7 Days to Die

Is this game good? Yes. Is it worth 44 dollars? no. 1.0 release was just so they could charge more for the game. Its litterally the same exact game with the same bugs and issues before 1.0. Get it on sale or dont get it

Nine years ago today, I purchased 7DTD and have put many hours into it, so I figure it's about time to review the game since it's about to go to 1.0.

First off, I don't like zombie movies. They bore me. The only zombie movie I've enjoyed was "Shaun of the Dead". That being said, I was skeptical about the game from the start, but it looked interesting, and I enjoyed it. In those nine years, the game has become my most played game of any. I may look away for a couple weeks if a new game catches my attention, but I always come back here. I have other games of the genre without the zombies, but this blows them away. The game is immersive to a point where you do not want to play it when someone is sleeping nearby, unless you don't mind waking them with your "startled exclamations". Seriously. I speak from experience. Now, like all games, this one has some things which will not appeal to some folks . . . it's inevitable. Fortunately, 7DTD was built with great modding capabilities, and if you don't like something, odds are a modder didn't like it either. The only thing of which I can think that I dislike, I changed with a mod.

Graphics: Excellent. I like them. The artwork pulls you in where details abound which help to create a world able to suspend disbelief. Computer is a few years old, but running 5760 x 1080 > 60 fps @ max settings.
Gameplay: Very enjoyable. Many options available to find your desired game style.
Time to Complete: Define "complete" and look at my time played.

Overall, I really like the game, including the zombies. I would recommend this game to anyone that likes the Sandbox/Survival genre, even if you don't like zombies. They work in the game, and I've come to enjoy them in their role. Thanks for your work, TFP.

After 140 hours I can only say, it's good fun until it's not.
The moment you reach your "end-game", the fun mostly stops.
The problem lies in that "end-game" doesn't really exist. It all depends on when you personally feel like you've achieved everything you want from a run.
You can always keep grinding endlessly, which only reminds me of Vaas from Far Cry 3 asking me if I know what the definition of insanity is.
The game is great overall but there are some major negatives.
It's either too easy or too hard.
The game is pretty boring for the easy part, just 1 or 2 tapping zeds you spot,
OR you will be rushed by so many zeds you have to run and kite your way to safety, which is a pain with how dodgy these c*nts move.
Which brings me to my next point.
Stealth... it exists.
You get a small damage bonus when attacking enemies from the shadows, bigger bonuses with certain weapon types.
Now you'd think that in a post-apocalyptic world stealth means everything. Stay hidden and you'll never be spotted.
Well, The Fun Pimps think otherwise by implementing "trigger points" in every POI (yes, all of them), where zeds will just spawn in and aggro you.
For this reason stealth is something you can completely ignore in this game.
Enemies are well designed up until the demolition zombie. Which, if you hit it in the wrong (or right) spot will beep and explode seconds later dealing massive damage to anything around it. I mean, why not give them a beard and call them something else. It's just agonising and another weird design choice by The (at this point not so...) Fun Pimps.
Forget about the red-eyed wolf if you're not gonna cheese him. Whoever decided to give him a 1000 hp pool should be fired.
Now for my biggest gripe and the reason I'm writing this review, a bug.
Sometimes quests won't complete.
This happens cause The Fun Pimps want you to explore POI's exactly how they designed them.
As I mentioned earlier, all POI's have trigger points, where if you reach that point in the location a wave of zeds will spawn and aggro you. When these points won't trigger, the zeds won't spawn and you won't be able to complete the quest.
This happened to me 3 times in 2 days.
Now bear in mind, tier 5 quests are only in specific locations, and probably a fair distance away from your base.
So you'll have to drive 2-5 miles, spend over an hour clearing a 15 story building or a school, only to realise at the end of it that something isn't right cause the quest won't complete.
First of all, in my opinion, a mechanic like these "trigger points" shouldn't exist in a game like this in the first place as it completely negates the feeling of freedom and obliterates any use of stealth.
Second, if you do decide to implement this mechanic, at least make sure it's working as intended.
A bug like this shouldn't exist in a 1.2 version of a game.
The combat.
Combat is mostly sluggish. Trying to hit enemies with melee weapons can be as hard as hitting them with guns.
Mostly because of how these Rushy McGee's move.
As I mentioned earlier, it's mostly boring 1 tapping them in the face, but the ones who don't die from 1 hit immediately become annoying cause of the dodgy movement and the attack animation bug.
It's a solid open world survival game with good crafting mechanics but I would only recommend if you hate being stealthy and don't mind the bugs I mentioned.

