7 Days to Die Reviews

They badly need to rework how infections work, or at the very least provide a setting to lower the chance of infection. because its just plain not fun to deal with when a silent dog runs up behind you and bights you once and now you have to use ANOTHER anti biotic, makes perma death runs straight up annoying and not even fun.

I just learned about this games brittle save game ability and lost a char due to a bsod. All the work arounds feel like they really cheapen the exp and i cannot in good faith recommend this game knowing that its been in the game for as long as i can tell based on my google search

The Ultimate Survival Experience! 7 Days to Die masterfully combines survival, crafting, and base-building in a vast, dynamic world. Intense zombie hordes, a deep crafting system, and realistic physics create endless excitement—whether solo or with friends. A must-play for survival fans!

They some how made their game less optimized than Ark SE, which is saying something, with no ability to actually fix the majority of issues that crop up as a result. On another note, in their attempt to switch genres mid development for some asinine reason, they made the game unplayable without mods, and even then the lack of optimization remains an issue. Your game used to be really good, now it's an irritation. I hope you'll get your act straight, but i won't hold my breath.

Rating: 6/10 7 Days to Die, developed by The Fun Pimps, is an open-world survival horror game that combines elements of crafting, exploration, base-building, and zombie survival. Initially released in Early Access in 2013, the game has received multiple updates over the years but remains unfinished, with numerous issues that impact the overall experience. Despite its strong core gameplay loop and endless replayability, 7 Days to Die suffers from technical problems, outdated visuals, and a slow development cycle. What Works Well? 🏗️ Deep Crafting and Base-Building System One of the game’s strongest aspects is its crafting and base-building mechanics. Players can gather resources, craft tools and weapons, and construct fortifications to survive the horde nights, where waves of zombies attack every seven days. The level of customization in base-building is impressive, allowing for creative and strategic defenses. 🌍 Large Open-World Exploration The game’s randomly generated worlds ensure that no two playthroughs are the same. Players can explore deserted towns, abandoned bunkers, and rural landscapes, searching for supplies and weapons while avoiding zombie hordes. 🧠 Survival Mechanics with RPG Elements The game features hunger, thirst, and stamina management, as well as a perk system that allows players to specialize in different playstyles, such as combat, scavenging, or crafting. These RPG elements add a layer of depth that keeps players engaged. 👥 Co-op Multiplayer Enhances the Experience Surviving alone can be tough, but 7 Days to Die shines in co-op mode. Working together to build a base, gather resources, and defend against the horde adds a layer of strategy and excitement that makes multiplayer the best way to experience the game. Major Issues Holding It Back ❌ Still in Early Access After a Decade The biggest problem with 7 Days to Die is its slow and inconsistent development cycle. The game has been in Early Access since 2013, and while updates continue to roll out, progress is slow. Features are often reworked or delayed, and there's no clear release date for a finished version. ❌ Poor Optimization and Bugs Despite being fun, 7 Days to Die is riddled with technical issues. Performance can be inconsistent, with frame drops, long loading times, and frequent bugs. The console version, in particular, is outdated and no longer receiving updates. ❌ Mediocre Graphics and Animations While the gameplay is engaging, 7 Days to Die’s visuals feel outdated. Character models, zombie animations, and environmental textures look like they belong in a game from the early 2000s. This can break immersion for players expecting AAA-quality graphics. ❌ Repetitive Gameplay Loop The core gameplay is fun, but after several in-game weeks, it can become repetitive. Once you establish a strong base and have a steady supply of weapons, survival becomes less challenging, and the sense of danger fades. Conclusion 7 Days to Die has an addictive survival gameplay loop, a great crafting system, and an engaging co-op experience. However, its lack of polish, slow updates, and technical issues prevent it from reaching its full potential. It’s a game that could have been a true survival horror masterpiece, but its unfinished state holds it back. 🔹 Rating: 6/10 – A fun but flawed survival experience. Worth playing with friends, but be prepared for bugs and an unfinished feel.

