Zombie survival games keep promising survival and delivering zombie shooters. (Or zombie “survival horror.”) Gamers notice. TheGamer noticed gamers noticing, and then… well, let’s talk about whatever this thing is that they said.
Are they reaaaallllly?
Okay, so first: this article was kinda confusing. Then it just… ended. Abruptly. Like welp, we’re done here. Anyway.
I live, primarily, in the survival ecosystem. Zombies (follow along with me here, I get a little rambly) are probably the easiest way for folks to imagine SOCIETAL COLLAPSE inside a gaming environment. That, btw, is super odd to me, because I feel like there are so many cooler ways we could do this. Pandemic? Nuclear war? Aliens? Gee, I dunno, environmental collapse?
But survival games keep returning, over and over again, to the zombie trope, which works fine, really, because the AI is simple to insert (it’s not like they’re doing backflips or carrying machine guns) and it gives the player something to struggle against. (Besides finding rocks.)
The article goes on to name a bunch of stuff I mostly don’t know, outside the RE franchise (haven’t played since the second game), State of Decay 3 (I loved 2!), and the Dying Light series (DL1 is the only game of the trilogy for me.) Okay, fine, clearly he means zombie games for horror fans or something, and what the hell do I know, maybe no one is making those games anymore.
But then he links to this Reddit thread, where the author goes:
“GOD how much I long for a massive open-world zombie survival game. Not like 7 Days to Die, State of Decay, stuff like that. Think Project Zomboid, but 1st/3rd person and realistic graphics.”
–SchmeppieGang1899
And basically a bunch of folks pile in because they would (apparently) all like to live in a video game that feels like The Walking Dead. Again, fine, not my cup of tea. But the article goes:
Uhh, that’s not what they said? (I’m going to ignore the high budget thing, the only thing the OP said about money is that it would probably take a lot to make this mythical game and so a bigger studio would have to do it.)
The base building, need to scavenge or grow food and supplies, the countless ways you can defeat walkers and herds, the indefinite types of defenses you can make, the homemade weapons, the vehicle customization. Just the way you can interact with and use the world around you in a zombie apocalypse scenario I don’t think I have ever seen in a video game before. [Lightly edited grammar so the quote is coherent.]
– SchmeppieGang1899
This is what I mean when I talk about survival games with actual consequence. Base building that matters. Resources you have to manage. Systems that interact. Not just ‘find gun, shoot zombie, repeat.’ VEIN is getting close. Project Zomboid gets it. Most games don’t.
And gamers have noticed.
They are literally asking for an intricate survival experience with zombies. (Again, as if asking for a game like Project Zomboid wasn’t a fucking tip off…) Maybe it’s easy to get confused by the “defenses and homemade weapons” talk, but they want to struggle and scrape and fight for every hour of their day. They aren’t looking for another toothless adventure craft masquerading as survival. The zombie survival game people are asking for doesn’t exist yet. But they’ve drawn the blueprint themselves.
yes i want realistic looking world gen, i want zombies, i want hordes, i want them to rot and stop moving from all the things that would be eating them as they decay and in a year 2 max be nothing but bones. so you win, except all the human trash that will be worse then the moving dead. if we going on further yes weather should impact, gas storage life is only a couple years, guns limited same with ammo and depends when you drop into this zombie apoc. further we must now go how does one turn into a zombie, or are u immune hence not one. if you can turn then is it blood, a virus, a fungus, etc. now transmission is needed if its blood u get cut you stab zombie in head and get blood on you your dead, get splatter in eye dead, on your skin well skins absorbs too, so dead, but its a game so have to have some wiggle room. ok so its drool from a dead thing cool. so only if bitten. everything and anything has to be used as a tool/weapon/resource its the end of times. people are dumb so boiled water only for drinking. all rivers/ponds/lakes will be contaminated. back to environment northern or southern winter summer etc storms, sickness, how much you can carry, lets add a cart how easily to traverse the environment. well shit all power plants are going to fail hard, the nuclear ones will ruin many states, fires out of control, this world is hell. shall we keep adding?
Did you recently binge all of the Walking Dead shows while snorting a kilo lol
no but the wife did.
Sounds like you’ve got quite the wish list!
point is they ask for harder more realistic more cause/effects but a 5 minute write up and you can create an idea to help facilitate those wants yet go further indepth and create such a game that no one would play cause it is too close to real life. it would take a dev a long time to work through the balance between acceptable effects vs what most would not even want to play and balance it for a game and not be as harsh for this digital reality thats being created. no game will satisfy the majority one thing or another they will pick apart and complain and trash it cause something minor.
I think the point of their Reddit thread was to illustrate a simple point: that they’d like something more along the lines of a Zomboid in realistic 3D (with all that entails), and, though VEIN is close, there’s room for more. The ‘it’ll be too realistic’ concern assumes devs can’t find the balance between consequence and fun – but that’s literally game design.
Zomboid did it. Others can too.
As for ‘no game will satisfy everyone’ – no shit. 😂That’s true of literally every game ever made. But Project Zomboid has maintained a dedicated playerbase for over a decade specifically because it committed to depth over broad appeal. You don’t need to satisfy everyone. You need to satisfy the people asking for this specific thing – they exist, they’re vocal, and they’re currently underserved.
The ‘it’s too hard to balance’ and ‘people will complain anyway’ arguments are just excuses not to try, IMO.
Lets talk about a little known game, “Jaws of Extinction.” I loved the concept. Yes there are zombies but it also has an Economy Survival stick to it. Yeah yeah i get the zombies, but am a hoarder by nature. I love when Economy is a big thing in survival games. Hey Sifner topic for next Podcast. Survival Economy. Kill your neighbor and get his phat loots to sell haha. Scavenging is fun for me. Farming and might even get into a little pvp if i can get that loser’s loot and sell it.
I’ll make note of the topic request! JoE had a chance to be something, but they really tripped on their dick with the UE5 port and then the long…awkward…silence. I don’t even think it was ever called off, now that I think about it. I haven’t checked their server in ageeees.