or two zombies and was like yeah i can take them out only to be blindsided by zombies that heard the other two dieing
Project zomboid helped me realize how quick I would die in a “sprinter scenario” irl lol
Dead corpses sprinting its just ridiculous
Alive infected now thats something
After long enough you outlive them
Mess up once in any way before then and youre dead
I'm genuinely shocked you only have 300 subscribers- this sort of content seems extremely professional and well done, and your analysis of the game is absolutely amazing.
Seems it doubled overnight. Well deserved.
Good catch... I didn't even reflect on this. The dude sounds as solid as any 1M I've listened to. Subbing to see if the quality stays this high.
Has over 1k now
@@panicsnacks6882 Well deserved
I am fine with the base game vision.
That said my friends and I set up a game where, our goal was clearing the map of zombies, with the help of mods, we made it so. It was a blast as it became a game of logistics and attrition with the horde. And despite having military gear. The horde never lost its danger. One wrong step and we'd die, and we did so a lot. I think that speaks to the vision of this game the most, that even with mods changing things the core of it never changes.
The Horde will get you, it's only a matter of time.
The closest comparison you can give is The Long Dark, both games focus on long-term play, and both games (usually) also slowly kill you due to poor decisions.
the long dark is boring trash tho
@@handemorebattlelands4009 literally a wrong opinion
@@zombieranger3410 literally the worst survival out there, cant jump, cant play with friends, trash graphics, trash story, nah dude
I myself have no opinion on the game but I think Long Dark has multiplayer mod, can't recall exactly.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. One and only
Zombie guts disguise is honestly a good idea. It could incentivize players to make a trade off between their own health and survival. Hygeine too. Imagine if tooth decay were the biggest killer. This would be great for a hardcore mode.
there’s a mod for the zombie guts
I really like how the settings are like "here, take It, do what you want, More loot, weapons whatever. Just play and have fun not dying"
Helicopter event is not something that I run away from but I rather use it to clean my neighboorhood with big ol molotov
the true chad move
@@Yimothy B) and also big brain moove ( if you manage to not burn the 3/4 of the buildings around )
I go fishing during the helicopter event 😎
i love that theres mods for “the big no’s” that the devs dont want to add
That's what happens with what I call framework games like this. The Devs make a good or great base game but make it easily modable with steam workshop access. And so the game lives on past where vets get bored or cases where the base game rubs a player the wrong way.
Rimworld is like this. I and a lot of other vets regard the base game as lame, but as a customizable framework of whatever colony sim experience we want it's amazing.
@@jakkuhl6223 I still can't find a mod that lets you SPECIFICALLY so no zombivixir or medical cocktail, SPECIFICALLY let's you treat the zombie infection with antibiotics and resting, because in George Romero's movies, the zombies aren't caused by a virus, it's caused by an unknown phenomenon, and the reason why bites are fatal, is because a corpse full of God knows what diseases, just bit you
@@jakkuhl6223 and a mod that disables zombies getting faster when you go near them, since Romero's zombies never do that
Great video that describes the game play perfect! I love this game. The jump scare sound still gets me every time. I bought it a about three weeks ago and already have over 100 hrs of play. Best $20 I ever spent.
it's such a great deal
The Jumpscare Sound got me one too many times, so I installed a mod which replaces it with Oblivion Guard Voice Lines
it still gets to me consistently as well but it makes me laugh now bc i changed mine to the vine boom
One of my favorite moments was just...walking to town. Lonely on a road and with a nebulous objective in mind. Very, very atmospheric. Other games claim to be atmospheric, Project Z masters it.
"an ever present danger just waiting for you to slip up" percently captures the tension + fear i feel almost at all times playing this amazing game! (except for when i'm safe hiding in my base, my character developing clincial depression)
Time to munch on 5 bowls of 1 cabbage each while telling yourself it's a 5 course meal!
I think you can get rid of that by walking around a little bit outside in the game.
Helped with my boredom.
@@Cacowninja sortof, but boredom and sadness are two different meters. boredom fills up when inside and goes down when outside. sadness fills up from eating yucky foods, being too bored, or a few other things iirc, but it does NOT go down on its own without modded traits like Blissful.
so you can *prevent* it building up by touching grass but once you get the sadness you can't *cure* it by touching grass.
@@fractalgem You cure the sadness by doing things that improve your happyness. Either using anti-depressants, drinking (ironically considering alcohol is a depressant) smoking, reading fun things like pornos or magazines, or watching entertainment.
