18
votes
Over ten years after its Kickstarter campaign and Alpha launch, 7 Days to Die is finally leaving Early Access
Link information
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- Title
- Alpha Exodus: Leaving Early Access
- Authors
- Brian Wagner
- Published
- Apr 20 2024
- Word count
- 1088 words
I have over 400 hours played in the game since it was first released. My friend group has revisited it pretty much every time there was a major update, or we caught wind of an interesting new Total Conversion / Overhaul mod for us to try, and we have had fun playing it each time. So I feel like I definitely got my money's worth out of the Kickstarter for sure, but even at the new 1.0 release price ($45) I still think it's going to be well worth it.
p.s. It's currently still $25, and from April 22 to April 29 it's going to go on a Last Chance sale. So if you enjoy open-world, horror, survival, crafting games, IMO you should definitely consider buying it before the price goes up after the 1.0 launch.
Have you ever played The Long Dark? This looks like that, but with zombies and base building. Granted that makes it a very different game, but if that's what it is like then I might give it a shot.
I haven't but I've watched loads of speed and challenge runs of Long Dark. 7 Days is nothing like Long Dark though, IMO. 7 Days is a coop (or PvP if you want, but I never have) open world, survival, horror, crafting, base building, zombie horde defense game.
Most of your time is going to be spent scavenging in buildings for useful materials and gear, collecting natural resources, crafting, and building your base + base defenses (traps, turrets, etc). And on the 7th night of every week you will need to defend you base against a zombie horde, which gets more and more dangerous over time, with more and more powerful zombie types showing up.
Noted. I figured it was a lot more action, although the scrounging and crafting I think would be similar, although with a focus on weekly base defence as you mentioned.
Strictly multiplayer, or is it possible to play solo? Reviews seem to indicate both...
I've played it solo and still enjoyed it. But it's much more fun with a few friends, IMO. And it's even more fun with a whole bunch of friends, since more people means you can more easily make mega-bases... and the hordes also scale up based on how many people are at the base and what levels they all are, which makes Blood Moons way more fun with lots of people too. ;)
Great, thanks for the info. This will be on my list of possible party games if I ever make friends ;)
FYI, there are quite a few online servers for the game, usually with their own Discord servers, that you can join/play on to make some friends in the game. E.g. Guns Nerds & Steel (a 7 Days Youtuber) has his own community server and Discord.
I've played on a few online servers over the years. Some are PvP focused, others purely PvE. Some are heavily modded, others are just the base game + some QoL stuff. Some are heavily moderated, others more laissez faire. So you can pick your preference.
Hot tip. My main issue isn't a lack of friends but rather that the most difficult quest is scheduling. Drop in is where it's at for adult folk.
Yeah, fair enough, and totally understandable albeit a tad sad. :(
I'm exceptionally lucky in that even though everyone in my core, long-time friend group is in their 40s-50s now, and most have SOs and kids, we're all still active PC gamers. We met playing Everquest back when we were in high-school/college, so needless to say we're all massive massive computer nerds. ;) And thankfully we still manage to find time to play games together almost every weekend, and even most weeknights too.
That's an excellent friend group to have grown up with! Lovely to hear that and that you were able to all keep it going through the years. I'm lucky enough to have a committed D&D group, so all is not lost :)
That is enough for me, and a drop in multiplayer game here and there will let me try some new stuff out, too.
Wow! I never thought I'd live to see the day. I've got over 1200 hours in this game myself so I definitely got my money's worth as well. Considering how long it's taken them to get this far, their roadmap for the next couple years seems ambitious.
Can I win? Or is this the kind of game where it's just about how long you can last?
There isn't really any winning, per se, but there also isn't really any losing either, since there is no permadeath (unless you impose that rule on yourself as a challenge). So you can just keep playing even after you die.
However, you get an XP deficit imposed on you when you die, and you will also have to recover your gear and inventory from your backback which drops where you died, otherwise you can lose its contents since backpacks disappear after an hour in real time (unless you change 'drop on death' in settings to make the game easier). And you will also likely have to rebuild portions of your base if a horde manages to break through your defenses during a Blood Moon (which comes every 7th night by default, hence the game name ;). The tension in the game comes from the risk of those things happening.
Ultimately it's a make-your-own-fun style of open ended game though, where the enjoyment is found in the core gameplay loops. The beginning is mostly exploring the map, killing stray zombies, and looting locations, hoping to find all the things you need to survive and establish a base. The middle stage is building up a permanent base with sufficient defenses to survive horde nights, and enough crops to sustain you. The end stage is typically getting that base eventually wiped out by a horde you can't handle, and then learning from your mistakes to make an even better base and have it survive even longer next time. :P
If you play it for as long as my friends and I have, you will probably eventually find the base game a little too easy, even on the harder settings. But then you can just start looking for mods to either crank up the difficult even higher, add more powerful custom zombie types, new maps or buildings/points-of-interest, or even a total conversion / overhaul mod like Darkness Falls for an almost completely different game experience. The mod scene for 7 days is thankfully quite well established at this point and there are loads of good ones out there.