SURVIVE

FIRST OF ALL; YOU WILL DIE
You're trapped in a quarantined city with a million zombies. There is no escape. There is no cure. The end is coming, so get used to it.

Project Zomboid is about the choices you make, and how you choose to live your last days on Earth. As a hero who goes out in a moment of heroic self-sacrifice to save a defenseless family? Or a callous coward who saves his own skin and leaves his companions for dead?

It's these choices, and the story you weave in your adventure. That is what Project Zomboid is all about. Not saving the world with some pie in the sky cure, or flying away in a helicopter where everything will probably be okay. This is the apocalypse.

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THE WORLD
As Project Zomboid develops, we will be adding new areas to the world, so that eventually you will have a huge city and surrounding suburbs and countryside to explore. Any building can be used as a safehouse, and any building can be looted for equipment to help you survive. You can hunt out weapons at the local gun shop, anti-biotics at the pharmacy, and food at the local market. But at a pinch raiding people's fridges, sheds and medicine cabinets will keep you going.

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THE STORY
Right now, the outside world knows nothing about the zombie threat. The government has quarantined the city, and cut off all communication with the outside world. The news is rife with speculation about the events that are occurring in the city borders. Soon they will know, and wish they didn�t. The quarantine can't hold forever, and just outside the exclusion zone lies the still operational local power plant. Once that goes, batteries and canned food will be worth more than their weight in gold.

As you play Project Zomboid, the longer you survive, the game-world changes around you as the apocalypse develops. You can keep up on current events by turning on a radio, and those events will affect your situation as time progresses. You may even be able to influence them.

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THE PEOPLE
Surviving is easier when you have company. As well as (planned future) friends joining you in co-op multiplayer to help you survive, you can meet thousands of diverse characters that you can trade with, join forces with, battle for resources, betray, help, or work for. Diverse randomly generated quests such as helping them find loved ones, finding them equipment or sentimental mementos to escorting them through the more infected areas of town.

In your group, you must deal with the different personalities and relationships, which can sometimes lead to deadly friction. And what to do with that clumsy kid who keeps leaving doors open and making way too much noise? Give him a talking to, or ask him to accompany you on a salvage mission and blowing his brains out down the street, before returning and claiming to the others he got eaten by zombies? It�s up to you how you keep people safe, and what lengths you will go to.

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SELF IMPROVEMENT
There are all manner of skills and perks the player can develop to help them survive. 50% unique and innovative, 50% ripped off other titles, our unique and innovative skills and perks systems keep character progression interesting and avoids the dull increasing of numerical values, without sacrificing depth.

Learn skills from other survivors for everything from shotgun operation to cooking, medical training, carpentry and orienteering, that can then be increased as your character progresses and provide unique bonuses as they develop.

Pick a profession for your character which bestows unique perks to them, and pick up further perks as you play by completing hidden �achievement� style criteria, meaning your character can be trained up differently depending on your play style and preferences of weapons and tactics.

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MIND AND BODY

You can sustain injuries to any part of your body, from a broken leg to a concussion. These will need to be bandaged, set, cauterized or otherwise dealt with to keep you going. Illness and disease is also a real possibility, so better bury those corpses in the garden or set light to them before you catch something, because the hospital�s a long way away!

But it�s not just physical injuries that you can be inflicted with. The zombie apocalypse is hard to deal with, and it�s easy to sink into depression, or worse. You must try and keep your morales high, your stress down, and take some time for the little things to keep you and your companions sane. A hot shower, a cooked meal or a bit of music will go a long way.

If people are at the end of their rope, they may become withdrawn, fight, cry, or even stick a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger (which makes a lot of noise!). Paranoia can fool the senses and outright insanity isn�t easy to come back from. Cigarettes, alcohol and drugs can keep the darkness at bay, but rely on them too much and you may get addicted.

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BUILD

Build and craft items to help you stay alive. From weapons, food or traps to a simple plank of wood nailed to a door. In Project Zomboid you will be able to craft hundreds of items.

Using the crafting panel, you can combine or dismantle items found in houses, backyards, shops, hospitals or any other location, in order to create new and more useful items.

