Project Zomboid

Basic info

Project Zomboid is a survival-RPG, placing players in a zombie infested city as just a normal person, which means that one scratch may be lethal. Since this is still in early development, these are all planned features.

The world is an open-ended sandbox city, with survivors to find and stuff to craft other stuff from. The zombies are as lethal as they are slow, so one bite or scratch might make the player into one of them. The goal is not to survive however, but survive as long as possible. Death is inevitable, so in the end the player must decide how to end it.

Additionally, there will be a crafting system. Players can make anything from molotov cocktails to traps for their home. Boarding up the doors and windows is also a viable solution, until the player runs out of food.

If the player's character doesn't eat, he will die. It is also possible to get sick, so medicine is needed. Even with other survivors at the players side, things might go bad. People go mad, might try to kill the player or just run out letting all the zombies in.

Planned features

• 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.

How to get it

The game can be bought from Steam as part of the Early Access program and is also available from GOG as part of the In Development program.

The Google Debacle

To fund the development of the game, the developers chose to open for pre-orders and donations. For this they used Paypal and Google Checkout. As of 25th of April, the Google Checkout option had to be removed, as Google had problems with the donation part. About 80% of all the pre-orders so far had been through Google Checkout .

In response to this, the developers are offering "brilliant" and "innovative" games that come with a "FREE" Project Zomboid Pre-Order. You can buy fantastic games such as Droids (£5, or $8), Stand On Top Of The Other Guy But Be Bigger (£10, or $12), and Rock Paper SCIZZORZ (£15.00 or $17) to gain access to the marvelous freebie that is unlimited and life-time access to Project Zomboid. The bonus games are jokes only made to humor and meet the demands of Google Checkout by supplying games that are indeed out, but providing PZ for an "added bonus".

Added to Steam Early Access

As of Nov 8th, 2013 Project Zomboid has been available under Steam's Early Access program.

GOG In Development

With the announcement of the GOG In Development on January 28th of 2016, a program that allowed users to purchase games that are still in development (akin to Steam Early Access), introduced Project Zomboid in to the first wave of games available for purchase in this new program.