-Stolen from another reviewer because it sums up everything I dislike. I can't play this game anymore. I got no patiences for this. It seems like the game has gotten worst with every version released in the last 3 years. It seems like the developers look at what players are doing and then deem it exploitative or just don't like it in general and change it. To summarize it, they don't like how the players are playing their game and they want them to play it how they (devs) want them to play it. We went from alpha 12 creating sand molds for glass jars to now as of b25, no glass jars or containers or anything and want you to die of thirst on day one. We use to build underground and be safe, devs didn't like that and now the zombies dig. We then built air forts or off-ground bases, devs didn't like that and added physics to the blocks and coded zombies to attack the nearest support pillar to force collapse. You use to build a small structure or clear and rehab a point of interest as a starting base after scouting for ones with forges or being near water. Devs didn't like that and now Poi's are deadly, and sometimes spawn zoms inside after placing your land claim block or bedroll. They marketed the game as a crafting survival game, but now have made it difficult to build and craft and forces you to loot all the time. You use to eat once and drink 3-4 times a day, devs didn't like that and now You're constantly starving and thirsty all the time. In alpha 12, you use to read books to unlock crafting or recipes and magazines to increase skills, the devs didn't like that and thought a skill point system would be better. They took the book/mags out in alpha 13-18 then reintroduced it in 19 to co-exist with the skill-point system, but now in b25, you need the books and mags to level up for everything. You use to heal up and regain stamina after eating or drinking, and now you just a weak ass ♥♥♥♥♥, since food doesn't recover as much health and water is sparse. They cut down or remove quite bit of assets and gameplay from the game to simplify it and I think that has detracted from the game from it's earlier versions. Now the fun pimps don't like the stealth mechanic and have null and negate it in the latest version. That's just a fraction of the evolving changes. The game used to be pretty fun to now being such a total grind and chore, that I can't even stand it for 30 minutes before I quit out. I know what you're thinking, I'm complaining about how hardcore and difficult then contradict myself with them simplifying crafting and assets. But if you ever play the earlier versions, it wasn't as much of chore then as more of a realism and understanding basic build process, and it was quite fun. There was more to do. Going "oh I need sand and clay, I need a jar for the mold, I need a forge, some metal or an anvil" and put it all together to get 5 glass jars. Then I need water, pot and campfire. It was all obtainable and you had to manage it and it made it felt like you were trying to survive. Now it's like, you have to loot and get lucky, Do about 30 hits on a tree, block or door and now you're thirsty because you've exhausted your stamina repeatedly, so don't run or swing your club and avoid zombies, and hope you find water. It's a walking simulator with a looting mechanic. That's just bad game design. The Fun Pimps are not so fun, I think they are pure masochists that enjoy C&B Torture and they are making this game for those that enjoy that type of fetish.

OK, After 1000 hours over many years and many different betas... this game is in an awesome state. But it still doesn't really have an ending or an end goal! I highly recommend. It's a much more realistic Minecraft with pretty awesome building and structural physics. Every 7 game days it turns into a 3D tower def. Hey devs- I recommend: -An end goal -Implement factions like White River rangers (good guys) and Bandits (bad guys) -Allow you to join one of those factions -Factions determine missions and ending -Village builder with NPC villagers you can trade with and keep alive -Ending is finding a cure in a huge final boss laboratory level? It still needs those things to be a 10/10 perfect zombie apocalypse game, but in its current state of 1.3 it's awesome.

