If you have been on the fence about buying this game, you can get it this week on steam for around $6. When it goes to alpha later this year, the price will be $45.
Alpha? I feel like I have been hearing about this game for a decade.
I bought that on a decent sale last year, but only checked it out for a few minutes. It looks very promising.
Is there base building? It has the tag for base building but then I occasionally see comments on reddit about how there is not. Can you build structures?
I think I read it has been in Early Access for 7 years.
Just over 10, early access released December of 2013. And it’s not alpha, but 1.0, releasing in June.
Family and I picked it up a couple days ago, just waiting for a time we’re all available to boot it up.
Turns out I own this. According to Steam, I played it for nine minutes, in January 2015.
Guess I wasn’t too impressed by it.
But yeah, you have been hearing about this game for a decade.
I have 360 hours in this game over ~7 years. Base building is its bread-and-butter, its official shtick. Full terraforming voxel environment.
My fellow players and I agree that after version 16 (I think we’re on 22 now) the devs pushed everyone to play in the way THEY want us to, and much angst ensued. The mechanics increasingly gravitated away from “realistic” to “you guys aren’t playing it right so we’re going to make it harder even if it makes no sense”.
The most recent drama was along the lines of this: formerly, you could gather water from a lake in glass jars to drink when thirsty, and you’d end up with an empty jar, as you’d expect. Now, the jar disappears forever, and you cannot make jars; you have to buy them from a trader. Traders generally are a pointless mechanic they added so they can say “yes we have NPCs”.
My biggest complaint: they formerly had a mechanic where you’d gain skills by actually using the skill. Want to be a better miner or archer? Simply engage in those activities. Now, they have a cheesy “find a book” scheme.
Zombies used to be dormant in some buildings; now they are somehow encased inside walls and spawn inside rooms you’ve already cleared.
An overall reduction in enjoyment and “realism”.
Interesting–I only picked it up a few months ago, and love the difficulty on it.
Base building is 86% uninteresting; but one day a week, oh boy, a good base is crucial. I really loved the frantic feel of the hordes.
Interestingly, multiplayer was much MORE difficult than singleplayer–mostly because I was playing with some lovable goobers who lacked the discipline to let the zombies come to us. With a good base design in singleplayer, I was able to pick them off at my leisure.
And it looks like 7D2D is LEAVING alpha (the release is called Alpha Exodus) and going to 1.0. But I’m having trouble finding two tiny details:
- When?
- What will be added in 1.0?
Their FAQ is all about their rationale behind this move (which looks like little more than a name change) and what it means for pricing and such. Some frequently asked questions are notably absent.
Edit: wait, here’s the Dev Diary, which seems to answer my questions.
I’ve got north of a thousand hours in it; it’s a fun game with friends/family!
I can’t argue with this; they have very much forced an “exploration is everything” gameplay style, making self-sufficiency basically impossible.
However, there are a ton of great mods out there to return it more to its roots, and some really good total overhaul mods (Subquake’s Undead Legacy mod is great, and Wasteland is interesting- makes it into a Fallout/7D2D mashup).
I have bought 12-15 copies of the game over the years for various people, and actually just bought another cheap copy last night!
Fully agree with your points and I should have mentioned there are many great mods, including complete overhauls like Darkness Falls.
And I had great fun, on multiple maps/different times, playing with cow-orkers on a rented server.
Not a gamer. So when I read the thread title my thought was “Fuck that. I’ll die later even if I have to pay full price.”
Yeah, that’d be taking bargain shopping just a wee bit too far!
7 days to buy 7 Days to Die on sale
I have a few hundred hours into this game.
The biggest strength this game has besides it’s building (which is among the best of any game I play.) is that it is truly a sandbox. You can play it pretty much any way you want to. And the modding community is beyond amazing.
Spoilsport! 