Project Zomboid, in my humble opinion,takes the crown as the best survival game ever made. My longest-living character, Tamara Bailey, survived for 376 days, before falling from a rooftop as I was building a garden on top of my fire station base. She didn’t deserve to perish like that, but Project Zomboid is a game that tells the story of how you die. Something will get you, eventually, whether that be a zombie bite or clumsy accident.
Set in 1993 rural Kentucky in the area surrounding Louisville - it’s a hellhole, never go there - Project Zomboid is a hyperrealistic simulation of being the last survivor on earth. The game did have NPCs in one of its earliest builds, but in the latest update, Build 42, you are still completely alone - except for the addition of farm animals, like cows, chicken, and sheep, which at least give you some greater existential purpose.
Once you’ve basically conquered the game on its default Apocalypse settings, much of the endgame is what you make of it - hence why I built Tamara a garden on her roof. There is no endgame goal set in stone. Much of your enjoyment rests on your own ability to role-play and have fun completing menial tasks, like collecting every mannequin in the game, creating a massive farm like a sort of apocalyptic Noah’s Ark (was that a kind of apocalypse? Yeah, I guess so), or kitting out your base with unlimited booze and art yoinked from the Louisville Art Gallery.
Others have another solution: attempt Project Zomboid’s hardest starting scenario, the CDDA challenge.
Oh No, Oh God, Not Like This
Let me tell you a story. The CDDA challenge has your character waking up in a burning building, drunk, naked, coughing and sneezing with a nasty cold, and with a massive shard of glass lodged in their groin. If that doesn’t already sound pretty grim, there are thousands of zombies outside, and it’s the middle of winter. Your chances of surviving these first few moments are obviously pretty slim.
After 400 hours with Project Zomboid, I finally attempted the CDDA challenge this week. I managed to survive 14 days with a character I named Ronald Crum. First, I ripped the curtains off the windows and made a makeshift bandage for my wound, tied a sheet-sling bag to carry essential items - food is so important in this challenge, but you’ll need a can opener to open any cans you find - and then tried to kill a zombie for their shoes. Without shoes, your feet get scratched, and you start to bleed.
Ron Crum managed to complete these simple tasks and even looted some of the nearby buildings in his neighborhood. After gathering a few basic supplies - a kitchen knife, a couple of tins of food, and some battered clothing from a zombie he killed in a bathroom - he headed north, to a large farmhouse with some dead chickens and sheep in the fields. These would come in handy later, but first he needs to kill the 20 or so zombies roaming the area.
Cue an eight-hour in-game fight where you need to wait for the zombies to fall over fences so you can then splat their heads with a stone you find on the ground. It’s exhausting work and Ron’s body is riddled with muscle strain and fatigue by the time the fight is over. Thankfully, the area is largely clear of zombies now, and he can butcher the chickens in the fields for some meat. He cooks these on a campfire, and for a moment, there is peace.
But of course, this peace doesn’t last long. While you could survive for a few days off your meagre supplies around the farmhouse, to really excel in this challenge, you need to venture out again - either to forage for berries and crafting materials in the woods, or make your way to nearby points of interest, like an abandoned train station, or, if you’re feeling brave enough, the bar on the edge of town.
This Is How You Died
Ron decides to collect some berries and even finds some thicker, warmer clothing on a scarecrow at the rear of the farm. He really needs a jacket, otherwise he’ll freeze to death. Unfortunately, there’s no jacket to be found in either the train station or the abandoned cabins to the south, so Ron needs to head into town. The bar is overrun, but he manages to clear out a small safe zone around it with a lead pipe he’d found in the farmhouse basement.
He decides to call the apartment above the bar home for now. It’s close to town and there’s a lot of booze downstairs. Ron spends the next week tentatively exploring a nearby warehouse and even a couple of buildings. On day 9, disaster strikes: a helicopter arrives overhead. Ron doesn’t know who’s watching him or why, but it attracts every zombie from across the town of Muldraugh to his location. He needs to flee into the woods to lose them.
The area around the bar is now overrun. He tries to clear a few zombies, then leads others into the woods by shouting, and even manages to get back into his apartment to finally sleep. But in the night he can hear the zombies shuffling around outside. At 7am, they break down the door of the apartment. He makes a desperate jump out of the second-story window, and falls immediately into the waiting zombies below. They lunge and bite into his neck. Ron instantly dies from a horrific wound. His story is over. This challenge is hard. I stare at the body of Ron on the screen, and after a short acknowledgement of his efforts, I load up another run.
