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Move over 7 Days to Die, you're not the only Zombie survival game in town with a recent overhaul. Project Zomboid is another that just released an absolutely massive Beta update to try out.

Included in their "IWBUMS" (I Will Back Up My Save) Beta branch on Steam (not on GOG until stable) is the first step towards Project Zomboid version 41. The amount of changes included is quite ridiculous. The Indie Stone even said it's the "most fundamental and wide-ranging update that Project Zomboid has ever had" and they're not wrong.

This latest Beta is work towards making Project Zomboid feel a little more alive and have a wider variety for everything. It's a foundation to bring even more big changes to PZ, with the new animation work in this build helping to bring wild animals in the next major build. This Beta is expected to last a while, as they have more to add back into it.

Some Highlights:

  • New gameplay styles: Builder, Brawler and Survivor
  • More deadly ‘Survivor’ (Survival) gameplay balance – player can be dragged down by horde and feasted upon etc.
  • New survivor abilities: sitting, sneaking, sprinting, jogging, racking, reloading, climbing, fence-jumping, collapsing and much much more.
  • New combat, new weapons, new difficulty balance.
  • New character creation – many, many different new clothing options both on spawn and discoverable in the world as loot or on zombies.
  • New zombie behaviour: feasting on recent corpses, lolling against walls, falling over fences etc.
  • Blood system that progressively bloodies bodies and clothing of survivors and zombies
  • New injury system – movement and combat visibly hampered when injured. Lacerations now possible, an injury state that lies between bites and scratches.
  • Improved gunplay: green/red aiming outline, new guns, improved racking and reloading, increased gun loot spawn.
  • Zombie Death Scenes – zombies discovered in the situations in which people died. Prayer meetings, sports-viewing parties, survivor zeds wearing backpacks etc.
  • Situational zombie type/clothing and inventories – cop zeds in police station, firemen zeds in burnt buildings, Chef zeds in restaurant kitchens, bride and groom zeds at a wedding ceremony in church etc.
  • Clothing protection: different clothing provides different levels of protection from zombie attacks.
  • Server-side saving: MP save system now in a server-side database. Offline SP-side, also means no more lost cars via irl power outages.

That's just me picking a few fun things and there's seriously loads, see them all here.

If you wish to try it out on Steam you need to right click on the game, go to Properties and hit the Beta tab and then find it in the dropdown box:

At least the name is pretty clear, I don't need to remind you to back anything up do I?

Don't own it yet? You can purchase a copy from Humble Store, GOG and Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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4 comments

Aeder Oct 17, 2019
Sounds like it's taking a few ideas from Cataclysm DDA.
Gamewitch Oct 17, 2019
Quoting: AederSounds like it's taking a few ideas from Cataclysm DDA.

They openly admit CDDA is a major influence on the game. But I am glad to see more progress maybe these changes will make it a more palatable single player experience in the long run. As the game currently stands for single player it feels kind of empty for me not a ton to do once you get stuff going the right way now I'm not asking they turn into CDDA level of crazy systems but some more stuff to do and deal with in general outside of the zombies would be good. Still kind of upset I bought the game to play with people on Discord only for said group to ghost right after I bought it on Steam for full price.
Tchey Oct 17, 2019
As a more or less casual player of CDDA for years, all other survival/zombie/roguelike/crafting games feel empty, it's to awesome.

I'll give another try to PZ i guess, soon.
Interknet Oct 17, 2019
Woo, about time.
If they keep to their previous statements, NPC survivors should start getting worked on once this stuff is on the stable branch.

I really look forward to that!
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