Octopus Overlords

Indie Stone a British indie developer is putting together what may be my ideal zombie game. Project Zomboid is being developed on an alpha release cycle a-la Minecraft. It is a real time isometric zombie, sandbox, survival game. Eventually your character will die. It just looks freakin awesome.

Shotgun Test
Line of Sight Demo
Crafting Molotov Cocktails

Audio interview by Bulletproof Pixel.

Looks good. I am more surprised that we havent see more mine craft clones already.

Indie Stone basically had a succession of catastrophes and pulled it out. They dealt with funding issues; even a car bomb.

Tech demo is released - Alpha. To play it you have to buy one of their other games which gives you a license to play Project Zomboid. This is due to the funding issues they had before (Google and Paypal had issues with taking preorders for something that had yet to be released). They will be releasing a demo; but at a later point.

Spoilers:
Project Zomboid test drive pt. 1
Project Zomboid test drive pt. 2
Project Zomboid test drive pt. 3

There's three games on their site, each a different price. 5 GBP, 10 GBP, or 15 GBP (~$8, ~$16, and ~$23 respectively). It's pretty much a pay how much you're willing to for the game. Just in case you were confused about the pricing.

It looks interesting but their site is certainly confusing.

The public tech demo is now available via bit-torrent. They also stopped the funding model that they were using as people can now buy a license to the alpha.

Rise from the dead! A rather big update is being worked on right now and for like 6 bucks you can get in for life. They are doing a public beta of the new release and I'm having a blast with it. Just survived 6 days and 21 hours until I got attacked by like 30+ zombies.

I really think the game has a TON of potential so I'd check out the demo if you're the least bit interested. Looks like the new version will drop in a couple of weeks.

Current beta release that you can play if you buy the license. http://theindiestone.com/community/view ... =21&t=6507" target="_blank

Seriously I've jumped out of my chair when I get startled by a group of zombies. I opened a door earlier today and there were like 5-7 zombies all waiting to eat me.

How difficult is "survival" ... ?

Some of these games just decide to get absurdly hard just to kill you. Some of them let you kill yourself accidentally. Does this one just decide you're going to die, or could you survive as long as you kept your wits and didn't run out of food and ammo?

I purchased this one least week. I'm pretty hard on games and I must say, this one is pretty good. It's freaking great when you condisder that it's an alpha from an indie studio. The 'new' update is a save feature which was what prevented me from diving in full throttle. The longest I've survived is 5 days 16 hours. I only died because I had to stop playing and (last week) there was no save option. Initially things aren't too tough - there is lots of food, gas and electric still work and you can drink toilet water. I've read that down the line toilets dry up, and the gas electric go out and obviously food that can spoil gets spoiled.

There is a level up/skill system, carpentry for fortress construction, NPC's that join your band (albeit NPC AI is very much a work in progress) and some really great immersion/RPG elements, like when you are out in the rain you get damp, which can possibly lead to chills, then a cold, then a fever. Without rest, food and dry clothes you can wind up full blown sickly and nausious with negative modifers on speeed, aim and awareness. It's pretty cool. And if you just decide to sit in a room and wait around, your avatar can get 'bored', which requires you to read or doodle etc etc. Given that it is an alpha my only gripe is that it's freaking dark at 3pm and it just barely gets light 9am. Maybe it's by design, but it bugs me since zombies seem more active in the dark.

Some fellow survived a year, iirc, there was a YouTube video of it. I don't recall the details but it was a long video.

(btw, it does seem like there's a lot of either cloudy days or long nights.)

Paingod wrote:How difficult is "survival" ... ?

Some of these games just decide to get absurdly hard just to kill you. Some of them let you kill yourself accidentally. Does this one just decide you're going to die, or could you survive as long as you kept your wits and didn't run out of food and ammo?

They don't randomly try and make it harder if that's what you're referring to. They eventually cut power/water, but that makes sense and I like the feature. I died because I couldn't find a can opener in my area and had to wander into a less safe area. I had enough food for a LONG time if I could have just found the darn can opener.

Also as the days go on more and more zombies show up which makes it harder and harder. They actually spawn the zombies at the end of the maps and then they wander around. It's kind of neat as you totally could find an area where they don't wander much and stay pretty safe for a while. I was holed up in a area that had a alleyway behind it that had almost no traffic going through it.

That's good to hear.

I loved the web game The Last Stand - Union City, but got to a point where I'd be exploring buildings and the ceiling would drop out and literally 20 or more zombies would fall down in rapid succession and maul me. Naturally, they'd also likely be blocking my way to the exit as well and kill my companion if they didn't kill me. I eventually just threw my hands up and never played again.

