I woke up one morning after a dream. A dream of a perfect zombie game. A huge map with cities to explore, construction to build your own bases, surgery mechanics like metal gear solid 3, and total freedom to survive in the apocalypse in whatever way you want. But most importantly I wanted people and characters that you could invite to your group, having to make tough decisions and have arguments with them like who gets how much food or who needs medicine the most. That very day, I was looking for a game like this and zomboid fit the bill pretty much to the letter, excepting my last wish for the NPC friends. It's a zombie survival game that's been in early access for almost 10 years. These words should be like sandpaper to my brain. But I played 12 hours of this bad boy in 2 days and I am impressed. The sheer depth of every mechanic and how it doesn't feel like you can't do what you would do in a zombie apocalypse. You can pretty much do anything you can think of. Collect rainwater, but you have to heat it up to clean it. You could use the oven but one day the lines are gonna get shut off. Same with the sink. One day canned food will run out, so you better take the time you have to learn to fish or set up a farm. A huge chunk of my playthrough felt more like stardew valley, so when I went into town for more supplies and I saw a zombie I was like oh right. So it feels like you can safely get away from zombies with proper planning. But the zombies aren't a joke. If you make a SINGLE mistake then you're pretty much dead. Saw a fancy car I wanted. Didn't check my corners and boom, zombie. I panicked and broke the glass window of the car and got in. Deep wound, glass stuck in there. I had to hotwire it, and drive away from the horde of zombies while doing hand surgery on myself in real-time. This shit was so intense I think I lost a few years off my life from stress. I'll see you guys in heaven at 77. But anyway, you don't know shit about these zombies. You don't know how they work. Sure, you can customize them in sandbox mode but you don't know if they're drawn to corpses of other zombies or if they can smell the blood on your shirt. The game won't tell you, but if you're paranoid or cautious you can get rid of zombie corpses and wash your clothes and self to get rid of the blood. It reminds me of the early days of the walking dead when they didn't know how the bites worked or if the walkers were still conscious and could come back once the whole thing blew over in a week or two. I dunno about you guys but I like not knowing things. This game is just pure awesome.

But there is a flaw. Yeah, it's early access and it's still not done. There's just one aspect I really need from this game and that's the human NPC update. If you check the developer's Twitter updates you can see they are working on it and just like everything else in the game it's insanely detailed and ambitious. But unlike an ambitious promise from a game like no man's sky, I totally trust this team that each NPC will have deep memories of relatives going back to their grandparents and can tell you about the time their stepdad fell into the lake while fishing. These guys. That's the one thing that's missing and the part of a zombie apocalypse that I think is one of the most important. Because if you have nobody with you, then you are just struggling every day to keep living so you can survive tomorrow. I'd honestly get sorta bored just not even being able to chill at all. I like that this game has books and CDs and VHSes so our character can pass the time. But I'm adding that extra half-star when this game gets the NPC update.