I love PZ, really do. I do however also recognize that its playloop is a challenge for many many people to enjoy. The game suffers from essentially needing to know how to play in order to learn how to play. I have yet to find a single one of my friends that enjoyed the game until I sat down with them, watched them play via stream and coached them.

So when you do buy it, pay real close attention to the return window if you aren’t really enjoying it. If you aren’t essentially hooked in an hour, you probably never really particularly enjoy the game.

There are so many mods for Zomboid, some of them are staples that never leave my modlist. I have a mod that replaces almost all the headgear on zombies with a headcrab from Half-Life (you can loot and wear the headcrabs too), as well as a couple “occupations” based around a Black Mesa security guard, or an HECU marine.

There’s the whole host of True Music add-ons, which all add actually listenable music to the game, in the form of cassettes, records, or CDs. There is also a collection of mods called True Action, that give you more emotes and animations for your character, such as dancing or actually sitting on a chair or bed instead of just the floor. Tons of vehicle mods too; plenty of real-life vehicles from all kinds of eras (the game takes place in the 90s, so I usually like to keep the 90s aesthetic) but there are plenty of “lore-friendly” ones that have made-up names for the cars. Mods that add interiors to RVs so you can have a mobile base, mods that make you able to add a basement to your house/base, new maps (one I have called Project Russia, and it’s basically the surrounding area outside Moscow, also a huge map)…