Developers have spent a decade trying to turn what was once a great Sandbox survival zombie-minecraft with RPG elements into a very poorly designed "fantasy" RPG. What does that mean? Instead of simply spawning in a world and doing your best to survive, you must go through the developer's intended experience, doing the same repetitive tasks from the very beginning. See that house over the road? Well that's no longer a house thats now a "POI" aka Dungeon. Its full of scritped zombies that'll pop in as you walk the inteded path, or bug out if you don't. Want to get some clean water? well collecting and boiling water was considered too easy and not RPG enough, so now drinking water results in the character eating the glass jar and you flat out cant collect dirty water anymore. Why? The developers implemented a new water filtering station. You need to have read enough magazines to even get the crafting workbench and, along with whatever the water filtering station requires as well. You hardly progress by simply exploring, looting and surviving anymore, instead, as soon as the game starts, you are forced to find a trader (even if theyre kilometers away) and start questing for them. This will send you to a random hou- Sorry, POI, respawn all the scripted zombies and loot inside and let you do the intended path until you complete the dungeon-POI and progress that specific trader a little. Then you do it over and over until the trader decides you are worthy of doing the same POI clearing quests but for someone else, they send you far away into a new biome where you start doing the same. Rinse and repeat, thats the game now. Hope you like walking back and forth between your house, the trader, the dungeon and back. As a result, everything feels fake and scripted. Your character's growth is determined by eating magazines, zombies, loot found and rewards are affected by a lootstage, you can simply reset houses. Instead of zombies roaming the world there's just a couple on ground level and most spawn inside the POI using invisible triggers. the world just doesn't feel natural. It feels as if you installed a very crappy RPG mod with classes on a far-from-finished survival game. And developers have spent like a decade doing this "mod", recreating its skill trees and classes several times through the years. Thats pretty much all they've been busy with. TLDR: Game shifted experience from sandbox survival with light rpg elements to very poorly designed fantasy RPG-like.

After 140 hours I can only say, it's good fun until it's not. The moment you reach your "end-game", the fun mostly stops. The problem lies in that "end-game" doesn't really exist. It all depends on when you personally feel like you've achieved everything you want from a run. You can always keep grinding endlessly, which only reminds me of Vaas from Far Cry 3 asking me if I know what the definition of insanity is. The game is great overall but there are some major negatives. It's either too easy or too hard. The game is pretty boring for the easy part, just 1 or 2 tapping zeds you spot, OR you will be rushed by so many zeds you have to run and kite your way to safety, which is a pain with how dodgy these c*nts move. Which brings me to my next point. Stealth... it exists. You get a small damage bonus when attacking enemies from the shadows, bigger bonuses with certain weapon types. Now you'd think that in a post-apocalyptic world stealth means everything. Stay hidden and you'll never be spotted. Well, The Fun Pimps think otherwise by implementing "trigger points" in every POI (yes, all of them), where zeds will just spawn in and aggro you. For this reason stealth is something you can completely ignore in this game. Enemies are well designed up until the demolition zombie. Which, if you hit it in the wrong (or right) spot will beep and explode seconds later dealing massive damage to anything around it. I mean, why not give them a beard and call them something else. It's just agonising and another weird design choice by The (at this point not so...) Fun Pimps. Forget about the red-eyed wolf if you're not gonna cheese him. Whoever decided to give him a 1000 hp pool should be fired. Now for my biggest gripe and the reason I'm writing this review, a bug. Sometimes quests won't complete. This happens cause The Fun Pimps want you to explore POI's exactly how they designed them. As I mentioned earlier, all POI's have trigger points, where if you reach that point in the location a wave of zeds will spawn and aggro you. When these points won't trigger, the zeds won't spawn and you won't be able to complete the quest. This happened to me 3 times in 2 days. Now bear in mind, tier 5 quests are only in specific locations, and probably a fair distance away from your base. So you'll have to drive 2-5 miles, spend over an hour clearing a 15 story building or a school, only to realise at the end of it that something isn't right cause the quest won't complete. First of all, in my opinion, a mechanic like these "trigger points" shouldn't exist in a game like this in the first place as it completely negates the feeling of freedom and obliterates any use of stealth. Second, if you do decide to implement this mechanic, at least make sure it's working as intended. A bug like this shouldn't exist in a 1.2 version of a game. The combat. Combat is mostly sluggish. Trying to hit enemies with melee weapons can be as hard as hitting them with guns. Mostly because of how these Rushy McGee's move. As I mentioned earlier, it's mostly boring 1 tapping them in the face, but the ones who don't die from 1 hit immediately become annoying cause of the dodgy movement and the attack animation bug. It's a solid open world survival game with good crafting mechanics but I would only recommend if you hate being stealthy and don't mind the bugs I mentioned.