@@kalreynolds5829 well yes? And eating food can be one of those activities. Prepared food gives 5 happiness per unique ingredient, with possible penaltiesforoverusing an ingredient. (So don't put bournon or wine in, itll give less happiness that way)
As a PZ veteran I started to heavily mod my game. One of them allows you to change the % ratio of all zombies and you can modify it in real-time. As much as I love base zombies recently I started to spice my game up by adding 10% sprinters and I can go higher than that if I want.
I got the game a few weeks back. Hardest part isn't losing a character But progressing one from the safe spot you left him at. Found the ranger station and have begun to secure it and set up water collectors along with the pots I brought along. Yet I haven't found any seeds or much in terms of axes and I know I have plenty of time for winter to prepare but I am terrified none the less to hope back in and lose that progress. Yet the moment I do I have no issue starting over.
Firestation. There's one in whichever town is on the south side of the map, west of Muldraugh. If you choose firefighter profession and start there, you sometimes will spawn in right inside the station. It usually has about a dozen or so axes, and there's a police station across the street. The down side, is there's a lot of zombies in that town, but if you're careful you can get all the gear you need.
Might also want to consider late game and start working up crafted axes and maintenance.
@@nobodyspecial4702 eyah muldraugh has the most versitile loot IMO currently camping out in the trailer park to build some stashes
@@Dman6779 I start in riverside so I can loot the supermarket, police station, all the various convenience stores and usually there's one or two prepper houses in the city which get you nice starting weaponry. Once I get that stuff all moved over to the supermarket since it has enough coolers to keep stuff for a while I start to ferry it down to the country club housing where I make a more permanent base. From there, it's a pretty short car ride to loot the town south of there with it's gun store, doctors office, farm and tool stores. After that, a couple days to get to hit up Rosewood for the police station and fire department, but the town is usually pretty overrun making it too dangerous to go for the stores in the center. Quick jaunt to the secret base to the west to get military backpacks and then it's off to Muldraugh and after that, West Point and Lousville. By then, maxxed all the skills and pretty secure in the golf course base, I restart because surviving is too easy at that point.
I would say it’s the fact that you are driven towards them that makes it for me.
It’s like you are stuck in a room that’s full of fire, you have a safe zone but after a while the wall will start pushing you toward the fire.
The trick is that you have been given a bucket full of water and a heavy flammable oil on the bottom, you can use the water to help clear a safe path but use too much and you risk spilling the oil as well spreading the fire, the more water you use the more you have to tip the bucket and the easier it gets to make a mistake and spill the oil.
You are driven towards the fire and are encouraged to go into it earlier than you would like.
Honestly, Project Zomboid is pretty much the other side of the coin of the zombie experience to something like Left 4 Dead. Both games carry the omnipresent threat of the horde and the melee-centric zombie gameplay, but they approach it in entirely different ways. In PZ, even a single zombie can be lethal in the right circumstance. In L4D the specials are the only ones that applies for, with regular infected only really being dangerous in large groups, and given your footage I don't need to tell you what happens with large groups in Zomboid if you get too close.
L4D is all about the short game. About getting the hell out of a place where you're never going to survive for long. It's all guns blazing, slaughtering zombies left and right. By contrast, PZ is all about the long game. It's fairly rare that you are "in a hurry", so to say, but there's a lot of long term pressure and risk management. The zombies are a genuine threat, but they're not jumping out at you all the time. If you're careful you can almost avoid them entirely, and indeed you can reach long-term success by just settling down to farm and fish in the middle of nowhere. At the same time, all too often you will find yourself needing things from the civilized world, loot which necessitates putting yourself at risk, so half the time you're the one choosing to encounter zombies. It's loot that L4D just gives you as you run along, because in that game there's really not much of a choice.
They're different, and that's not a bad thing. Slow zombies don't work well in an action-focused game where outrunning them could just remove the challenge, and being constantly under attack from fast zombies makes it difficult to put the idea of the long term into practice. Nonetheless, they're both important parts of the greater zombie whole.
Great comparison
Since when l4d was nelee centered game when here no melees in the game (unless you mean l4d2)
I’m the 69th like =D
4:53 - I once escaped an entire horde in the city while at minimum movement speed and too exhausted to fight. A lot of the chase was at night, too. It was difficult and took about 15 - 20 real life minutes of careful movement and clever traversal of the world, but I did it, and I somehow managed to sleep my character's exhaustion away. No scratches, no bites.
