I will survive

Lately I have been playing multiplayer Project Zomboid with some friends. It's a zombie survival game and it is really good. But there is one problem. It's not finished yet.

The zombie apocalypse survival genre is currently extremely popular and there are dozens and dozens of games out there. From the accomplished like Dying Light (crap ending and all) to cheaply thrown together Unity asset “games”, there's no shortage of titles to choose from if the idea of running around and trying not to become fodder for the ever growing army of the undead sounds appealing to you.

Of course there are other games in the survival genre as well. Games like The Forest (run around a forest dodging cannibals) and Stranded Deep (run around tropical islands dodging sharks) and The Long Dark (run around in snow dodging wolves) run the high end of the genre, but there are currently seventeen pages of survival games on Steam alone. So if you want to test yourself against the elements and some kind of enemy trying to eat you that's not a necessarily a zombie, you can.

But before you do, there is one thing every survival game must have, and most currently don't, and that's an end game.

To be fair, games like Project Zomboid are usually indie developed and that often means that they lack money and manpower. This in turn means that it takes time to finish the game and the Zomboid guys have done an amazing job so far. The problem is that the game becomes pointless after a while if you can't win somehow.

Sure, it's fun to see how long you can survive and how many zombies you can stomp to death before succumbing, but how many times can you be bothered to restart again?

The crux of the matter lies in the core of survival:

1. Find shelter
2. Fortify said shelter
3. Stock up on rations
4. Wait

But if point number 4 never happens, you have ultimately nothing to do in the long run. So you start to take stupid risks in order to be entertained, which is why you play games to begin with.

I really like the survival genre, and if you find a game you think looks interesting, maybe support the developer, but playing an unfinished survival game is kinda nuts, because you can't ultimately survive it.

Until next time, have a great week!