7 Days to Die dozens of times in 3 hours

7 Days to Die

(Dozens of Times in a Period of 3 Hours)

The Basics: A zombie oriented first person survival and crafting game. 

Previous Time Spent: 18 minutes

Expectation of learning Curve: Fairly High

Why I bought this: I convinced myself that I liked survival games.

My 3 Hours with the Game: My time began with the creation of an odd looking fat man, pictured below:

Following the normal grotesque adjustment of sliders that accompanies a game where I'm allowed to make my own avatar, I chose the default settings for things like night and day cycle (50 minutes), zombie running (only at night), and difficulty. I then loaded up the game, which worked to generate the world I'd inhabit for these next several hours. 

After the game loaded, my first impressions were of an ugly wasteland of broken down cars, shambling corpses and little sense of purpose. So, I wandered, and within minutes (after successfully scavenging a brass candlestick from a car) died for no apparent reason. Later, I learned that this unexplained death was the result of not looking down, and being bitten by a zombie who was dragging itself along the dirty roadway. 

So, I started again, taking the time to make a slightly more cartoonishly ugly avatar, and awoke in a desert. This desert was populated with typical desert things, cacti, large chunks of rock, broken down cars, zombies, and rabbits. After scavenging in some cars, I found a shovel, and then a sense of purpose in a rabbit, which I chased through the desert for some time, before dying, coming back to life, and finding my way to a compound. There, I found some things, but mostly the restless undead, and an unpleasant death. 

I should pause here and point out again, that death came constantly in this game for a while. Eventually though, I took the time to look at some crafting recipes, and learn to hide. 

Learning to hide was what gave me my first spot of hope. I survived an entire night by hiding out, slowly grabbing cotton, and apparently spinning cotton into usable clothing with my bare hands in mere seconds per piece. After surviving the night, I ran into a zombie dog while trying to scavenge my way through a building. This didn't go well, and my poorly assembled club did not prove an adequate match for the beast. So, I died. 

With that, I decided to start fresh once again, and built a new world. This time, I reduced the general frequency of zombies, and randomly generated the environment, hoping for a fresh, safe start. So, I awoke in a relatively peaceful forest. I spent my day sneaking around the woods, and then built a crude shelter on top of a boulder.

My shelter consisted of a sleeping bag (that I made myself out of cotton), and a few pieces of ladder that I set up to sort of float in front of the rock (made of sticks which I gathered by punching bushes). I stayed in this shelter until about midnight, and then came to the realization that my shelter allowed me the relative luxury of sort of saving and being able to start in a familiar place if I died. Emboldened by my immortality, I left my shelter, and starting crouch walking through the moonlit woods, collecting sticks, rocks, and cotton as I walked. 

In those woods, I learned the secret of zombie bopping, and became confident enough to face individual zombies in the old Daggerfall style (backwards walking, running, circling). With this new bit of confidence, and realization that I was nearing my 3 hour requirement, I pressed on, intrigued by a lone 2 story mansion in the distance. I found the mansion, but before I could get close, I heard the telltale cries of zombies. A veritable horde came from the surrounding woods and structure, surrounding me. |I tried retreating, tried fighting them off, but I fell quickly.

I reawoke a short time later(sans equipment in the classic MMO style), atop my little shelter, Set on revenge, I began traveling through the forest, sneaking through the early morning hours, and assembling a club as I walked. I approached the house as the dawn rose behind me. The zombies, slower in the daylight, were easier to handle. I spent a good deal of time running around the woods, luring individuals away, bopping them on the head with my club. Then, I got greedy. 

I moved slowly away from the house, attempting to draw the horde away, into the woods where they would be easier to evade. Then, I made a mad rush for the house itself, barely dodging the few stragglers from the horde of zombies. I ran to the front door, finding it locked. Then I rushed up a set of stairs leading to a second floor porch, making my way into the house through a broken window. As I set to scavenging, the horde approached. The vast majority of them went a fairly direct route, breaking through the front door into the kitchen where I was frantically searching for things.

Panicked, I led them up the stairs, only to find a few had come up the porch stairs, and were entering the window. Trapped, I tried luring more up the stairs, hoping to jump down and push past any remaining zombies. Unfortunately, my poorly thought out plan did not have timing on it's side, and I landed in the middle of several undead, who made quick work of me.

Final Verdict: I could see myself playing more of this game. After getting the hang of some of the systems involved, it certainly worked for the creation of emergent narrative. However, it is brutal, unforgiving, and a bit ugly. I definitely regret picking it up on Steam, but I don't hate myself for the purchase.