Despite always being curious about it, I must admit I was terrified of trying 7 Days to Die. Not because of spooky scary zombies, but because I've never seen a game's community this consistently angry at the people who made it.

So naturally, I always assumed the game was a complete dumpster fire. But a few weeks ago I finally bit the sham sandwich and dove in, and let me tell you - 7 Days to Die is not what I expected. Not even close.

Video version of this retrospective (~18 minutes)

Early Chaos

Like any survival game, my first few hours were just endless confusion. Now, theoretically the game has a detailed tutorial explaining everything you can do. But it's kind of like trying to operate a nuclear reactor after giving the manual a quick skim. There's a lot of information to go through, and as a newbie I had no idea what to actually focus on.

So I followed my instincts and did what any reasonable person would. I collected rocks. I punched grass... and I violently shit myself to death. Because as it turns out, a diet consisting entirely of murky lake water and old sham sandwiches isn't particularly good for your health.

But honestly, it's not... entirely my fault. The game makes something as simple as getting clean drinking water surprisingly complicated. Since my character apparently just loves that sweet, crunchy taste of glass, I was constantly running out of containers to boil water in.

So eventually I had to make a forge and learn how to blow my own glass just to get a consistent supply of drinking water, which is some crazy 90s adventure game moon-logic. And yet, despite this, I kept playing.

It's good info. It's just... a lot.

Getting Into It

And the thing that kept me propelled forward, besides the jet stream constantly coming out of my behind, was the atmosphere. 7 Days to Die might not have fancy-pants visuals where you can see every pore on a character's face, but it has something much more important: an atmosphere that just sucks you in and never lets go.

Walking through a creepy basement is bad enough on its own, but it's made so much worse when you can hear zombies having a rave somewhere above you. If you're lucky, you can simply sneak on by. If you're not, the ceiling might just collapse and leave you in the middle of a zombie rainstorm with no umbrella. You never really know what's going to happen, and I must admit, I love that tension.

Because sometimes a fat lady will crash through the roof, break every bone in her body, and just die on the spot leaving both of you confused. And sometimes a zombie will tumble down the stairs, kissing every step on their way down, only to get back up and charge at you with a snarl... even with all their bits and pieces in bits and pieces. Now that's unpleasant.

But don't get me wrong. 7 Days to Die is not a horror game. It has its moments, like when the fog rolls in and you suddenly feel like you're in Silent Hill, but most of the time it's a bit of a clown show, with enemies getting launched into the air Team Rocket style... though that might have something to do with my character looking like an actual clown.

Unfortunately, this is where the game's jank starts to rear its ugly head.

Every now and then you get hit by a cataclysmic, literal 'fire raining from the sky' kind of storm. It sounds like the coolest thing ever, right?

Well... instead of letting you squirm and panic as you dive into the nearest zombie-infested crapshack to avoid hell itself opening up, 7 Days to Die gives you a very video gamey timer at the top of your screen telling you exactly what's going to happen and when.

So instead of being a nerve-wracking moment you'd remember for weeks, these storms are basically an excuse to get up and go to the toilet. And that's a strange miss for a game that's otherwise really good at making you feel like you're actually surviving against impossible odds.

The storms are way too cool to be this easily ignorable

Meet the Zombies

And the zombies are a big part of that struggle. They're mostly great, but... you'll see.

What I really like is that the game takes them seriously. Individually they're not a big threat, but if you mess up and get caught in a horde, there's no amount of armor that will save your insides from becoming outsides. So even if you have a flaming sledgehammer - that's also painted red to make it go faster - you still have to watch your ass every time you enter an unknown location. And I'm gonna be real with you: I love when survival games actually make you work to survive... even if it's occasionally stressful.

As you'd expect, there's a lot of different zombies out there - from the humble 'swag-walker' to the 'oh god get it off my face' radioactive variants. They all require slightly different tactics to deal with, but what unites them all is this profound feeling of... wrongness.

