Project Zomboid - fun little indie Zombie Survival RPG

[Psychotic]

Project Zomboid | The Zombie Survival RPG

Project Zomboid is a Zombie Survival RPG. Here are some of its planned features:

• Retro-isometric style with plenty of zombie insides thrown in for good measure.
• A massive city and the surrounding areas to traverse, explore and loot.
• Open-ended sandbox world – survival is your only goal, and we’re sorry to tell you… you WILL die eventually.
• Get infected. How will you spend your final days? Will you have a heroic moment of self-sacrifice, or end up chewing your best friend’s throat out?
• Meet other survivors who you can join forces with, trade with, undertake missions for, or fight with for resources.
• Loot, salvage, and build what you need to survive the apocalypse, from food and medical supplies, to weapons, even just booze to help get you through the nights.
• Advanced item crafting allows you to use looted items to build weapons, traps, defenses, and many other things to help you survive.
• Character progression. Learn skills and perks to help your character face the challenges of survival.
• Starvation, illness, loneliness, depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, insanity, trust issues. There’s more to zombie survival than shooting zombie heads off.
• Join your friends and survive the apocalypse together in co-op multiplayer.
• The world changes the longer you survive; power plants fail, plunging the city into darkness and making batteries and tinned food prized commodities. The army rolls into the streets to perform ‘clean up operations’ and other gamechanging events occur the longer you survive.
• Play in your browser, or stand-alone, on PC, Mac and Linux.
• It will be released Minecraft style, where there will be continual updates adding new features, weapons, game-play and locations.
• It is available here and there will be a tech demo coming soon.
• The tech demo will just show a fraction of the planned features and is merely a taste of what is to come. We will continue developing after this point, feasibly for years and years, improving and expanding the game.

Anyway, I've been playing the demo (found here) which right now is the full game as yet anyway, and I gotta say it is a lot of fun. Download it and give it a whirl - you'll enjoy it!

I really like the emphasis that has been put on survival rather than the usual suburban fantasy of "KILL LOTS OF ZOMBYS!!!!" as just meeting your day-to-day needs is a challenge. Which, in all fairness, it probably would be in a zombie apocalypse.

Oh, and if you're planning on making the worthless "HURRRR ZOMBIE GAMES ARE OVER-DONE THERE'S LIKE 4 ZOMBIE GAMES OUT THERE NOW" post that somebody usually makes when there's a zombie game thread, well, don't bother 'cause no-one cares. Go tell your mom instead. And hug her too - I'm sure she'd appreciate it.

[Madonna]

Is "hug" what the censor changes that word into? Wow.

I do enjoy zombie games, not because you get to kill zombies (but what a plus), but because there are elements of survival in them. The zombie part of Call of Duty is awesome because it is not about killing all the zombie waves that come at you, but seeing how far you go because you are going to die eventually. Left 4 Dead really makes the urban exploration and sneaking about pretty cool, though that is all you do eventually. And Dead Rising is great because you have a home base, you have to bring in more survivors, and (pretty minor) deal with a few trust issues and resolving drama in the safehouse. The chance to kind of smash together all these elements and turn the main focus on survival is something for which I have yearned.

I have watched this since its early teasers and am happy the demo is out now. Time to see how hugging excellent it shall be.

[Psychotic]

It really hugging is.

I decided to load up on whiskey, painkillers, sleeping tablets, beta blockers and rotten meat and observe the outcome. The game described me as "Utterly trout-Faced" and after passing out for 12 hours, I stumbled into a horde of zombies with a hammer and it went about as well as you might expect.

[Iceglow]

But what if I want to smurf your mother?

[Psychotic]

Get your sister to dress like her?

[Iceglow]

I'd rather get Quin's sister to dress like her.

[FFIX Choco Boy]

I'm manly enough to admit - the music freaked me out so much I exited the game before the 1st zombie popped up. I've been watching videos, though, and it looks really good. Definitely one of those games to have my friends come over to my house and play so I can watch them get pissed because they don't get the concept of life over glory.

[Madonna]

So I accidentally smothered the woman. I then wandered around, got a hammer, ate some soup, and beat up a pair of zombies to get batteries and an axe. Then night fell, my left hand was injured, and the park was swarming with zombies going on dates. Group dates. Like, twenty zombies hooking up. Times a million. I survived all of a day and eight hours.

