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7 Days to Die Review – One of the Most Immersive Zombie Survival Games on the Market

The Fun Pimps
The Fun Pimps Entertainment

There are a veritable plethora of zombie survival video games on the market, some good along a lot of badness. 7 Days to Die was one game within the ever-popular genre that caught the attention of many a gamer out there. Some of the things that set it apart was that it was a sandbox, role-playing, zombie survival game that turned into a tower defense experience on every seventh day (within the game that is).

But let me back up. Upon starting each game, you can either play on 7 Days to Die’s fictional pre-generated map called Navezgane or you can choose the procedurally generated feature and get a randomized map. The only difference between the two options is that Navezgane has a few additional distinct points of interest that the random maps lack.

Once you begin a game, 7 Days to Die starts off like most games of this type—you spawn in with some raggedy clothes on your back, a little bit of food and water, and that’s about it. You must quickly collect some resources, build some rudimentary tools and weapons, and scout out a spot to build your first base. Of course, you must do all of this while dodging lurching zombies which populate the game’s environs. When night falls, the zombies become more powerful, so much so that even one or two can end your life in a hurry.

Another thing that makes 7 Days to Die unique is that you can choose to either build your base up from scratch, i.e. the foundation; walls and such, or find an already existing building and begin retrofitting it instead. For instance, I was playing with a gaming buddy and we were exploring a small town. After clearing an abandoned grocery store out by killing all of the zombies that were lurking around in it, we discovered that above its ceiling was an entire separate maintenance level.

We crafted a ladder, climbed up into the space, and blocked it off with a trapdoor. From there we built floor panels and laid them across any holes that were present. Then we constructed a kitchen and some storage rooms. In 7 Days to Die, you have the freedom to do these sorts of things.

What makes 7 Days to Die so harrowing is that on every seventh day a huge zombie horde will arise and basically come at you wherever you are. Therefore, the game has this constant sense of urgency that hangs in the air, as you try to gather enough resources to erect a base resilient enough to withstand each zombie apocalypse. This lends itself to creating lots of emergent gaming moments.

For example, I recall a game that a friend and I had started back a couple of years ago. We spawned in close to dusk and began running against time to find shelter before nightfall. We came across an abandoned, two-story farmhouse and quickly killed the few zombies that were hanging out there (the previous owners we guessed).

As night enveloped the place we scurried down into the basement—we hadn’t had the time to build up any fortifications. We ran around like little frightened school girls for a minute or two and then we heard some zombies moaning outside of the upstairs main floor. We ran into the basement’s bathroom, shut the door behind us, and cowered there in the darkness.

Suddenly, we heard some very disturbing guttural growls accompanied by the sound of rapid footsteps. We figured that some type of apex predator was on the loose and had somehow picked up our fear-scents. As we hunkered down in horror, we heard this thing smash its way into the house upstairs, run around like it was searching for something, and then screech loudly.

It ran downstairs into the basement and we could hear it smashing the furniture there as if it were upset that it hadn’t located a couple of fleshy morsels that it had been previously detected. Then it began walking down the hallway towards our bathroom door. By that point my friend and I were screeching over our microphones like a couple of high-octave wussies.

These types of moments happen quite often in 7 Days to Die, and that’s pretty impressive for a game that doesn’t feature the most impressive graphics. Many people have wondered if the game’s developers would ever upgrade the game’s visuals and that made me perform a little research on the game. Unfortunately, I came across some rather bad news…

Apparently, 7 Days to Die’s developers, The Fun Pimps, severed their ties with their previous publisher. This caused some sort of legal wrangling which has resulted in a halt to any further updates for the game. This is most sad, since 7 Days to Die is one of the most immersive zombie survival sandbox games on the market. Only time will tell whether or not its devs will be able to continue work on their little unpolished gem, but for now it’s a relatively fun game to play with friends.

SCORE: 83%

7 Days to Die features pretty decent graphics that make its zombie survival gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:

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