Do you like Minecraft?
Do you like zombie apocalypses?
Do you like Bacon?
If you answered yes to all three of these questions (with the last one potentially having a question mark at the end), then you may get a kick out of 7 Days to Die, which has all three (yes, including the bacon)!
7 Days to Die is a Survival-Horde-Crafting-Zombie Apocalypse First Person Shooter. In addition to this genre list being 3 miles long, this game is also in Alpha (16.3, at the time of this writing), so it's got a few kinks to work out...
...
Ok, A LOT of kinks. Despite these shortcomings, it does bring a fresh (as fresh as you can get with zombies) approach to the survival and zombie apocalypse genre of games. It also offers an intricate crafting system where you can make things from meat stew, to blunderbusses, to mini motorcycles!
But first, you need to survive.
In Solo and Multi, you start the game naked. Outside of your skivvies, a backpack filled with bare essentials, and a torch, you've got nothing. Just the road in front of you and a house nearby. And you can start in any kind of weather: hot and arid (Desert), pleasant, yet a lil wet (Forest) or ice cold (Mountains). The places you can start off in in Navezgane, Arizona-which is the fictional town you're in-vary wildly with each play (even more so if you randomize the maps). And to top it off, it's quiet....
Really quiet...
There's barely a soul within 100 feet of you and the house near you looks quite inviting. You break the door down and you're greeted with a corpse on the ground. Ignoring it's presence, you look around the rest of the house an-what the FUCK do you think you're doing?! BASH THAT CORPSE'S HEAD IN BEFORE IT RISES! By the way, if you happen to start up near a big house, prepare to say hi to MULTIPLE zombies inside.
Alright, so with the zombies out of the way, you can make this house your own, but first you'll need tools. Very similarly to Minecraft, you get to punch wood to get...well wood. But then you'll need stone to craft a stone ax. Once you've gotten that, it's off to the races with gathering materials to strengthen your house and increasing your chances of survival. As you do all of this, however, you'll get both hungry AND thirsty, and you'll have to forage and hunt for your food. Also like Minecraft, but also surprisingly similar to games like Skyrim, you level up by doing various things across the world. Mining, cutting down trees, cooking, EATING, attacking, what have you, you'll get better at it the more you do it (Well, with the slight exception of eating). The better you get at the things that you do, the more options that you'll have open to you.
Once you've done your work for the day, it's best to head back home...because night time is NOT a fun time in this game. You know how things get more dangerous in games like Dying Light when night comes? Yeah, same difference, only you're not as badass as other characters...not yet at least. Zombies go on the prowl even more so than in the waking hours, and to make matters worse, they run. This is where things like noise, smell and stealth really come into play, because one false step could alert a zombie to your presence.
But the true terror comes every 7 days. Why 7? Hordes.
But I won't tell you about that...not tonight at least. So I'll see you in 7 days time!
Until then, stay alive.
--Chocothunda (10/4/17)
Title image from Gameranx.com, screencapped by Choco.