Using walkto to get through a forest is the easiest way to lose a horde and i managed to sleep in one and survive after being chased by a 2.5 zed pop louis horde
Almost bled out due to scratches after jumping through windows in louis tho
Loved seeing Bruce Greene ex-FunHaus member featured in this video! Made my day with that small reference
Take smoker as a negative trait, it can be replenished by simply killing zombies and looting them.
- the 47th most zomboid man in the world
Plus it helps cure the sads. Smoking removes the negative anxiety from withdrawl and it lowers your sadness.
Smoker is the only “negative” trait that is actually a positive in this game lol. No downsides. Just a bunch of free points
heres a tip for escaping large hordes if you're reasonably far from them, use the "walk to" feature in context menu (click to walk) and then put the speed on two, you can still control where you go but it's faster and you can make quick decisions and it also janks their pathfinding AI slightly
This game reminds me of RimWorld.
-Managing your characters mood, hunger, and supplies while hoping you don't get attacked by a horde.
-Amazing customization.
-Permadeath
-A new story every time you play.
I love it!
the mouse flinch at 7:28 sums up half the video
What do you mean there is no cure in game? The tutorial teaches you that if you get bitten, you can administer the cure by pressing Q.
*If you know, you know.*
I thought bleach was the cure?
q also cures boredom, very versatile key
@@stens.8394 it used to be a way to make sure your character doesn’t come back a zombie
@@TemmieContingenC does it not prevent zombification?
@@brodyrichter8113 It was patched around build 40, meaning if you drink bleach you will die painfully and reanimate, except without a trachea. And yes it used to be able to prevent zombification as you died to the bleach instead
I just wanted to thank everyone for all the support this video has gotten. It's done way better than my videos generally do by a pretty wide margin which is super exciting!
I want to keep on putting out more videos, so if you're interested in more content please consider subscribing! I've already got the first draft of the script for my next video finished, so I think that one should be ready soon enough.
Thank you all for watching!
If I wasn't already in love with this game i would immediately jump in it after watching this video, a really accurate, funny and interesting one! :)
It's actually really well done!
9:44 Terraria almost always gets nominated, but they actually only just won the award for the first time last year.
Just saw you have like 700 subs. That came really unsuspected!
good shit my guy, I look forward to seeing you blow up. Do you know what kind of style/ content you're going to be aiming for?
I really like project zomboid for its fantastic portrayal of the apocalypse progressing. You can listen to the TV and radio and learn how it goes from quarantine to discovery of the nature of zombies to the broken quarantine to the world being devastated by both the zombies and the airborne virus to the end of all outside media. Especially how it affects gameplay like with the early on helicopter event mentioned and utilities like water and power being shut off, even the world slowly being overgrown and the zombies decaying.
I cant believe its only been a year since multiplayer released. It feels like so long. Cant wait for the NPC/animals update as well as the next crafting overhaul.
Wdym with multiplayer beeing released since just a year?
@@nicz7694 oh snap dec of 2021 theres an article about it. Ok so it has been over a year that makes WAY more sense. Had weird Timelapse Vertigo for a second
@@LargeBlueCircle ah ok since I can remember that MP was ingame WAY earlier than that. Around 5 years ago when I bought the game for some friends. I remember since Cars where new.
I guess it was more like an rework of some functions.
Car update was the first when friends joined and I played with them together. Was pretty nice!
@@nicz7694 yeah exactly! They had taken it out, did a lot of rework, and added it back in. Same with NPC's- except for adding it back in. Really love PJZ the devs always seem to take their time and when they add functionality it always seems to be like how AAA games should be- works well and not a broken mess of bugs held together by chewing gum, rubber bands and paperclips :/
the helicopter guy can shove it
Honestly my guy could stay inside for the rest of his life and he’d be fine, only having to go outside to tend to crops.
Pretty cool video fellow survivor. A little tip, while walking through dense forests right click and choose "walk to" this way the pathfinding feature will take over taking the shortest, more silent way possible reducing the chance of getting scratch with tree branches, while maintaining the options of crouching or running. Very effective to outrun zombies because makes you very quiet.
I can back the zombie guts and I can think of a way to balance it, too. You smell like a zombie, you're moving around makes zombies move in the direction they saw you move in. Kinda like cattle in a herd. If they're not aggressive towards you, but they're following what they see as a 'leader'
Damn this is actually a really cool idea and I hope to at least see this implemented as a mod
@ChefBrownSauce OH GOD Can you imagine walking along, leading a bunch of zombies behind you and then it starts raining? 🤣🤣
@@bassybgaming3388 Time to empty your bowels!
