7 Days to Die

7 Days to Die is an open-world game that is a unique combination of first person shooter, survival horror, tower defense, and role-playing games. Play the definitive zombie survival sandbox RPG that came first. Navezgane awaits!

Game Details

Developer: The Fun Pimps
Platforms: Steam (PC, Mac, Linux), Microsoft Store, PS4, Xbox One
Link: Website, Discord
Release Date: Dec 13, 2013
Status: Alpha

Features

• Explore – Huge, unique and rich environments, offering the freedom to play the game any way you want with many unique biomes.
• Craft – Craft and repair weapons, clothes, armor, tools, vehicles, and more with over 500 recipes. Learn more powerful recipes by finding schematics.
• Build – Take over a ruin, or build from the ground-up. Design the ultimate fort to include traps, electric power, auto turrets, automated doors, gadgets and defensive positions to survive the undead. The world is fully destructible and moldable.
• Cooperate or Compete – Work together cooperatively to build settlements or work against each other raiding other player’s bases, it’s really up to you in a wasteland where zombies and outlaws rule the land.
• Create – Unleash your creativity and build the ultimate world by yourself or with friends. Enjoy unlimited access to over 800 in-game items, nearly 2,000 unique building blocks and a painting system that offers over a quadrillion possibilities.
• Improve – Increase your skills in 5 major disciplines with a multitude of perks under each attribute. Gain additional skills by reading over 100 books. 7 Days to Die is the only true survival RPG.
• Choose – Play the Navezgane campaign world, or dive back in with friends in a randomly-generated world with cities, towns, lakes, mountains, valleys, roads, caves and wilderness locations. The possibilities are infinite with nearly 400 unique locations.
• Combat – Encounter over 50 unique zombie archetypes including special infected with unique behaviors and attacks.
• Survive – Experience real hardcore survival mechanics with nearly 50 buff boosts/ailments including hunger, thirst, infections, broken bones, food poisoning, hypothermia, heat exhaustion, dysentery and more.
• Destroy – Buildings and terrain formations can collapse under their own weight from structural damage or poor building design.
• Loot – Scavenge the world for the best guns, weapons, tools, armor, clothing, which have quality ranges which govern attributes to provide hundreds of thousands of item permutations. Augment items by attaching a multitude of mods
• Quest – Meet Trader NPCs to buy and sell goods and complete quest jobs for rewards. Enjoy several quest types in over 200 questable locations.
• Customize – Create your own character or pick a preset and customize in-game even more with a huge selection of clothing and armor you can craft or loot in the world.
• Drive – Enjoy the badass vehicle system where you find all the parts, learn all the recipes and craft your own vehicle including bikes, minibikes, motorcycles, 4x4s and even take to the skies in gyrocopters.
• Farm or Hunt – Plant and grow gardens for sustainable resources or head out into the wilderness and hunt over a dozen unique wild animals.

Visuals

My Thoughts

7 Days to Die is one of those games that people were constantly recommending to me whenever I would poke around looking for a new survival game. And for a (long) while, I resisted! I hate Zombies, horror/gore, and oh man do I hate jump scares. However- for whatever weird reason- I started poking my toe into the zombie survival waters provided I was able to play with my sister, Dee. Her primary game genre is FPS, so she is all about running into shit and shooting it/punching it in the face. And that kind of crap helps with 7D2D, centered as it is around the horde nights and array of zombies/gruesome animals.

The world is entirely destructible, which makes building take on a fun and exciting new life. Want an underground bunker? Build it! Love to flip existing in game houses/assets? Do that! There’s decent (constant) combat, with an array of weapons and play-styles. Minimal survival requirements beyond don’t get eaten as it’s primarily about base defense and killing alllll the things.

For whatever reason the game has been in Alpha for years and years. It’s kinda a running joke with it/the developers, to be honest. But the updates have been steady and address both issues AND content, and that’s worth its weight in gold these days.

This is a definite pick up for me. Just bring a friend for protection.