Project Zomboid Survival Game Has A New Major Update, Our Video & Thoughts Included

Project Zomboid is one of the few survival games that actually shows a lot of promise, not only because of the frequent updates, but it now has online support too. This latest version adds even more new features.

This new build is hidden on Steam under the "IWBUMS BRANCH", you need to enter in the password (read that link) to access it. They keep putting new builds in the hidden branch and then when stable they release them as public beta builds.

Our video of Project Zomboid on Linux

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My thoughts

It's really great to see it get polished up for Linux gamers, I remember the days when Project Zomboid used to crash due to file-name cases (Linux sees "This" and "this" as different files, Windows doesn't). The performance of Project Zomboid on Linux nowadays I really cannot fault everything is smooth including the lovely lighting system they use.

The game is as hostile as ever (it's meant to be!), I never last very long due to not having very good survival skills in a game like this. Here's a big hint: Don't go running around in daylight if you only have a broken fork and a saucepan as a weapon, to quote Pokemon "it's not very effective!".

The new character models sure are lovely, seeing all the different animations like smashing a window and climbing into it are much more satisfying than the old rather static models.

The combat in the game is the real issue for me, it's far too finicky and unless you manage to really get your character the right way around which can be difficult the zombies will easily kill you. I think that's part of the point though, you aren't supposed to take on a bunch of zombies with melee weapons, but try to get them one on one where you have time to aim. With time I am sure I will master it. The golf club seemed to do little to no damage though sadly, pretty sure in real life if you swung it at someone's head even once it would knock them senseless.
That does leave you constantly wanting "just one more go, this time I will find a gun!".

The only issue right now is their full-screen support when you have multiple monitors it will take-over both monitors and force a resolution change, it's been reported though. That's such a small issue though that it hasn't hampered my fun on it, but I would like to full-screen it someday soon.

The guys have had a rough time developing it, but it has made them better developers and personally it's still in my top 10 games to keep an eye on.

This new build adds (highlights!):

• New cooking system - To make it easier and more realistic
• Fishing!
• A ton of new food items
• New weapon - The hunting knife
• Context menu command to chop trees down to make it easier
• [MP] Password will now be hashed in the data base - Security hooray!
• Korean language is back
• Japanese language

They also fixed some Linux specific issues (hooray!):

• Fixed running out of file handles on Linux (too many open files). . Looking at Resource Monitor I saw many open files: 1) All the .lotheader files 2) Many duplicate ambient stream .ogg files (windy day, windy night etc); more as time passed...
• Fixed quoting problem with projectzomboid.sh (Linux demo won't launch).

Great to see them pay more attention to Linux!

You can get the game from Desura which has a really old version as Desura doesn't support multiple branches, but buying on Desura does also give you a Steam key or from Steam directly.