[Psychotic]

So I accidentally smothered the woman.

Yes. I, uh, accidentally smothered her too...

[Madame Adequate]

Truly a glorious game. I urge you all to play it.

[Madame Adequate]

Mad bastards on the official forums are already modding this thing (Dev comments suggest they're big supporters of modding, which is top.) Someone made a hospital. I was extraordinarily pleased because the graphical style means it looked like Theme Hospital.

[FFIX Choco Boy]

Sorry to toot my own horn by referencing my own thread, but I had posted earlier about a zombie game I really wanted to play.

http://forums.eyesonff.com/general-g...o-zombies.html

It seems a lot like these developers read at least parts of my ideas and either put them in, or wants to put them in. Overall, this game is really great so far, and it's only in it's very beginning stages. I have very high hopes for it, and hope to see more of my ideas and desires pop up in it.

Also, I started a competition with my friend on this game. We developed a sort of points system to playing, and whoever racked up the most points would be the best at the game. Basically, we made it so we got 5 points for every hour survived, 20 additional points for a whole day, 50 points for each building raided (max of 21 total, not including the starting house), and 100 points for managing to survive a serious zombie attack long enough to actually become a zombie. I made 760 points on my first playthrough, and he managed to accrue 2,710. Using this scoring system, what are you guys' records so far? I do have to say, though, I'm sort of ashamed of mine. But it's not my fault. A horde randomly knocked on my door a little too hard on day 3, and right when it turned day 4 I died. I did manage to go zombie, though.

[Psychotic]

Mad bastards on the official forums are already modding this thing (Dev comments suggest they're big supporters of modding, which is top.) Someone made a hospital. I was extraordinarily pleased because the graphical style means it looked like Theme Hospital.

Ha! I love it. Bloaty god damn heads, son.

I just downloaded this bad boy: http://theindiestone.com/community/v...hp?f=27&t=2882 gonna give it a whirl and see how it goes.

e: http://theindiestone.com/community/v...hp?f=27&t=2882 this looks even better actually.

Also here is a tale that my dear LJ pals already read. For those who have not, this is my adventure. It is why you should play this game!

(SPOILER)The game begins with the text "This is the story of how you died." Well, listen to my story. It may be the last ch... oh smurf it.



Here's you. In the demo you are Bob Smith, and you have a wife with a broken leg, Kate. It's implied they were attacked by human looters as opposed to zombies. Anywho, you're holed up in a house. There's a brief tutorial where you tend to Kate's wounds, board up the windows and doors, and scavange at a nearby house. This is all easy enough. The next challenge the two face has not been so easy for me.

See, an unfriendly gentleman will barge into your fortress. This might not prove so problematic if he wasn't armed with a shotgun, but he is. Ordering to drop your hammer and to go upstairs, he takes one look at Kate, decides she's infected and blasts her. Any attempt at heroics...well... even if you do pick your hammer back up, there is only one outcome.

Not this time, mothersmurfer.



Here is the ground floor of the house. You can see the kitchen and back door to the left, and the lounge and front door in the centre. There's some other room off to the right but whatever. Kate is upstairs.

In PZ you can craft items. Hammer + Boards + Nails = barricade. And I decided to build a barricade right where Bob is standing now, and hide upstairs for the unsociable caller to arrive. I think his name is randomly generated; this time his name is Ben Wallis. Ben spies me through the bathroom window and begins his usual spiel. However, when he walks into the house, he cannot get past the barricade! Success! Of course, he could've just gone round the back, which is something I had not initially considered, but neither had he so it's all fine and dandy.

Anyway, I can now come and go as I please through the back door, while Ben is in the lounge. A slight problem occurs; I can see his shotgun through the wall and it is trained on me, following me wherever I go. I have to walk past the front door, which is wide open, and he has a clear shot on me. I quickly sneak round to the side, pull the door to, and immediately hammer some boards over it. The asshole is sealed! Hurrah!

This is not enough for me. I want revenge. I decide to scavenge in the city for some form of weapon. I was hoping for a molotov, which I could chuck in through a window and watch as he burns, but I figured I'd settle for a shotgun.

The stories I could tell about this point would be interesting of themselves. As I went from building to building, avoiding zombies (ha, this is their first real mention!) I managed to secure a shotgun but no ammunition. I took a light wound to my shoulder, and I made a makeshift bandage using torn sheets. Unfortunately this plagued me throughout, as I kept having to down more and more painkillers raided from bathroom cabinets to stave off the pain. I think I was addicted.