As your various crafting skills increase, or you find more useful tools and equipment for crafting, then you will get access to more complicated crafting recipes,

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WEAPONS

You will be able to construct makeshift weapons, or modify and improve existing ones, out of looted or salvaged items you find upon your travels.

Each weapon has a range of characteristics, melee weapons for example will have differing ranges, swing arcs, min/max damage thresholds, weights and resistance, which will make them differ wildly in application and effectiveness. A hammer may be great for crushing the head of one zombie, but when surrounded by five of them is not going to get you very far. A baseball bat is great at pushing multiple zombies away from you, but can quickly tire you out swinging it wildly through 20 groping hands.

By combining them with other items, or using tools on them, you can alter their attributes. Hammering nine-inch nails through a baseball bat will increase its damage potential, but will reduce its ability to knock back zombies. Where using a hacksaw on a shotgun�s barrel will improve its close-range capabilities and lower its weight, but will reduce its range.

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FOOD

While you can always eat cold raw food at a pinch, health, morale and a sense of normality are important when the undead are shuffling outside your door. In Project Zomboid, you can use your crafting skills to create a culinary treat to help keep up the spirits of you and your companions, which may help avoid any inconvenient mental collapses.

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DEFENSES

Some planks of wood and a few nails could be the thin line between safety and being zombie food. Pushing furniture against the door may give you the additional time you need to jump out the bathroom window and leg it to safety.

Protect yourself and your allies from the relentless horde with a range of weapons and defenses.

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WHEN TO FIGHT

Combat is a tricky business in Project Zomboid. Unlike Left4Dead or other more shooter-based zombie games, you can�t expect to go head to head with a horde of zombies and walk out of there. Unless by �walk out of there� you mean �shuffle out of there � groaning�. You may be able to handle one or two zombies without too much concern, but when 100 of them are thumping at your door�.

In Project Zomboid, you�re hit by the �weapon safety paradox�. That is, the weapons that are safest to use tend to make a lot of noise, and bring more zombies your way. The weapons that are safest to use also tend to have limited ammunition, so by the time they�ve attracted a hundred more zombies, you�ll likely only have a hammer or baseball bat left to deal with them all.

And remember: In this game, you�re not immune. You can be infected by something as simple as a scratch. Melee combat is extremely dangerous.

This is why, generally, fighting a group of zombies is a BAD IDEA, and should only be attempted as a last resort.

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LINE OF SIGHT AND CHARACTER AWARENESS

In Project Zomboid, we simulate the character�s awareness of their surroundings will a full line of sight system.

Different things will affect the arc in which your character is able to see, such as drugs, drink, paranoia, tiredness, or otherwise distracting elements in your periphery vision, such as the rain in the demo.

You also have small zone where you are able to detect zombies close to you for a full 360 degrees. Both the arc and this detection zone can be increased with various skills and perks, as well as some performance enhancing drugs, to simulate the character�s increased awareness of his surroundings.

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Here are some of its planned features:

+ Retro-isometric style with plenty of zombie insides thrown in for good measure.

+ A massive city and the surrounding areas to traverse, explore and loot.
Open-ended sandbox world � survival is your only goal, and we�re sorry to tell you� you WILL die eventually.

+ Get infected. How will you spend your final days? Will you have a heroic moment of self-sacrifice, or end up chewing your best friend�s throat out?

+ Meet other survivors who you can join forces with, trade with, undertake missions for, or fight with for resources.

+ Loot, salvage, and build what you need to survive the apocalypse, from food and medical supplies, to weapons, even just booze to help get you through the nights.
Advanced item crafting allows you to use looted items to build weapons, traps, defenses, and many other things to help you survive.

+ Character progression. Learn skills and perks to help your character face the challenges of survival.

+ Starvation, illness, loneliness, depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, insanity, trust issues. There�s more to zombie survival than shooting zombie heads off.

+ Join your friends and survive the apocalypse together in co-op multiplayer.
The world changes the longer you survive; power plants fail, plunging the city into darkness and making batteries and tinned food prized commodities. The army rolls into the streets to perform �clean up operations� and other gamechanging events occur the longer you survive.

+ Play in your browser, or stand-alone, on PC, Mac and Linux.

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