When you see them shambling around, you don't get the feeling that they're bloodthirsty monsters out to steal your cat food. They feel sick... like there's something seriously wrong with them. They shake. They stutter as they walk. They flail their hands around like they're being swarmed by bees. So smacking them with Thor's hammer is less murder and more of a mercy.

Now, would I like a bit more visual variety? Yeah, of course. The different types all kinda look the same, but even so, I like the cut of their jib. They're just fun baddies to massacre indiscriminately.

But it's not all sunshine, roses and zombie dogs. The actual fighting against the zombies has a bit of that World of Warcraft feel to it - where you're not really fighting the zombie itself, but rather the air in front of it. Everyone's attacks extend way further than the visuals would suggest, which gives the game this thick layer of jank.

It's not a deal-breaker by any stretch. You get used to stuff like that quickly, especially if you play a lot of survival games, but it's the kind of jank that is just weird to see after thirteen years of development.

The zombies are cool, but could use a bit more visual variety

Descent Into Madness

But at the same time, that kind of weirdness is part of the game's charm, as you'll quickly notice once you start poking around the world. Because, as far as I can tell, every single house - and there is a lot of them - is unique and carefully hand-crafted.

One of the first places I stumbled upon was an innocent looking pig farm. Well... the innocent part fell off very quickly, because this place was chock-full of cages with human remains... and also pigs. And I think you know what that means.

But that was just the start of my descent into madness. After sneaking through the decrepit basement and into the house proper, I found an entire network of hidden passageways criss-crossing the place. And all of this for a pig farm?

And then, I noticed a bizarre hole in the roof. So naturally I climbed through and found something that defies any explanation. So let me ask you: what could a bunch of cannibalistic, pig-raising madmen living in a Salvador Dalí house have in their super secret hideyhole? More bodies? All the loot from their victims? A human-skin sofa that would sell for waaaaaaaay too much money in RimWorld?

Whatever your answer, you're not even close. Because it's a flamethrower trap... guarding god damn Super Corn! What even is this gameeeeeeeeeeee?

That wasn't a bit. The super corn is real... somehow

The Bear Bar

And this isn't just a one-time thing either. At one point my friend noticed a bear themed bar sitting in the middle of nowhere. And since I'm a sucker for themed buildings we smashed through the roof and dropped inside. At which point I realized the name was quite literal! These absolute frikkin lunatics had two live bears caged in the middle of their bar! Which now meant we had two giant zombie bears on our hands!

Sounds like hell right? Well, turns out it was super easy to deal with, barely an inconvenience. Their AI glitched out and they just did a really good running man while we stabbed them in the shins.

And 7 Days to Die is like that everywhere, which is exactly why I can't stop playing it. There's secrets, puzzles, hidden rooms and all sorts of weird details scattered throughout the world, to the point where it reminded me of Enshrouded - which, if you've played that game, is some serious praise.

Can you imagine having a drink right next to a raging bear? Yikes.

Gathering & Crafting

But exploration is only half the story. The other half is that 7 Days to Die slowly transforms you into a locust. At first I was just grabbing obvious stuff: food, weapons, medicine. But thirty hours later I find myself acting like a crackhead and stealing radiators, dismantling cars, and getting worryingly excited whenever I find a fresh roll of duct tape.

And the game makes this so easy it basically rewires your brain. Need car parts? Just tear apart a car. Need leather? Hunt a deer, or just go to town on someone's office chair. After a while you start seeing the whole world as one giant hardware store.

But the real treasure isn't a broken down shelf - it's what lies within. Every bookshelf and container has a chance to give you new recipes and skill magazines, which unlock cool things like fisting turrets or mini-bikes. So once you've been playing for a while, seeing a simple mailbox will fill you with the same excitement as finding a discarded $10 bill.

But, since 7 Days to Die always counterbalances the good stuff with jank, there's a bit of a problem here as well - the crafting itself. It's not that unlocking things takes time. I actually like that. Finally building that minibike felt insanely rewarding precisely because of the work I put into it.

No, the problem is actually using the crafting system. Your base will quickly fill up with different workbenches, each one containing pages upon pages of recipes. Some are unlocked by books, others through perks, and some are hidden behind upgrades you're never told about. I spent entire in-game nights just sitting there, slowly flipping through menus trying to figure out what I can even do.

