Project Zomboid

Worth buying? What 300 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 300 Steam reviews actually say.

Very Positive · 94%Very Positive · 94%2013

The verdict

A deep, brutally realistic zombie survival sandbox with great atmosphere, co-op and mods. Skip it if you want a finished, stable game with goals, or hate tedium and steep difficulty.

Great for

Players who enjoy emergent stories, realistic survival systems, modding and co-op with friends

Main risk

Updates keep breaking saves and mods, and after the early game there's little to work toward

What changed in the last 30 days

156 recent reviews

Many recent reviews blame the 42.21 push to stable for breaking mods, saves and launches, with no rollback available. Some also mention a price rise, a new EULA and crashes. Fairly consistent across many reviews.

156 recent reviews

What players love

Emergent stories and funny deaths

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 positive reviews

“Get absolutely ravaged by a horde of 20 zombies holding an orgy on the toilet - New Character I love this game.”
Steam review · 142.4 h played ↗

“I lost a 20ish hour character to a foot fracture. Not zombies, not hunger or thirst, not even sickness. I just broke my foot and died. Best game ever”
Steam review · 82.7 h played ↗

“I died of diarrhea after drinking river water, 10/10”
Steam review · translated from Russian · 221.9 h played ↗

Deep, realistic survival simulation

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews

“Profundidade absurda. Fome, sede, cansaço, frio, humor, ferimentos, infecções, até o barulho que você faz importa.”
Steam review · 159.7 h played ↗

“just about everything you can think of it is a factor that plays into your survival. AND I MEAN EVERYTHING.”
Steam review · 304.9 h played ↗

“The game is brilliant in the details. Your character's mood affects their actions. Panic affects accuracy. Fatigue affects survival.”
Steam review · translated from Russian · 66.5 h played ↗

Huge modding community and replayability

Mentioned in ~1 in 6 positive reviews

“if you somehow get bored, the modding community has you covered — with extra maps, new cars, guns, and total overhauls”
Steam review · 115.9 h played ↗

“Incredibly deep game with an awesome mod community.”
Steam review · 1140.8 h played ↗

“the best and most customisable zombie sandbox game u can ever experience.”
Steam review · 1429.4 h played ↗

Rewarding but steep learning curve

Mentioned in ~1 in 6 positive reviews

“this game has a huge learning curve and when you first play the game you WILL die in the stupidest ways possible.”
Steam review · 55.7 h played ↗

“every death feels like it was your own mistake you could have easily prevented, which makes surviving even more rewarding.”
Steam review · 170.7 h played ↗

Atmosphere, music and freedom

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 positive reviews

“The music is ethereal, the atmosphere is breathtaking, the possibilities in this game are endless.”
Steam review · 55.7 h played ↗

“what makes project zomboid an amazing game is the amount of freedom it gives you.”
Steam review · 170.7 h played ↗

Great fun with friends in co-op

Mentioned in ~1 in 9 positive reviews

“Playing with friends makes the game 1000 times better, absolute work of art”
Steam review · 76 h played ↗

“the game is best played with friends, as I had some of my fondest memories in the game exploring zombie infested locations armed with baseball bats and hope”
Steam review · 276.1 h played ↗

What players complain about

Bugs, jank and dependence on mods

Mentioned in ~1 in 3 negative reviews

“zombies disappearing and being unhitable 1m in front of you because they are inside a little bush, or cars turning into shadows”
Steam review · 273.9 h played ↗

“This game is 6/10 by itself, but an 8 with mods.”
Steam review · 1216 h played ↗

“Without mods, there's simply not enough meaningful content, depth, or fresh gameplay to keep it interesting long-term.”
Steam review · 365.3 h played ↗

Endless early access and slow development

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 negative reviews

“The last big update, build 41 was fully released in 2021 December 20. Before that, Build 40 released Dec 2018. It is now 2026 and Build 42 is only on the unstable branch.”
Steam review · 586.8 h played ↗

“My kid was born during the development of this game. Perhaps we will see it stable by the time she hits college, and NPCs by her first kid and im a grandpa.”
Steam review · 1212.3 h played ↗

“For years now this thing has been stewing in early access and is still raw.”
Steam review · translated from Russian · 807.6 h played ↗

Updates break saves and mods

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 negative reviews

“Every update breaks all the mods on the workshop, with the devs not leaving an option to stay behind on an update until mods are updated to new/current version”
Steam review · 543.3 h played ↗

“Devs just nuked a lot of popular branches due to a security vulnerability, single player runs and multiplayer runs nuked to the nether. 300+ hour run gone.”
Steam review · 317 h played ↗

“Either add the ability to roll back to 42.20, or don't call it stable.”
Steam review · translated from Russian · 280 h played ↗

Crashes, lag and poor optimization

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 negative reviews

“You can play B42 for about an hour minimum before the lag becomes unplayable. Driving through towns specifically is hell.”
Steam review · 867.9 h played ↗

“a game that crashed on load every time. This is with zero mods installed, an AMD Ryzen 7 9800x3d, and 32gb of RAM.”
Steam review · 621.5 h played ↗

“Driving a car causes freezes. Just running around looting buildings and clearing a town causes freezes, even in already-explored areas.”
Steam review · translated from Russian · 429.3 h played ↗

Tedious grind and punishing realism

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 negative reviews

“The game is 80% moodle management and 20% playing the game and having fun. Realism only exists to harm the player never to help.”
Steam review · 557.4 h played ↗

“Muscle strain is stupid, uncomfortability is stupid. Weapons break after 2 zombies.”
Steam review · 490.8 h played ↗

“Devs care more about "realism" than what is actually fun for a player.”
Steam review · 160.5 h played ↗

Repetitive, no endgame, goals or NPCs

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 negative reviews

“Base constructed, food stored, guns stored, generator plugged in, running water in taps.... and absolutely nothing to do. Null.”
Steam review · 168.3 h played ↗

“if you learn how to survive past the first few hours/days, you'll realize there's not much to do. No NPCs, no quests, no factions”
Steam review · 9.4 h played ↗

“after 40+ hours, its the same, get supplies, get a place, get stuff to survive, until u die”
Steam review · 51.2 h played ↗

System requirements

From the Steam store page

Steam Deck: Verified

Minimum

OSWindows 10 / 11 - 64 Bit

ProcessorIntel 2.77GHz Quad-core

Memory8Gb Ram

GraphicsDedicated graphics card with 4 GB of VRAM minimum, OpenGL 2.1 and GLSL 1.2 support (generally 2012 or newer)

Storage10Gb

OSWindows 10 / 11 - 64 Bit

ProcessorIntel 2.77GHz Quad-core

Memory8Gb Ram

GraphicsDedicated graphics card with 4 GB of VRAM minimum, OpenGL 2.1 and GLSL 1.2 support (generally 2012 or newer)

Storage10Gb

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