@ChefBrownSauce you're walking along and it's just the calm music, it starts raining and the music goes 0 to 100 instant high version and all of the zombies just slowly magnetized towards you
Not to mention the absolutely amazing soundtrack this game has, it really captures that burden/hopeless feeling.
Already was eyeing this game, now I'm definitely sure I wanna try it. I feel like it's something I'd get addicted to very easily.
God this channel just gave me the feeling of finding $50 in a random pair of pants!
What an informative , fun and well edited video ! Im Subscribed Yimothy .
Its my opinion that Zombies are at their best when they're slow and weak, but there's a FUCK TON of them. You CAN kill them, you CAN outrun them, but you can NEVER outlast them.
Love this video. Your play-by-play of how drinking got you killed was a stand-out segment of the video.
Uh, I don't really have a conclusion... ok bye!
i remember buying this game in 2020, never playing it cause it didn't have multiplayer at the time, i ultimately played it solo one day, about a month after buying it, loved it, kept playing, and basically never stopped. here i am in 2023 surviving with friends, i really hope this game keeps getting the love it deserves!
Been playing zomboid for years and so happy it’s finally getting and love it deserves.
I love Project Zomboid because it has a mood no other game has captured. You WILL die, there is no cure, there is no one else out there, help isnt coming, your story ends with you dying. Whether its turning into a zombie, dying from starvation, cold, a car accident, or even walking through a bush and dying from a cut if you have no way to bandage it. That list of Big No's are pretty much all features that break that vibe and I love that the devs refuse to add them.
It's really nice to see more attention on Project Zomboid. Truly a gem.
My most tragic story is losing my favorite character to burnt fish, me and my friends had a game running in Louisville where we had a shelter and a really good set up. We were low on food and I ended up eating some bait fish that I’d found in the fishing net. My friends left the fish to long on the campfire and all 7 of them burned. I was desperate so I ate them. My character got sick and died in an hour of eating the fish. My friends will never let me live that down
Good video. Been playing the game for a couple of weeks now and watching as much content on the game as I can. PZ is the zombie game I didn't know I needed but it's become my favourite zombie game of all time as it allows me to live out my zombie apocalypse fantasy and show me how quickly I would die
Slow zombies are scary because they lull you into a false sense of security. You go from thinking about how slow and stupid they are, and how easily you can outmaneuver them, to being thrown to the ground by one and getting your throat torn out in a frantic, chaotic, spiraling burst of helpless violence as you desperately panic trying to stay alive. Fast zombies and "special" zombies are just always a threat and never give you that false sense of security, so it goes from being scary to just being predictable when one gets you: they never get that sudden and guttural horror you feel when the creature that's not a threat suddenly becomes a gigantic threat.
Great video. I am definitely with everyone with saying that your work is underrated.
Becoming decent at Project Zomboid requires a transformation of your mind and habits. It is really something.
One thing I find super cool is when you die, you can come back as a different person and find yourself as a zombie and your impact on the world. I find that super interesting.
Also, Terraria and Project Zomboid has some of the most dedicated fan bases there are, they tend to be oddly kind communities. So they both honestly deserve the Labor of Love reward IMO.
very well said. ill be showing this to anyone thats curious about the game when i bring it up. the multiplayer really kicks this game up a notch and it makes it so much more enjoyable in my opinion. you slip into sub consciously roleplaying wether you like it or not even more.
Thanks to YT for recommending this video, it's really a good summary of how the game makes you feel while playing it. Loved your commentary!
sprinters are horrifying in this game. Having 6% sprinters on is still a nightmare. I can only take 2-3 at once.
Dude I had a panic attack when the zombies fucking had their neurons activated when the sun just slightly set
I fucking love sprinters. Ironically, I survive way longer with sprinters on average because I don't get bored and do something suicidally reckless.
I remember when I played with sprinters, and forgot to turn off the TV in my bedroom before I went to sleep. It just so happened a horde was standing outside my boarded window at 6:00am and ripped me apart to the sound of pancakes
I've been waiting for years to make a video like this on project zomboid.
This was really great! Lovely voiceover! Hope the retweet from IndieStone invites a ton more people over, because you definitely deserve it!
I was recommended this video by the algorithm and I'm so glad it did because this is a fantastic video.
The fact this game is perfectly playable and challenging even if you play a custom game with ZERO ZOMBIES says a lot about how great this game is.
