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"7 Days To Die" is an early access survival game developed by The Fun Pimps. The game is set after a nuclear apocalypse in a fictional county in Arizona. You play as a survivor and you have to find shelter, food, water, and various other supplies to help defend yourself from the zombie horde. The game's open-ended and there isn't really any end to speak of you just have to survive build up your character and your base and survive ever increasingly more hostile hordes on a seven-day basis before you jump into the action you get to choose a character, unfortunately, you can't create your own but you can customize their abilities and their clothing throughout the game. so the main map is the Navis game a fictional part of Arizona but you can also choose to play in a randomly generated map which can be good or bad it really is potluck what you get because it, as I said, is randomly generated. The game has a variety of modes you can play local, solo or local couch co-op, you can play online survival, online creative or have a private game with other people online.

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The first thing to say about the gameplay is everything in the game world is destructible and you can build below ground level or high up in the sky but before I get into the building aspect the first thing you do is learn the basics. The controls are pretty straightforward but most of them don't feel very responsive in particular during the combat also the building can be a little bit irritating as things seem to jump around when you're trying to place them on the floor but the first thing you do in the game you get on-screen tutorials and that helps you craft the bedroll, clothing, basic tools, weapons and a campfire your bedroll acts as a respawn point so when you die you return there but you're with your items remains where you died and if you want the items back you've got to go back to where your corpses and collect the goods. If you don't put down a bedroll you'll respawn a random location which is never a good thing because you could literally be anywhere. Your character has stats that can be improved by doing certain activities or buying perks via the level up system.

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There are traders in the map where you can buy and sell items to help you survive but the main thing you need to know is the game has a seven-day cycle and at the end of those seven days the zombies are coming. The hordes come at night and they start out quite tame but after a few weeks in the game in numbers and the variety of the zombies attacking your base really does grow. Zombies can run at night so it's a lot more dangerous to go out then but on Horde nights you don't really have a choice they will come for you and you will even have to kill them that night or wait until the morning once they've calmed down and then take them all out and this is where the building comes in.

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One of the key past Seven Days To Die is building to build you need resources so you'll be seeing lots of screens like smashing rocks, cutting down trees, punching grass, mining underground, or there's always something you need to keep building and fortify your base with and the 7-day loop keeps you on the clock. You can pretty much build anything in the game given enough time resources and imagination if you want to build a concrete bunker on the ground with a spike pit protecting it you can do that, you can build death pits, you can pick off zombies from range build a tower I mean really it depends what you want to build it's all there you just have to get the resources and build the thing but if you want to build with high-level materials like concrete or metal you do need to craft a forge workbench and other special items and these things will take time to find but again the more time you put into this game the more you will get out of it. To build these special items you need schematic books so you basically need to read the recipe and then once you've got the recipe you just need to find the items to craft it and then off you go.

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So the zombies, most of them they're pretty slow and useless but in larger groups. There can be a problem you get the large exploding zombies spiders Zombie so you can climb up of your base and there are feral ones you know it is the typical standard. Just standard zombie types so you need food, water, and zombie protection to survive but you can also get things like food poisoning or infections that will require medication or antibiotics to cure. So you'll need to look for hair drops or hospitals or medical centers so you can find these good otherwise you will have a very slow and painful death. Overall, it's a game about surviving, being prepared for combat, building a very strong base, setting up traps, and just covering all of those bases. It's not a game you can really complete it's more about the process of surviving and growing eventually you'll have a massive compound where you'll grow crops you'll have clean water workshops with all tools and items you need you'll have an armory with weapons and ammunition and when the hordes night comes you'll be really prepared for it but all of these things will take you time and if you've got the patience it's a very satisfying process to get there.

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Let's talk about the graphics. You don't need me to tell you how bad the graphics are because if you've seen the screenshots you can see exactly what I'm talking about. The animations are terrible, the environments, buildings, and structures they really have minimal levels of detail and it really doesn't look good. It's, without a doubt, one of the ugliest games I've ever played. The in-game sound isn't really much to write home about. There isn't really much music to speak of but the pieces that are used are standard they're not terrible. The trader's voice acting leaves a lot to be desired and overall the in-game audio really isn't very good at all. Either way, you can adjust the options for difficulty, day like time, experience mounts, in other game altering settings, as you please even with cheats enabled if you want to be able to spawn in whatever you want to whenever you want to. As you play the game your character will experience status effects and you'll manage their health and other attributes. Stamina plays a large function in this game when you swing weapons or sprint or jump you'll drain your stamina if it runs out you'll be vulnerable your health is about what you'd expect if you lose all your hit points you die and you'll respond nearby and have to go back to your death location and collect all your loot that you drop.

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The crafting and building options are comprehensive. Everything in the game world is destructible and reusable will creative builders the game is a goldmine of possibilities. The game has a split-screen couch co-op mode it's a very addictive game loop gathering resources crafting and surviving and the game is a genuine survival game in the beginning while the graphics are some of the worst you'll ever see on the ps4, the collision detection during combat is awful, the map does feel a little bit too sparse and empty, there aren't any NPCs wandering around apart from the traders at their bases and the game still isn't finished several years after it went on sale. There's no story really no characters you just play the game and do the things you find enjoyable you begin with nothing but as you craft and loot and explore the world you become stronger and stronger until you're a walking armory with a house full of stashed goodies and supplies.

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Final Thoughts

Seven Days To Die is an enjoyable survival crafting game let down by it's all good controls, Poor collision detection and terrible graphics but if you can get over those issues the game can be very addictive and enjoyable I mean I put in hundreds of hours into this game playing solo and in couch co-op with a friend so there is a decent game in here but you do need to put a lot of time in to get anything back but building bases, taking down hordes, and searching and looting the game world it's pretty satisfying and if you're into those sort of things you will get some pleasure from Seven Days To Die but one thing to know the PS4 version has been abandoned by the developers and it hasn't seen an update in well over a year. The PC version is still being finished so if you have a gaming PC and you like the sound of this game I'd recommend getting it on Steam instead of the PS4 because the PS4 version probably is never going to be updated again. The game won't be for everyone only if you're into building, crafting, survival, zombies, that kind of thing. If you're looking for a more linear and structured game then this definitely won't be the one for you but I played it a lot I enjoyed it I got over the audio, the graphics, I mean the aesthetics of the game are absolute trash but underneath all of that trash is something worth playing if you're into those kinds of things.

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