I don’t know what Early Access game has been around the longest in history (Project Zomboid, maybe?), but I do know that zombie survival game 7 Days To Die is definitely at the top. We first reported on its arrival back in the gloomy ages of 2013. For context, that was the year Grand Theft Auto V came out. Whoops! Okay, tranquil down, sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out. Yes, the arrow of time is immutable. We’re all probably marching towards our graves, I know. But at least now 7 Days To Die has finally released a fully-fledged 1.0 version.
Version 1.0 dropped today and features “more optimizations, polish, quality of life improvements, new content, new features, and new gameplay systems than ever before,” according to the surely tired developers at The Fun Pimps.
Their summary is also quite delicate. full patch notes are huge. World generation has been beefed up, making it faster and theoretically resulting in more compelling worlds. There are now a bunch of recent “points of interest” including recent theaters, high schools, and hotels. There are recent zombie variants (though I think they’re mostly cosmetic, like the recent nurse zombie type and the “bowling alley” zombie). There are recent animal and vehicle models, the lighting has been overhauled, a “new and improved blood dismemberment system” will make things gory in recent ways, and there are now various “challenges” that act as tutorials for recent players (replacing the venerable quest system). There are a bunch of other stuff beyond that that I can’t share with you for fear of adding another decade to the clock.
Even after all this, the developers say they’re not done with the game. The roadmap for future updates includes hints at a weather system, a trader revamp, recent bandits, and a story mode, all of which are supposed to get them out by the end of 2025, they say.
The last time I played a horde hunger simulator was a decade ago, after it first appeared on the scene. I liked it then, enjoying the solo defense of a log cabin and the basic nighttime defenses of my recent home (which was completely destroyed by a much larger swarm). I’ll be back to let you know how it holds up after all this. Perhaps a decade of poorly thought-out survival games has dulled my enjoyment of the genre. But I do enjoy digging holes for zombies to fall into. Check back next week for a fuller review.