That was also a "survival" game where you had to manage food, ammo, health, inventory, and sleep. There was no specific need for "water" and you couldn't actually build fortifications. Just a side-scroller that started out cool and eventually got retardedly hard.

They just released the version that now includes saves. It's highly experimental so I'm sure horrible things will happen, but I like the way they are listening to the peoples demands. Oh did I mention you can build forts? I haven't tried it yet myself, but there's a few screenshots floating around of some pretty great things they have built. Bridges across roads, rope ladders into the forts etc...

This is sounding like a thing that is worth $8 to me.

I'd say for sure it's worth 8 bucks. Considering they are only calling this a alpha and it's really fun I can't complain. They hit a big lull in development because they got robbed, but now it seems like they are hitting the ground running.

Thread with the fort pictures.
http://theindiestone.com/community/view ... 4&start=40" target="_blank

They are already to release P of the beta releases. Minor fixes have been flying out the door over the last week or so. Guess maybe they should rethink the letter system as they are going to run out of letters.

It looks fascinating; do we have to be a member of their forum to play the demo? There's a code/password involved apparently. I've dl'd this previously but it hasn't worked. It seems even the unfinished version has lots of appealing touches.

Not sure I bought it right away since it was so cheap. I can pretty much promise you will get 8 dollars worth of value out of it. This is not Fort Zombie. Dear god that game disappointed me.

I think if you use this link you can get the demo without paying anything. It's way behind the version in beta, but it will give you a general idea of how the game works.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.ph ... t-zomboid/" target="_blank

Is there still no way to save in the alpha?

They added saving sometime last week. It's still a work in progress, but it's in there. It saves when you sleep or when you leave the game.

bought it, downloaded the alpha and played through the tutorial-ish story scenario. Other than spending an entire day trying to figure out how to attack (ctrl+left click) I thought it was interesting. Hope to have some time to play sandbox tonight.

After spending a bit with it last night it's got promise. The interface could really use a lot of work... it's functional, but it's nowhere near efficient or intuitive. Among other things, lots of dragging and dropping that could be replaced by keyboard combinations.

Good premise and mechanics so far though. I hope more zombie games are created along these lines. Personally I'd love to see a game that combined FPS open world gameplay with mechanics like this or Rogue Survivor.

Yes the interface is certainly clunky. I think they did put in one of the latest test releases a mass move button to and from containers. Haven't tried it yet, but at least they know the current system isn't all that grand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xu-Jend ... r_embedded" target="_blank

Nifty.. I like how they are implimenting the guns. And yes I realize I'm kind of a fanboy right now.

Bought it last night. New mouse moving should make life easier, WASD doesn't cut it these days I'm afraid

Looks like it's lots of potential, customisation etc. Haven't worked out if you can talk to other "survivors" that are running around or what yet. New lighting models look good too, less xcom chunky adn more smoother gradiants.

what version is the latest? I keep seeing people talking about a 2.0 release, but all I can find on their site is 1.5d or something like that. I don't know how to use the mouse to move, and can't find a save feature. Any help is appreciated.

They are open testing releases. If you bought the game you can download the files and run it. I've never been able to get the installer to work just the zip files, but your mileage may vary.

Latest Release:
http://theindiestone.com/community/view ... =21&t=7092" target="_blank

thanks. i bought the game a few days ago but could only find that 1.5d release on their main site, but didn't read the forums that thoroughly.

They purposely weren't announcing it everywhere. They didn't want a ton of people grabbing the beta files and then complaining about the bugs in it.

WTF their Forum is gone.

Octavious wrote:WTF their Forum is gone.

The indiestone.com site you linked? That's still up atm. If it's somewhere else, I wouldn't know.

It was down before... Shrug... I was getting some weird page for a bit.

I'm not insane apparently....

http://theindiestone.com/community/view ... =20&t=7288" target="_blank

I'm watching YouTube videos. Beyond survival, do we have any goals: finding a cure, rescuing survivors, building a rudimentary lathe, reaching safety?

Nah none of that is in yet. They do have a story mode, but there really isn't much to it yet. I think it will be a while before anything really detailed comes out. People can create custom stories, but I haven't seen anything longer then a few minutes.

Ok, I'm in. I can get the 1.4 demo working, but I have no idea how to get the downloaded 2.0 zip working.

Edit: Fixed it by installing 32 bit version of Java 7, rather than x64.