I picked this up to play with Shiny recently, and this is a really good game. I heartily recommend it.

If you've played Dead State, it's kinda like that (but way better and first person) . Roam around, loot stuff, survive the zombies.

Add on top of that a skill leveling system kind of like Fallout or Elder Scrolls... doing actions over and over improve your skills in those actions. You level every so many skill levelups (I think?) and get more points. You can use those to further buff the base skills (so, go from 1 to 20 mining so it's not so tedious), or put it into some skills that you have to buy (like steel making). Additionally, many of the skills are level-tiered, so you can't get the camel upgrade (which makes you need less water) but every 10 levels (level 1 at 10, 2 at 20, etc etc).

As implied, you have to eat and drink or you'll die. If you drink murky (unpurified) water, you run a serious risk of getting dynsentary, which can be cured with certain things. If you don't treat it, it'll get worse and worse until you die. You can get infected from being hit by zombies (again, it can be cured). You can sprain your leg from falls, you can begin bleeding profusely (which will kill you quick if you don't have a bandage).

On top of that, you can craft... weapons, tools, forges, pickaxes, even guns and building materials. You can use the building materials to build bases. And everything in the game is destructible. You can tunnel, chop down trees, break up boulders, etc etc. You can also farm for food, cook meals, etc.

It's a surprisingly complex game for being in Alpha. I'm totally digging it. Dying is not permanent. If you die, you can respawn on or near your bedroll (if you have one), otherwise you just respawn in a random place. And every 7 days there's a bloodmoon and zombies get crazy. Everything you do needs to take into account that zombies will wreck you on day 7 if you're not ready. And of course it gets harder every 7 days.

Anyway... digging it. If you're looking for something to play, you may want to check it out.

Sounds interesting!

Some questions:

- so it's basically a FPS survival game with RPG elements? No narrative I'm guessing since it's still in Alpha?
- Is it coop, or set on a server with many other people? Since you and Shiny seem to be playing it together
- How's the combat?

To answer your questions:

- so it's basically a FPS survival game with RPG elements? No narrative I'm guessing since it's still in Alpha?
Yea, basically. The Steam page described it as "7 Days to Die is an open-world game that is a unique combination of first person shooter, survival horror, tower defense, and role-playing games". I forgot to mention you can build defensive turrets. I just haven't progressed enough technologically to build them yet.

- Is it coop, or set on a server with many other people? Since you and Shiny seem to be playing it together
Single player, coop, or server. There are public servers you can join. I create a local LAN server for just Shiny and me. There are various multiplayer settings... you can enable pvp and compete with other players. I'm not much of a pvp person, so that's not up my alley, but others I'm sure would dig it. Alternately you can play alone.

- How's the combat?
Guns are not something that's readily available until the mid game, but even then you shouldn't really use them unless you absolutely have to. Crafting gunpowder/bullets is resource intensive, so mostly you use melee weapons or bows. They're also loud, so they supposedly attract zombies. For melee, you want to dash in, smack the zombie in the head, then dash out before he can hit you. When you have two people, one person can distract while the other person hits it in the head. Outside of the blood moon, I mainly use a sledgehammer. I've leveled up my blunt weapons enough that a head hit will one shot most zombies. Shiny prefers bows, as she's not so good at not getting hit. All that is out on blood moons and nights, though. In the dark, zombies move much faster, so typically we just stay inside our base and do crafting or whatever. On a blood moon, there are hordes of very aggressive zombies, so we stand on our walls with bows to help our traps along in murdering them all. We also carry guns in case they breach out defenses and we have to defend our crap. If you're asking how it plays, it's fine. Getting hit can stun you, which slows you down, so you have to avoid that at all costs. There's also armor you can wear, but that can cause you to overheat, so I usually avoid it except on blood moons.

Hope that answers your questions.

yes it does sir, thank you very much.

i've checked the gameplay vids too now and it does look nice...when I get back from my trip I'll see if I can miss 22 euro or not haha. Then I might join you on your private server.

Yea, that would be cool. We may have to use one of those vpn hacks we've done before to get it to work, but whatever.

You'd think that with today's internet speeds people would stop putting up these ridiculous barriers for private servers etc. I guess they don't want to deal with retards who complain that their 40-people non-dedicated server doesn't work properly for people connecting from Siberia or some shit.