Image via The Indie Stone<\/figcaption><\/figure> The long production pipeline of Project Zomboid<\/h2> It was back in 2012 that I was just unpacking a new gaming magazine – its demo disc, in particular – only to discover one of Project Zomboid<\/em>‘s earliest builds on it. I’ll be honest: it didn’t look<\/em> good. Heck, it didn’t play good, either, for many of the same reasons some may feel Zomboid<\/em> is still not a great game. Slow, janky, and highly unpolished, Project Zomboid<\/em> has always had a massive early adoption hurdle that filters most players right off the bat.<\/p> Here’s the thing, though: I was hooked when I realized just how deep<\/em> the game’s simulation goes. And that was well before any of the truly substantial content additions and updates drop in, keep in mind. Just the core and the crux of it: Zomboid<\/em> at its most raw.<\/p> In 2024, Project Zomboid<\/em> can become almost any kind of zombie survival game you want it to be. A Romero-style plod? A Resident Evil<\/em>-type dread? A 28 Days Later<\/em> terror? Oh, just tweak a thing or two and you’re golden<\/em> no matter what your zombie fantasy might be. Project Zomboid<\/em>‘s gameplay systems are every bit as intricate as they are janky, and this leads to a hugely rewarding gameplay loop of… well, of pure survival. Even if you take zombies out of the equation, there’s still a whole game’s worth of content in Zomboid<\/em> to parse through.<\/p> Why is this relevant? Because I feel that it illustrates the importance of the zig-zagging nature of The Indie Stone’s Project Zomboid<\/em> production pipeline. There are several games’ worth of gameplay systems and loops present in Zomboid<\/em>. Build 42 – whenever it ends up coming out – will build on top of this further still. If the developers working on this game hadn’t started on multiple different barely related features over a year ago, Zomboid<\/em> would’ve been a far poorer survival game.<\/p> As it currently stands, instead, we’ve got what is easily the most comprehensive zombie survival game, bar none. It’s got its limitations, to be sure, and it’s certainly<\/em> an acquired taste in more ways than not, but there’s something special here. I can’t help but feel that, had The Indie Stone been more focused, Zomboid<\/em> simply wouldn’t be where it is today.<\/p> Image via The Indie Stone<\/figcaption><\/figure> How long is too long?<\/h2> On the flip side of the equation, Project Zomboid<\/em> is certainly taking its sweet time crossing the finish line. Not even the finish<\/em> line, at that: just one of the many checkpoints it needs to go through before the finish line is even on the horizon. We’re that<\/em> far off, as the project is in its 14th year of active development. The Indie Stone’s current development setup necessitates years’ worth of work before each major new Build comes out, and it’s a given that some players simply aren’t happy with that.<\/p> It’s okay to be unhappy, of course, but The Indie Stone is a small team working on an impossibly huge project at their own schedule. As someone who’s been playing Zomboid<\/em> on-and-off for almost half of my life, I can vouch for the team’s “slow and steady wins the race” strategy, simply because the quality of the product is there<\/em>.<\/p> In the end, The Indie Stone could’ve turned Build 41 into the 1.0 release of Project Zomboid<\/em> had they wanted to. The fact that they didn’t, I think, illustrates a sense of straightforwardness. Outwardly, The Indie Stone states plainly that Project Zomboid <\/em>isn’t ostensibly finished. The team is adding more (and more, and more, and more<\/em>) features into the mix that hadn’t even been on the docket, say, during the Build 40 production process, and this is bound to continue. And you can tell that this is the case purely because Zomboid<\/em> is unlikely to leave Early Access anytime soon.<\/p> Honestly, I don’t think we’ll see a full 1.0 release of Project Zomboid<\/em> before 2030, if ever. It just seems so unlikely, considering the size and scope of the project. When each major new Build keeps adding a whole game’s worth of gameplay on top <\/em>of what’s already there, though, does it even matter all that much?<\/p> Zomboid<\/em> trudges on, in much the same way as its tragic, lumbering monstrosities do. It’s been here back when I was a kid, and I’d be willing to bet it’ll still be trucking along when I hit my 40s. What’s one more decade of active development, after all, whether you’re Dwarf Fortress<\/em> or Project Zomboid<\/em>?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The more things change, the more they stay the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":872,"featured_media":487707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"article_type":"","gamurs_wordpress_blocks_hide_tags":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"[]","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[22566],"tags":[21960,1025,24352],"internal-label":[22870,24255],"invoiceable_action":[23728],"article_type":[23116],"coauthors":[{"id":872,"display_name":"Filip Galekovic","user_login":"Filip Galekovic","user_nicename":"filip-galekovic"}],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Project Zomboid and the long wait between major builds<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n