Project Zomboid is a Zombie Survival RPG available on PC, Mac and Linux.
Game Features:
Here are some of the features that can be found in the current PZ build.
Flee the Horde
Thousands of ‘proper’ zeds roam the streets. Gunfire and combat could lead to a bite…
Sandbox Survival
Scavenge food, craft items, construct barricades and fight against inevitable death.
Changing World
Day turns to night. The electricity falters. Hordes migrate. Society is in freefall.
Epic Exploration
Explore an isometric Muldraugh, KY, in our vast, growing map. Where will you make your stand?
Learn to Survive
Develop skills through play, while fending off depression, boredom and addictions.
Modding Support
Powerful Lua mod support, and map tools that will soon be given to the community.
Planned Features
Here are some of the planned features – alongside more weapons, animations, recipes, locations, survival systems and the introduction of dogs. We like dogs. Oh, and maybe the military will turn up one day too. Who can say?
PZ Stories
Our Kate and Baldspot tutorial will return alongside new plotlines. (Playable in build 0.1.5d)
NPC Survivors
In-depth NPC encounters driven by a metaverse system that tracks off-screen survival.
Join your Friends
Our eventual goal is to provide co-op MP on persistent servers. A long way off, but one day!
Source: The Game Website.
Update - 11 December 2023:
Since it's early access release, Project Zomboid has been added to several times and the developers continue to work on the game. The map is greatly expanded and as of the date of this post, is being prepared for another large expansion. Currently, the map consists of five towns and several smaller locations and the major city of Louisville.
See the following website for a map of the latest game build: - https://map.projectzomboid.com/
Preset difficulties are a feature as is a Sandbox mode. In Sandbox, players can customise game settings including altering the zombie behaviour to traditional (AKA 'Romero' style) zombies or the user can set them to follow current zombie movie tropes. They also allow difficulty levels to be modified with different loot levels, number of zombies, amount of time before electricity and water are cut off etc. etc.
The game also offers challenge modes (such as 'Endless Winter').
An active skill system is part of the game play and effects crafting ability and food creation (faming, trapping, fishing, cooking).
There is a farming system for characters to grow their own food as well as a limited hunting system (fishing and trapping) but animals are to be added in a coming update as is a further expansion of the crafting system.
There are several types vehicles the player can find scattered around the map. They can be recovered and used or they can be used to distract the zeds (e.g. hitting the car horn, leaving the flashing lights running on police cars). Or they can be scavenged to keep your current ride in running condition.
Players can make use of many household items for food purposes (refrigerators, freezers, ovens, microwave ovens) as well as being able to use light switches to turn on/off lights. When the electricity fails, players can make use of generators to keep the power on to their safe haven and also to power fuel pumps at service stations to keep their vehicles mobile.
Buildings can be barricaded to prevent zombies entering and a makeshift rope can be made to allow players to enter or exit windows of upper storeys so that they can block off ground level doors.
Radio and television shows inform the player of the state of the region and how the 'Knox event' is progressing and some TV shows offer skill improvement or crafting recipes. There are also recipe and skill improvement books that can be found and read.
Multi-player is supported with players able to host servers.
The game offers good modding support and there are many QoL mods as well as vehicle mods that include a range of military, police/fire/ambulance and civilian vehicles such as trucks, buses, sports cars and motorbikes and even watercraft & helicopters. There are many custom maps available that include new locations & buildings to entire map remakes.
Source: https://projectzomboid.com/blog/, PZ Steam Workshop.