To make matters worse, a lot of what you eventually craft ends up being worse than the gear you'll randomly pull out of someone's leaky toilet... which is, not ideal.

You can make a ton of cool stuff, but it's all just a bit janky

The Siege

Thankfully, crafting basic supplies and defenses is much simpler. Which is a very good thing, because you'll be making enough wooden stakes to put your local vampire hunters out of business. And if you're wondering why - it's because 7 Days to Die takes its name very seriously.

Every seven days the blood moon rises, the zombies inject themselves with the finest horse-steroids, and then crash into your base as an endless tide of claws and rotten flesh. And honestly? That first blood moon completely shattered my confidence.

I heard a bit about the game so I knew it was coming, and so I massively over-prepared. I fortified a two-story house, surrounded it with hundreds of spikes and barricades, and stuffed enough shotgun shells down my pockets to make myself jingle when I walk. I felt invincible. I mean, what could a few zombies possibly do?

That was the last intelligent thought I had that evening. Because once they started pouring in - first a couple and then eventually dozens - the outer defenses just melted. I barely had time to fire a shot before the zombies were squeezing through the gaps and climbing the stairs.

But that's fine. That's what the spikes were for. And then the spikes started breaking. And then my shotgun ran dry. It was a complete disaster. I had nothing left.

In the end, all me and my friend could do is huddle in a tiny corner of the attic, desperately swinging whatever weapons we had left while zombies clawed straight through the walls to get to us. And somehow, in the end, we survived. It was stressful. It was horrible. And it was absolutely fantastic!

That's where 7 Days to Die finally won me over. Because suddenly all the random stuff I'd been doing the previous week actually mattered. Every tree I chopped, every dirty toilet I plunged my hand into, every roll of duct tape I scrounged up - all of it mattered.

And that's such a rarity in survival games. Take for example Project Zomboid - one of my favorite games ever. Once you've lived past those hellish first few weeks, you've basically won. Sure, you can keep collecting food and weapons, but what's the point? Your only enemy at that point is boredom, and that'll be what eventually kills you.

But 7 Days to Die actually solves that problem. Every week the horde gets bigger, bitier and stinkier than the last, so you always have a reason to chop down trees, to smack rocks, and to sneak through grimy basements. Which is why I can already see myself sinking hundreds of hours into the game.

That one wooden beam is the only reason I survived that night

Mods & DLC

And that's before we even get to mods. I'm not talking about the official DLCs, because those are just expensive cosmetic packs. Which is a bit... optimistic for a game that's almost entirely in first person. Like who am I trying to impress? The zombies?

No, I'm talking about mod support. Something this game has in spades. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of mods out there. Everything from tiny quality-of-life tweaks to massive overhauls that might as well be a completely different game.

So once I'm done with this playthrough, I think I'm going to go full Skyrim and mod the game to absolute hell and back... and then probably spend six hours troubleshooting why it constantly crashes. And let me tell ya, I'll enjoy every single second!

There really is a lot of mods out there

Is 7 Days to Die Worth Playing?

And now, in the end, I have to ask: was everyone right? Was 7 Days to Die really the dumpster fire I spent years hearing about? Honestly. Not really.

It's definitely janky. The crafting menus could use a spring cleaning, the combat occasionally feels like you're playing an old MMO, and there are plenty of rough edges that even thirteen years of updates have not managed to sand down.

But that's not what I'm going to remember five years from now. I'll remember desperately fighting for my survival in a dingy attic. I'll remember discovering Super Corn. I'll remember breaking into the bear bar. And I'll remember constantly wanting to rummage through just one more building, before having my entire evening simply disappear. Because that's where 7 Days to Die really shines. It gives meaning to everything you do, from exploring to chopping wood to pillaging pig sties.

So yeah... I can absolutely recommend 7 Days to Die. Not because it's perfect. Far from it. But because underneath all that jank is one of the most addictive survival games I've played in years. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a totally-not-haunted crypt to dig into.