I also had to eat rotten meat, which made me quite ill. The night I found my 12 shotgun shells, my guy was cowered in an apartment building as the door was banged on 'til the early hours. He was titting himself. I had to down a lot of whiskey to keep him calm, as every bang seemed to unsettle him. Regardless, I was alive, it was dawn, and it was time to head home to finish off an asshole.



This picture is to break up text Anyway, the zombies in this game seem to swarm around the map in a little horde (there are a lot of stragglers of course) which I guess is quite realistic for zombies. My heart fell when I was on the street where our home was and was greeted by a titload of zombies. No. No. NO. Not now! Why now?!

I sprinted through the crowd, and cleared the zombies from the front yard with my shotgun, not wanting to be attacked from behind. The horde had seen me and would be moving in soon, so I had to be quick. I pried the boards from the door and burst in. "Son of a bitch!" yelled Ben, and we both fired at each other. He missed; I did not. My second shot did not miss either, and Ben was dead. smurf yoooooouuuuuu! I raided his corpse for his 35 (!) shotgun shells and baseball bat, which I modified with some nails.

However, I could not deconstruct my barricade with my hammer as I had assumed and head back upstairs to Kate. No matter, I'll just head out the front d... oh. NOW the screenshot above is relevant. You can see Bob desperately fighting his way to the backdoor. You can't see the zombies behind him because he's not facing that way, but I assure you it is smurfing packed behind him. The back yard was apparently full of zombies as well, which was always lovely.

I desperately slammed the backdoor behind me, knowing full well I had no boards to secure it. I took stock of the situation. Bob had been bitten. I don't know if it was an infectious bite, but being bitten is not ever a good thing. I went upstairs to Kate, and, exhausted, collapsed in bed with her.

I woke up in the middle of the night to some loud banging. I knew what I had to do. I downed an entire bottle of whiskey, and smothered Kate with a pillow. She was so sorry for slowing me down, she said, as she died. Better dead than zed, right?

Time to head downstairs and make a valliant last stand. Valhalla, here I come.



I had to brighten this screenshot for you. Anyway, I was on the stairs, my gun trained at the back door, where I had assumed they were attacking. I had seen them out there through the bedroom window, and as that was where they had last seen me, that was the logical point of attack. And attack it they did - and I was ready for them. What I did not know was that these were just the back yard zombies. The zombies from the street - the huge horde - had been lured in by free lunch that the corpse of Ben provided. They wandered in through the open front door (you can see in the earlier screenshot that I foolishly left it wide open!) and were now hammering on the barricade I erected to keep Ben out.

Yeah, the back door was a diversion. And my back was to the barricade they were pounding on. Clever girl. They broke through, catching me totally off guard, and grabbed me. I desperately fired off two shots. I don't know how many I took down, but you can see there's zombie corpses and blood everywhere, so I must've nailed a fair few. Not as many as I would've liked, though. And that's the story of how I died.

[Loony BoB]

I read Psy's LJ entry last night / this morning and made a note to check the thread he referenced. I have to say it's certainly intriguing and I'll possibly give it a go sometime this week if I'm bored.

EDIT: I notice it follows the whole "losing is fun" philosophy of Dwarf Fortress, in a way, in that there is no way to survive / win the game. I'd like to see someone make a mod where you can outlive the virus (or zombies, or whatever) but have that require you constantly be on the move between different regions of town or whatever somehow. In other words, not have it so you can kind of cheat your way by locking yourself into a room with a somehow never-ending supply of food. But rather have it so that you can, over the course of say three years or so (and that would be some accomplishment), get to a stage where there are almost no more zombies and then you can just finish them off. Either that or have it so that there is a maximum of 7 billion zombies, so technically the game can end if you kill that number of zombies because you have effectively killed every other human (turned zombie) on the planet.

Basically, an impossible goal, but a technically achievable goal all the same, rather than the goal of simply surviving. I'd only like it as a mod, though, as I quite like the losing-is-fun philosophy overall.

EDIT2: Psy, both of your recent links are exactly the same.

[Madame Adequate]

I think they've been reading all kinds of things about "How I would do zombies". They have specifically said things like "We've all thought of a game like this".

Also I love how the guys write. It's like Paul is really making a game!