And playing with friends makes everything better. I'm playing with three friends who were all newbies when they started with me as the grizzled experienced player trying to guide them. We play on very easy settings - low zombies, no bite infections, moderate loot and car spawns. And even then we've had losses. I died once to an infection (before we turned it off), one friend died due to catching a fever that took over a week to claim him because we just couldn't find antibiotics, and another friend has died about a dozen times due to lack of situational awareness (to the point I'm now babysitting him since he's the team mechanic and I'm fed up of not having those skills available to us). One friend hasn't died at all yet - but has had two really close calls, once when he got a deep wound on his neck and was saved with barely any health left by me performing emergency first aid in the back of a car as we were exiting a complete mess of a situation and recently when he accidentally fell off a balcony and broke his leg in the middle of a zombie infested mall (being saved by the first friend in the nick of time with the last of his shotgun ammo) and only barely managing to make it to the car to get back to base for proper medical care. And winter is just around the corner and we don't have enough food for the four of us.
I love this game.
Just started the video but I'm loving the format, just wanted to remember to leave a comment
Oh boy i love my Joshua Graham character, the only thing i really have to worry about is maintaining bandage and disinfectant supplies for the full body 3rd degree burns.
The peck did Joshua Graham do to get full body 3rd degree burns
@@numberstheidiot he got covered in pitch and tar lit on fire ass naked and thrown down the grand canyon. Somehow he survived.
@@enclaveofficerz3245 That sounds familiar, but besides that’s pretty neat.
I never heard about the Canyon biome in the 0 seconds I put research into the game. Did I miss an update or DLC or something?
@@numberstheidiot
There is no canyon biome, Joshua Graham is a character from Fallout New Vegas they're referencing.
As for the full third degree burns, probably a bad molotov or something.
Pro tip: the short sighted trait is the best negative trait because it can be completely negated with glasses and barely affects you at all
I've heard something about that not being the case. Someone tested whether it was true or not but I don't remember. Something something game mechanics.
1:23 dude i use that house as my base! i audibly yelled out "Dude thats my house wtf" lol
The zombies are done perfect. They have hit the sweet spot on everything. They can hear you but its not that if you make any noise they can hear you from miles away. Their sight is also good. They can see you but again its perfectly balanced where it doesnt feel like they will spot you always but they arent blind eighter. Also their path finding is perfect. They will chase you but to far to a point where its impossible. Also you can distract then by walking past windows. Its also perfect where sometimes they go for the door and sometimes they go for a window. The zombies arent that smart but also not dumb. Everything about the zombies feels perfect. I also love it that zombies have random weapons on them. They have unique clothes. And there are like tons of different zombies. And if you dont think it has enough veriaty there are mods what makes zombies even more unique.
The survival aspect of this game is also very good. You dont need to mutch food and there is enough. Yeah you need to worry about it from time to time and hoard a lot. Buts not like every session is looking for food. The fridges and freezers also last long but eventually everything will spoil. You character is also very balanced. You will never get to strong. Yeah you can get very strong and 1 shot zombies but it will take high skills and tons of grinding. But even then when you get tired or exausted you will struggle from regular 1 shots to taking like 6 swings. And when you get injured it doesnt matter how long you have survived or skills are you will need to take a break. The injuries dont last to long but they are annoying and force you to take it more easy for a few days
This game also has the perfect scenery. It feels fresh but also overrun. Its amazing that overtime the world will grow more. Trees will start to grow. Windows that were broken stay broken and it makes a town over time become more wear down. And you have so many side stories/random events. You find party houses, baricated houses and wrecked cars. They all leave you wondering what happened. Also they did a great job with the loot spawning. It feels so natural. You find food in kitchens and nails in garages. Its also amazing that you might find a carpenter house and it has more base building supplies. Or you find a mechanics house with a nice car and some car parts. All houses and loot places are very well implemented. I if you think its a logical place to spawn it 95% of the time does. I have played games where its all random and you find a m16 in a kitchen and that doesnt feel realistic (ofcourse you still can but its usually a survivor house or something)
This game looks simple but once you get playing I was amazed at detailed it is. Its very impressive
Project Zomboid is a game where you can make the experience as close to how it would probably be in real life as possible, even disabling the respawn, and yet the game does not lose it's challenging aspects.
My favorite setup is to make myself afraid of everything then combine that with adrenaline junkie.