It is a very good game. I've had it since it first came out. I played the very first Alpha version and the game has moved forward a lot. BUT. Version 1.0. The price tag is laughable. Game system and recipes? Tell me which idiot came up with the 5 raw meat to 1 grilled meat recipe? Or 1 stone = 1 sand? Why not 2 or 4 sand from one rock? Duct tape? 1 glue and 10 clothes fragment? Why 10? And why is there no recipe for springs? Why can't I lift the storage boxes? And I'm not even talking about seeds. 5 potatoes for 1 seed? WHO THE F*CK WAS THIS IDEA ? There is an awful lot of nonsense in that game (recipes, loot, levels, skill books), and an awful lot of undone things.

There was a time in this part of the 2000's, we called the "survival crafting" apocalypse in the gaming world.
Many were abandoned, many had bad reviews, many didn't live to the hype or died midway because they could not compete.
And few survived, and very few still live long prosperous development...
And this game is one of them.
A dedicated team, always fixing bugs, bringing new content from time to time and still going at It.
This is one of the teams that deserve a prize for their commitment.
7 Days To Die, a long trip from 2013 until now.
I saw this game being played on youtube and didn't expect a lot, but seeing the constant updates every month on my feed grew my hopes along the time.
Something I have to point out in my own perspective (and perhaps many) in horror games is, as soon the player is given a weapon, the horror factor either decreases a LOT or goes away entirely.
NOT in this game!
If you play It with headphones at night, alone (no other players), I guarantee this game will scare you even if you have a weapon while exploring for resources.
The very rare moments of music in this game is eerie, the ambient sounds (majorly in the "Burned Forest" and "Wasteland" biomes) and the silence always put you on edge, and when a random horde spawns close to you and those "battle music" drums start rolling, you start looking everywhere for your safety.
Exploring the ruins can be scary too, mostly if you enter a room, and right next to the door out of your vision is a zombie right on your face, gurgling right into your ears and puching you, It will be a guaranteed jumpscare.
And when you are done and/or your inventory is full, you race back to your base and as soon you enter the "claimed" area, nothing beats hearing that piano indicating you are back to your home and safety, but the melody gives out a vibe that you're not out of the woods yet, and any moment a horde decides to spawn with 3 "screamers" ready to spawn in even more zombies. (No joke, those screamers are terrifying at any part of the day!)
The Blood Moons, a huge experience farming event, which can also be the end of your base if you REALLY aren't prepared. If you decide to fight this event in your base, good luck and always be on the watch, the hordes don't come from the same direction.
But once you beat It and the clock shows 4AM, hearing that sweet piano tune indicating the night is over and a new day dawns, and the event is over, the relieve is real.
Graphics.
The zombies are really well made and give the look of a real threat, even more if they are irradiated ones cause those are a pain to deal with, and don't get me started on the screamers!
Another huge upgrade to the game is the "cosmetic" debris.
I still remember WAY BACK in the day, where construction vehicles were designed and made with separate blocks, making it weird destroying them for resources. Now they are It's own models, allowing the player to break them completely.
Gameplay also got a huge change too before.
You unlocked recipes by reaching new levels and unlock specific perks and such.
Now, you have to look for magazines about the topic (like weapons, materials, workshops, etc...), and THAT WAS HUGE, It makes the player explore more and more and that is wise. It keep people enganged.
It was before, but now It's even more.
The hitbox of the zombies is also superb. If they move a lot, the hitbox moves along, and if in the last 0.5 second, they move their head and you shoot, It's a miss. Making It a crucial decision in dealing with groups. Go for a quick kill with a gun and probably miss, or go melee and risk getting overwhelmed?
Exploring great difficulty ruins is challeging in terms of navigation and fighting your way in, but the rewards are really good.
If you want a good and fun survival experience, play It with friends.
If you prefer a horror game, play It like I said in the start of this review: alone, headphones, at night.

