I've been watching this game for years, and enjoyed playing an early free revision of it that you play in your browser. With it being on sale on Humble, and combining the sale discount with the choice subscription discount, I've decided to take the plunge and pick it up, finally.

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The thing is, all the big development companies should contribute towards projects like this so that they themselves don't get put over a barrel by the companies who control the creativity software market, e.g. Adobe, Autodesk.

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As a massive fan of the 7 Days To Die game - which encompasses survival, crafting, base-building, exploration, looting and fighting hordes of zombies - I've been checking out the new Alpha 19 experimental build of the game, which was available to the public on Monday 29th June. I play it as a single-player permadeath campaign.

I've been playing on Warrior difficulty, on the Navezgane map, and I've found the map to be quite different to the Alpha 18 map. There are Traders in different positions, there are new buildings replacing older ones, and other changes. The improved graphics and other changes do make it very fresh and appealing to play.

As I'm used to playing on Alpha 18, here are some balance changes and things of note:

Loot progression is a lot slower on A19. Even with perk points allocated into the Lucky Looter skill, you almost always get primitive stone tools (in tool boxes), primitive stone weapons (in weapon boxes) until you have gained a decent amount of experience (game-stage 15 and beyond). This makes the early game tougher as you are less able to kill zombies, slower to harvest resources.

Another noticeable difference is the depletion rate of food and water. I'd say you need to eat and drink three times as much as you do in Alpha 18. This is somewhat punishing in the early game. It "encourages" you to spend points in the Iron Gut perk, which enables food and drink to provide better nutrition (and also makes you less prone to getting sick).

There are a selection of new (High Def) zombie models, which look better, help with game performance (frame rate), and seem to have better hit-boxes than the zombies in A18. However, it seems like your character gets tired and out of stamina quicker.

There are lots of other changes in the game - Zombies can now swim. The zombie A.I. pathing is a bit different. There are new items and furniture. A selection of new weapons. New books for learning additional skills. New candies in vending machines which provide time-limited boosts to abilities. If you get injured in game. there are new critical effects which can be nasty.

Overall I'm enjoying most of the changes. My biggest issue with it is that the game difficulty is set to follow the experience level of the player (rather than going up gradually with time). Following the player's experience level does mean that the zombies "keep up" with you, but it also means that you don't have a (survival) reason to train up your player to gain experience, because you are always behind the curve - The curve follows you. It makes the game into a sandbox experience, rather than a true survival campaign.

I'd like to see the option of these settings -

1. Campaign Mode (game stage goes up as a function of time)
2. Sandbox Mode (game stage follows player experience, i.e. what we have now)

My other issue is with the zombie path-finding. It is just too direct-able, which leads players to build zombie-cheesing bases. The developers had a go at addressing the cheesing "slippery slopes" base designs, but I've already seen youtubers have got around the developer fixes. I tended to prefer the stupid zombie A.I. of Alpha 15 (on horde night). I'm okay with the current path-finding for regular zombie appearances, but during horde night it can be exploited.

I like the fact that you are relatively susceptible to RNG during the early game of 7 Days To Die. You start with nothing, perform some basic harvesting and crafting, and have some very basic tools and weapons. From that point onwards, you come across items, e.g. a piece of armour, a schematic, and you need to work out the best way forward with the limited resources you have acquired up to that point.

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I can confirm because I have just checked - For people like me, who have a Humble Choice Subscription, and *before* I pause the subscription, and *before* I unlock the monthly choices, the 20% Discount Bonus on Humble Store is active.

If I were to pause this month, then the 20% Discount would go away. (This does not happen until I pause it.)

Note that if you leave the subscription unpaused, then in the last week prior to the subscription switching to the next month, it is assumed you want it (because you didn't cancel it) and it gets added to your account. (Pause early to avoid getting a month you do not want.)

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My birthday is close to yours. Personally, I've always taken off my birthday as holiday every year. And when I was a kid, my birthday was in the Summer holidays so I never went to school (doing school work) on my birthday either.

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I'm not sure exactly how this next suggestion might be affecting the statistics, but it is certainly worth thinking about:

In my work-place, the typical user is on Windows and leaves their computer *on* overnight. Rather than shut-down and conserve electricity, they are so lazy they just screen-lock and go home.

With COVID-19, the companies have no doubt stipulated that desktops are powered down, as they are not in daily use, and they wish to cut down service costs.

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Playing it now. So far so good.

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As a result of the new Steam Sale, and that extra discount if you spend enough offer, I've been trying out demos. Space Robinson demo is still accessible: [steam://install/1144320](steam://install/1144320) or here https://steamdb.info/app/1144320/. I like it, but as yet cannot get far enough "in the demo" let alone progress deep into the game. (I'm one of these people who doesn't like gamepads, and tries to play twin-stick shooters with keyboard and mouse, and naturally it is a little too much for some titles.)

Mars Power Industries First Job is a demo/free game for their Deluxe version. I've been giving that a go, too.

I've been checking out a lot of game play footage to see if I like various titles, e.g. Stranded Deep, Dying Light: Hellraid dlc, The Enchanted Cave 2, and others.

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Very interested in this DLC, but have similar concerns to Skully about lack of variation and the overall play length. At the same time, I'd like to take advantage of Steam's £30 for £25 Sale Deal, i.e. Need to use the deal before the deal ends.

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It's nice when games like this come with demos, and especially when native Linux is available too. (Often a game demo will only have a Windows version.) Also, it is good form at the start of the game to ask you if you wish to send gaming stats (for improving the game) - I like it when software developers are up-front about this type of thing.

I've given it a couple of plays, and I'm liking it. Amusingly on the Steam store page, it says "Similar to games you've played: Slay The Spire, FTL: Faster Than Light", which is indeed the case (and I was thinking to compare to those, for myself.)

The action is real-time, but it can be paused like FTL using the Space Bar on the keyboard. I wonder if the real-time mechanic has an ulterior motive? - For competitive battles against other players (as a stretch-goal for the game, rather than for the initial release.)

Game appearance, controls, music, sounds and graphical effects are all of decent standard. I don't want to be 100% positive about the game, there is something a little bit "off" about it for me. Maybe I would have thought the same about FTL or StS on my first couple of plays of those games, which have grown to be firm favourites. (Although I'm a massive fan of FTL, I'm not so keen on Into The Breach - It could be that I haven't pushed myself to play that until I really appreciate it. Well, I find that game just too irritating to enjoy.)

Hadean Tactics looks like it *could* become a favourite of mine. It seems to have the right sort of pedigree.

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