7 Days to Die

Seren and I have been playing this for the past couple of days

Its a zombie survival game in which you can build and craft, but it focuses on survival rather than building, which im not usually a huge fan of because normally in these types of games the survival becomes trivial after the first 2 nights, but thats not true here
Every 7 days the zombies get more abilities which scales the difficulty to be about on par with your current level of technology as the game progresses
So when all you have are clubs and rocks the zombies are slow and easy (still fairly difficult since all you have is a club), but by the time you have guns and armor they are fast and more difficult
Not only that but the game will throw hoards of zombies at you every so often, it seems like it can happen at random, but its guaranteed to happen every 7 days, the hoard may not notice you and just walk by, but we only saw that happen once

Because you have to deal with hoards of zombies weapons alone wont be enough, so you can make traps like mines and spikes, and build a fort to stop the hoard from killing you, and since the zombies keep getting stronger as you play you have to keep upgrading your defense
It makes it so that you arent just building something to look nice, your building something that has to function as an actual point of defense, the zombies can destroy blocks, and if your building isnt supported by something it will collapse
It makes building a lot more fun to me, thinking up ways to stop zombies and then building it, they also put a bunch of cosmetic stuff in too so you still can make it look nice


There are abandoned towns to explore, secluded houses, as well as farms and probably other types of buildings all around
You can find guns or gun parts in places like that, other useful items like a mining helmet, crafting books that teach you how to make advanced stuff and of course basic supplies

Seren and i found a cabin next to a little pond which we turned into our base, it seems like the best possible place to start since theres a town nearby, a farm with nearly infinite corn near that, infinite water, trees and iron deposits everywhere, its great
The only problem with it is that it isnt fancy, we found another house which had an awesome view and a fancy kitchen with a skylight and a wrap around balcony, it had leather furniture (which i took) and marble counters, it makes our place look like crap, but i think starting there would be harder because the river is pretty far away, we had water the whole time without any issue but i feel like if we didnt start where we did water would probably be an issue

The cabin is made of weak wood and weve been hiding out in their during huge attacks so there are holes in the walls all over the place which we just shoved sandbags in to fill, the ground under the house has been recently dug up by zombies, i dont even know how the house is still standing considering about 40% of the dirt under it is missing


The game is in alpha so it has many bugs like items being deleted when using a forge or campfire (if you take out stuff or put in stuff in the wrong order or too much of 1 thing something ends up being deleted)
I also have a few problems with it, like how you start with a compass and a map (the map fills in as you walk), and the ability to see the time, you should find that kind of stuff in towns as you play
And the death system should be rebalanced, i think theres only 2 options when you die, you lose all your stuff permanently or your stuff is dropped in a bag that you can pick up again once you respawn
The first option is too harsh and the 2nd option isnt harsh enough, it should be something like when you die your stuff is dropped but at respawn your leg is broken your food and water meter is basically empty, your bleeding, your stunned in place at your spawn point for 30 seconds or so, and your vision is blurred or impaired in some way
That would make it so you need painkillers, bandages, food, water, and a splint to fix all that every time you die, the vision and slow walking of the broken leg should persist for awhile even after taking all that
I think that would make death a lot better, although it might be too harsh for when you are just starting out, but restarting the game after a death that early would be fine, it would also be too harsh in PvP since people would just spawn camp and youd be screwed, but still something like that should be an option for non PvP servers or singleplayer

Other than those minor things though the game is good, all they need to add is the ability to repair some of the broken down cars you find around the world so that you can drive and it would be amazing

Spoiler:

long story short, this game is good but definitely still in alpha

http://7daystodie.com/alpha-10-status-key-giveaway/

screenshots of new features

Spoiler:

The stuff thats being added in alpha 10 was pretty impressive progress until i started reading the 7 days forums and found a list of promised features: http://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?7084-Features-That-Haven-t-Been-Added-Yet!-%28But-will-be-in-the-future%29

That post was made back in march, of the features there i think only random generation and player character customization has been done, and as far as i can tell the random generation isnt finished yet
It took them roughly 4 months for each of those 2 features, so if they actually add all those features, assuming each 1 will take 4 months, they will all be added by May of 2021 at the current rate of development (thats skipping over sound related features and "more items", and combining similar things like generators, electricity, circuits into 1)
Of course "4 months" wont be the case for each of those, so it could be anywhere from like 4 to 8 years to add all that
It really makes it feel like the development is going at a snails pace, especially when so many of the planned features are really cool

I hope they work on drivable vehicles for alpha 11, exploring without a car or at least a bike or something is a pain with a world that large
Its not that big of a deal in a game like minecraft, since you mainly just explore underground there, but here theres towns and structures really far apart to explore
Also i really want to see the electricity, circuits and generator stuff, but that seems like something they would add last so i doubt it would be in alpha 11

Dont get me wrong, the game is fun as is, its just some of those features are so awesome that in comparison to what the game could be if it was farther along in its development its currently lacking, which i guess is part of the reason i dislike early access


We should figure out how to properly build, im sure theres a way to make bridges that actually work and a bridge between bases would be cooler than the tunnel we made (plus i dont feel like making another tunnel in alpha 10)
Also when we restart in alpha 10 i think i have a better idea for the spike moat, instead of digging a moat we build a ramp that leads into the moat, we should test to see how zombies react to ramps, like if they attack it or just walk up it
If they walk up it we can have them walk into the log spikes like that and put the log spikes on the surface so that we can expand it beyond 2 wide, we could make it something crazy like 10 rows of log spikes, then on the other side just a concrete wall with another ramp for us to climb up and look/shoot down on them, we might even be able to put holes at their feet so we can collect the drops
All that might be more work than just digging a moat, but it would probably be more fun to make