The game is about how some armed lawless man walks around the cities, breaks into the homes of defenseless zombies, and takes away their hard-earned property. Of course they barricade themselves, set traps, hide their treasures - but the marauder doesn't care.
On the seventh day the zombies run out of patience and they decide to pile up and punish the robber.

Was going to play it since had nothing to play in co-op, as something to spend time in, but it turned out to be pretty great game.
At the beginning game gives you pretty bad explanation what to expect from it, and to be honest - default map feels artificial as hell, but after ~20 hours I've decided to generate huge random map and oh boy it was different experience.
Trader spawned near Huge city, and it become clear that game is way better to play and progress in the similar way as most RPG games - quest based progression.
Since each time you take a quest - game re-generates location based on Your individual skills, increasing drop rate for things you specialize in. Plus rewards for quests are pretty sweet (you can just loot any place you see, but as result you will get for example a lot of farming journals and tools, when you specifically lvl-ed up guns).
Surviving first horde night might be hard and it might give you wrong idea that you need to build killboxes and that's your only way to survive, and that's fundamentally wrong. With the correct skill sets - you will be able to just stand in the middle of the road for the whole nigh and just run-n-gun every zombie that game will throw at you, so don't repeat my mistake of building some crazy fortress with kill coridors as your base - instead it's better to enjoy pretty great building system that game has, and build something pretty - either tree house, either some underground facility or anything you can think of.
Also, one good thing which game struggles to explain in trailers and any media content - is that every house on the map, every building is tiny adventure quest, where you will move floor by floor, unlock some other routes and have pretty decent reward at the end.
Aaand full terraforming, it gives a lot of space for creativity, as last base I've built an entire maze with underground garden, library, church of the gun (lol), sauna etc.
Leveling up is also unusual and interesting - like you can level up certain skills and as result you will be better at shooting from pistols, but, you will not be able to craft better pistols - for that you need to find corresponding skill journals, which drop rate depends on your skill, and I know that when you go to journal tab, there is text literally saying that "to get more journals like this lvl up this perk" but I've figured it out only after like 10 hours in the game, and imo tutorial could be way better.
LVL cap - it's 300 levels, so if you play long enough you can literally master everything.
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As sweet as it sounds there are some minor bitter parts there:
- Traders are the only humans which you are gonna meet and they have no "logic" connected to their phrases: for example you can buy entire stock of the trader and he'll say "That's all you gonna buy? You cheap-ass m-f-er", and it breaks atmosphere a bit, minor issue but unpleasant one
- Another problem is that building system is really flexible, but some times you will need to spend ~10 minutes searching right block shape, and god forbid if you placed wrong one using some advanced material - there is no quick way to remove them
- Late game tools (chainsaw etc) are just worse than manual ones from the previous tier - steel pick can break stone block in one hit and doesn't require any gas to run, so there is no benefit in getting your tools to max level,
- Electricity sucks, it chews up your FPS regardless of hardware which you have, and besides you can only connect anything to one "inbound" cable - so if you wanna make door that will be opened by camera from the outside and using switch on the inside f-u, there is simply no way of doing that
- Glass don't pass light, so, greenhouse - nope, only if you make roof out of iron fence (for some reason it passes light)
- Game stage and loot stage mechanics, they are cool and interesting but having simple line saying "loot that you find improves with your level and location difficulty" would help me so much, since it was a huge surprise for me that at lvl 100 starting town had really decent loot, and I can chill there for some time instead of going last biom raids all the time.