06:18 I felt this on a personal level
I think an added benefit of slow zombies is that they're surprisingly hard to lead away from a location. The zombies will oftentimes lose interest in you if yet get too far away. I've found that whenever I try and get the attention of a horde of zombies to lead them away from a location that I want to search, there will ALWAYS be stragglers. They're so slow that they'll usually lose interest in you when you run away. Instead of leaving the area that you're trying to search, they'll spread out, linger, and pop out at you from behind a corner when you're not expecting it.
I had my first helicopter event about a month or 2 ago. I was about 7 or 8 days into the game, and I kept reading that if I remained within my safehouse and never went outside, that provided the helicopter didn't see me I could stay there and be relatively safe from breaches. Problem was that I couldn't find anything that had the emergency broadcast station, so I couldn't predict when it was going to begin. I went to the Rosewood Police Station in hopes of finding a radio that had it, and I think I may have found it, and then collected a bunch of guns, only for the event to happen the moment I set foot outside. Thankfully I had a car that ran well, so I just drove out of town, waited for a break in the helicopter's sound, and then found a farmhouse to hide in till it blew over. I was playing on pretty low zombie start population, but there were still a lot of them that I saw while driving. It only took about a day or so to really blow over, but that was an intense and fun experience
Not the longest video but I loved it more than most videos about the game I've watched recently. Very nice
This was a great watch with my cat, he loved it
This video is what sold me on the game. Was not disappointed.
this was a great video, its clear, its to the point, its researched and well thought out
Spending 20 dollars on hunt down the freeman: 🤓
Spending 20 dollars on project zomboid: 😎
Project Zomboid understands that it's not the zombies that kill you. It's hunger, thirst, infections, cold, and more, all steadily wearing down your character. It's a game of attrition and preparation. Like you said, it's not about one zombie, it's about the horde. Its patience is infinite, and when you make a mistake it will punish you for it
Zomboid is like Sims meets Day Z, its such a perfect mix of survival mechanics, if you get too good at the game, you become arrogant and can easily be killed by one zombie, if you clear out all the local zombies, you still have food, sleep, water, illness, car mechanics, farming and weather to deal with. I love this game so much and I hope the devs know I do
My favorite moment in PZ involved hunger. I was starving and catching no breaks. I found a frozen burger, but couldn't eat it there, and my mood dictated that it should be cooked. So, I stealthy my way outside, looking for somewhere to cook it. It took a while, but I snuck into a small home, and popped it into the microwave. There's a bump at the front door. It's just one though, and there's a back door. I wait. The microwave hums. The door crashes open, but my burger is not cooked. I wait. The zombie comes toward me, and I push it down, and stand on it. The burger is ready, so I grab it. Another zombie comes in as I run for the back door. I open it, and there are three zombies at the back door.....
I imagined that scene. U were so desperate for just... Burger.
Project zomboid. Amazing game.
dude i love how project zomboid litteraly forces you to accept that you will die no matter what
its so unique to other games and i love it
You deserve every subscription
When you drive around a corner and suddenly there's a herd of 100+ zombies just standing in the road
"walking away from the game for a while is pretty normal" Ha, i was so pissed when i lost my first character to a scratch. But i kept coming back with "well i know not to do that now" or "ah, so thats what i did wrong! I can get around that now!" frustration fades, and I keep coming up with new solutions.
Been looking for a good review to convince my friend to play, and this is the best one I've seen yet. It really captures what it is that makes zomboid so special. Great work!
I think one of the things I like about zomboid is that whilst they won't add a lot of things and have apocalypse as the base game.
Technically they have added unlimited/highly abundant ammo through the sandbox mode. They serve you what they want the game to be, however at the same time they give you the options to make the game what you want it to be with the sandbox options and the accessibility of modding through the steam workshop.
the "negative" traits short sighted (just wear glasses) & conspicuous (if a zombie sees you it doesn't matter if it takes him 1 second more to "spot you") are easy +6 points for free.
What a fantastic way of showing off what makes this game so amazing. Genuinely legendary video 👌
Great video! glad you got picked up by the algorithm! Keep it up!
An indie game I found that made slow zombies threatening is "Death Road to Canada". It's pretty easy to kill 1 or 2 with a chair but then you get a something like a molotov and now you can suddenly kill 20, The problem is that in "sieges" the zombies keep coming and your ammo, bombs and chairs are all limited
The game also has a justification for how the government fell off even though the masses of zombies can be easily taken care of by a car of 3 jerks and a pug wielding a shotgun: They banned *jorts*
Project Zomboid is an anomaly in the game dev world where a trend of feature creep resulted in the game being infinitely better