11 years in Early Access has turned Project Zomboid into the ultimate survival sim, but I think the best is yet to come

What would you do in a zombie apocalypse? Go on, admit it – whether it's cramming into a well-stocked bunker or escaping to the countryside, we've all got a plan. Unfortunately, my time in survival sim Project Zomboid suggests I'm not cut out for post-apocalyptic life. I've fallen out of windows while looking for carrot seeds, crashed my car into a laundromat, and burned to death trying to cook a roast chicken, to name a few of my most humiliating ends. 

Luckily, Project Zomboid isn't defined by the hours leading up to your death. It's always those final moments you remember – whether that's the discovery of an inconspicuous bite mark on your leg, or the smell of burning poultry. 

Dead and loving it

Every few months, I come back to Project Zomboid with a new playstyle in mind. My goals have ranged from turning gated communities into walled fortresses, trying to survive in the game's overrun city of Louisville, and joining a self-sufficient multiplayer commune. I've even made characters based on myself – asthma, short-sightedness and all – and once tried to live exclusively in a car. Some of these adventures have lasted for in-game months, others hours, but every single one has ended in tragedy. 

That's part of the fun, though, because Project Zomboid isn't a game you can conventionally beat. Before your character loads into zombified Knox Country, you're confronted with a black screen and a stark message: "This is how you died". There's no getting around this, and even if you build an impenetrable mega-fort with enough food to chug along for years, there's no rescue in sight or end-credits to reach. Death is non-negotiable – the only wiggle-room is in how long it takes to arrive. 

With this fatalistic approach, Project Zomboid flips the survival genre on its head while embracing its status as a sim. 11 years of Early Access has given Project Zomboid plenty of depth on that end – cars have fleshed-out mechanical systems, an undercooked meal can kill you as easily as a zombie bite, while trapping and foraging make eking out an existence more interesting once Knox Country's power is shut down. 

It's the sort of mechanical granularity we expect from sim games, but rarely get in such a hands-on manner. I remember boldly fighting my way through a horde of zombies to reach the police station, only to nick an artery while climbing through a broken window. Too busy being pleased with my zed-slaying skills, I noticed my trail of blood too late, and bled out in the station's changing room. On a less gory note, I once spent days trying to fix up a battered red van, scrounging for parts while ignoring plenty of serviceable cars along the way. Did I need to do any of this? Not really, no. But when something as basic as surviving doesn't feel achievable, it's up to the player to make their time in Knox Country feel interesting.

That's because at their heart, sims like Zomboid have always been about storytelling. The goal is rarely to win, beyond targets you've set for yourself. In Crusader Kings, what you do with your medieval genealogy is up to you – and to be honest, I'd prefer it if you kept those details to yourself. As for The Sims, you can have characters chase wealth and status, or settle for lavishly decorating every house in SimNation. The thrill isn't in getting what you want, it's about what makes each journey interesting. In Project Zomboid, that just happens to be how you died. 

A farm upstate

Though I've been playing Project Zomboid since 2014,  it still feels like the best is yet to come. Although there's no release window for the game's long-anticipated Build 42, recent news articles from The Indie Stone suggest the finish line is (vaguely) in sight – and I couldn't be more excited.

For those who haven't been following the development process, Build 42 is currently set to add even more of the in-depth features I've been loving so far. The biggest draw is probably the addition of animals, which will be Zomboid's first iteration of NPCs as human NPCs are still in the works. This alone opens up so many avenues: we'll be able to hunt for food and raise domestic animals, which will make living outside of Knox Country's towns a lot more feasible. 

Bizarrely, I'm more excited by the update's tweaked height limits, which will introduce skyscrapers and basements to the game. To be honest, I could take or leave skyscrapers, but basements? Bunkers? Sign my suburbanite goblin brain up. Elsewhere, we've got more in-depth farming systems, late-game crafting options for "pottery, metal forging, stone working, brewing, and pointy metal weapon crafting," three new towns, and way more on the way. 

Maybe it's because I'm still thinking about basements, but I'm getting excited just writing about all of this. Even so, none of these new features will make surviving outright easier: for the casual player, I would imagine living off canned food and the occasional carrot harvest will still be easier than wrangling animals or heading into zombie-infested woods to hunt. And after all, you're still going to die. Eventually. But these systems do make the journey to that grisly end far more interesting – I'm already planning Build 42 playthroughs, which so far include fortifying a skyscraper with my pals, and branching out to settle deep within Knox Country's unexplored wilderness.

I've got no idea how either of these plans will end up, or what will happen along the way, but I can't wait to find out. "This is how you died," Project Zomboid rightly warns at the beginning of each playthrough. But only at that prophesied end, whether you're leaving Knox Country surrounded by undead or in a fowl-fueled fire, do you realise how much you've lived along the way. 

Here are the best PC games to play alongside your adventures in Project Zomboid