game still optimized like dogshit despite the devs promising there would be an optimization pass before launch, over and over and over and over - everytime there is a new Alpha build, people go "wheres the optimization?" and the devs keep saying "we will do it before launch." they did like ONE thing that ON PAPER should have been a performance boost, which is window occlusion, which will derender objects behind a window unless you are close to the window (reducing the overall load of objects that need to be loaded) and what happened? the game runs WORSE than it did before by a few frames. I'd give these assholes an excuse on the performance if it werent for the fact this game has been in alpha since 2013, and if they hadnt dismissed peoples criticism on performance as "crying" (along with telling you its YOUR pc thats the issue, I've seen these idiots tell people "uninstall the bloatware" LMFAO) newsflash to the clowns at TFP: this game could be on a fresh install of windows on the most powerful PC thats ever been built on the entire planet, you still wouldnt be able to get triple frames in a city (you cant even get CONSISTENT frames, let alone 100+fps) - go look at trailers/teasers they do for this game and notice how none of them are within a city or display a clip longer than 1.5 seconds if it does. thats because you would see the performance issues. dont believe me? go look up the "7 days to die: bloodmoon trailer" and you can see the jank there. AND IT WAS UPLOADED BY TFP THEMSELVES.... oh yeah, and just look at their roadmap - its genuinely embarrassing. I've played since A17, the amount of shit they have failed to deliver on that they promised for quite literally many years, are still yet to be put into the game. Bandits, a feature that has been teased for quite literally half the games lifespan, constantly told "they're coming next update" but of course that never happened, and you are now required to wait until Q2 of 2025 to see it (and you still wont because these clowns are so incompetent at game design that a singular zombie trying to path to you will cause your game to stutter, as they hit a tree 20 meters away from you because the pathing is so literal dogshit - zombies are also restricted to moving on the 8 way axis, in case you were wondering why hitting enemies in this game is so fucking atrocious) game runs like shit, but rest assured the devs updated a TON of animal models, including character models!!! (which they used to justify removing a lot of armor from the game, yay!!1 I love losing content for to get content!!!) these clowns sit on youtube for 6 of their 8 hour shifts, looking for 20-30 views videos on youtube titled "SUPER OP AFK ZOMBIE BLOODMOON BASE" so they can patch it, further fucking the pathing up, further causing the optimization to be worse, and all because the devs dont like when you dont play the way they want you to. finally, and probably the only thing that devs actually did right, is allow modding. which is a funny topic because many of the things that are on the roadmap, HAVE ALREADY BEEN DONE BY MODDERS.... INCLUDING NPCS/ANIMAL PETS AND EVEN BANDITS....YEARS AGO.... its embarrassing. this is the only thing I can give props to the devs for; allowing mods, because I wouldnt play this garbage otherwise if I wasnt able to revert all of the terrible decisions they make on a nearly-2-year-basis, because they're almost as slow as Mojang when it comes to adding new content, which would be an incredible accomplishment. when the game gives consistent 60+ FPS (so not anywhere near cities, which is where MOST traders are,) and after you get rid of all the dogshit game design choices the devs make via mods (which btw, running multiple performance mods to even be allowed to play this game rn,) it does become an enjoyable experience! but only for a couple days because this game doesnt have a cohesive end game and hasnt for 7+ years. devs have admitted that they are focusing on the early game as thats where most people will quit - so if you're fine with learning how to mod, where to find mods, etc... and accumulating the collection of 80+ mods it takes to make this game enjoyable, then this game is for you. and before some dipshit brownnoser who is stuck up TFPs taint (or god forbid some clown developer them self replies, further proving they do not work on this game) tries to tell me that the mods are why my game performance isnt good, go fuck yourself - I get the same performance in vanilla. same dogshit. the youtubers who play this game, same shit. mods or no mods, the game runs like shit in many areas. verifiable evidence all over the internet. fucking clowns.