7 Days to Die - One Man's Experience

The release of 7 Days to Die Alpha 16 is almost upon us. The new features seem to take the game to another level with sleeper zombies, zombie vultures, wolves and much, much more. One of the biggest new features to the game that I am looking forward to is not a new feature at all. Based on recent footage from Mad Mole (Joel Huenink), the changes the developers have made to the random gen maps look absolutely amazing! Roads intersect much more smoothly and cities are built on multiple terrain levels instead of only on flat ground.Hopefully gone are the days from Alpha 15 where roads would go up a cliff making them useless and impassable.

Many new POI's (Places of Interest) have been added to random gen making it even more interesting. From daycares and schools to unfinished skyscrapers, there should be plenty of new places to loot or turn into new base designs.

Just traveling through a newly generated world and checking out all the new locations will consume much of our gameplay upon its release.

I purchased 7 Days to Die on the Summer Steam Sale last year along with another game. I don't even remember the name of the second game I purchased. Once I installed 7 Days to Die, I was hooked. While initially frustrating due to the lack of a good tutorial at the time, The Fun Pimps (creators of the game) have since addressed this issue and many more. I even purchased a copy for my daughter who is not really a zombie fan. I wasn't sure she would even play it but since it was only $10 at the time I was willing to risk it. I told her I had bought it for her and then I went to bed. When I woke up the following day, I found she had been streaming the game all night on Twitch and she was as hooked as I.

A few days ago, I got my wife interested in playing. My wife's experience in PC games has been limited to some games on Facebook but she has watched me play 7 Days to Die and has watched while I was watching other YouTuber's play. The game is very configurable to the point where I was able to turn the zombie spawning off to give her time to become familiar with the controls and learn the game a bit. I will probably be purchasing her a copy at the regular price and I feel it is well worth the money. Not long after buying  7 Days to Die last year, I got caught up in all the hype surrounding No Man's Sky and purchased a copy of that for $50. I wish I had just bought two more copies of  7 Days to Die and given them to friend's. It would have been a much better use of my money. If you MUST have it at a discount, it will probably be on sale again during this summer's Steam Sale.

*Warning* this is a pre-release version of the game or what is commonly referred to on Steam as an Alpha. There WILL be bugs but the developers have been doing a pretty good job of handling those. There are a few that have not been addressed which can still be annoying (as of Alpha 15).

• One of those is the water physics in the game. Sometimes if you take out a good bit of water, the water around it will make a rushing sound as if to fill the void but it just continues on even though the water would have immediately filled the void in real life. 
• Sometimes zombies have an abnormally long reach and can hit you when there should have been no way. 
• The hit boxes for certain blocks can be off at times. Digging with a shovel and aiming straight ahead will sometimes remove blocks to either side, up or down instead of the block where you are aiming.
• Sometimes there is "clipping" where a zombie, animal, etc. will be partially inside a block and you cannot hit them in the head because the block is in the way.
• I have seen a deer climb a bridge. :-)

These are all relatively minor annoyances. The game itself is very good and highly addicting. If you've never played it before, I highly recommend grabbing a copy at your earliest convenience. If you have never seen it played, check out my series on YouTube.

7 Days to Die - Alpha 15 Stable Build Playlist