Recent reviews by tundríc ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Throw rocks at birds

Throw rocks at cannibals

Throw rocks at 3 legged woman

Throw rocks at friends

Throw rocks at cannibals in cave

Game end

Short, sweet, with fun mechanics.

A Story About My Uncle offers a beautiful immersive experience with great level design. The story is pretty light as is the difficulty, which is perfect considering the short nature of the game.

Pros:

• Level design - Each area has a different, fantastically designed aesthetic and lasts just long enough for you to get your fill.
  
• Light, fun story - Nothing to get sad, mad, or extremely happy about.
  
• Fun mechanics

Cons:

• No real challenge. Coming from a background of extensive platforming the difficulty here was very limited (Still fun, though).
  
• Very short without finding collectibles.

A sandbox game, before the world knew how much they loved sandbox games.

In spite of being part of the absolutely massive mess of a genre that is Survival/Survival-Horror, 7 Days to Die manages to find a niche and occupy it very well. You ask, what niche could this possibly be, given all the desperate attempts at "The Next Minecraft"? Well, 7 Days to Die has some actual (optional) difficulty to it.

In addition to a fresh perspective on voxel-based worlds and base building, 7 Days to Die is able to maintain a very high level of difficulty and suspense for far longer than any it's predecessors. Though difficulty is subjective to the dedication and experience of the player, 7DTD keeps players on a constant clock with the 7 day hordes - hordes filled with zombies that are actually intelligent. Intelligent? Persistent? Annoying? TBD. The persistence of the enemy AI in this game is something that really sets it apart from others. Where many other survival games fall short is after the first night, or first play session. You spawn in on a [beach] with a [rock] and everything is inevitably terrifying because you are defenseless and unaware. Though the minute that you build a wooden box around you and arm yourself with even the most primitive of weapons, that feeling of vulnerability goes away. Now - I'm not saying that it takes an extreme while to get to this point in 7 Days to Die. With the right knowledge and luck you can build a base and reach a point of practical invulnerability - something that is inevitable in this genre of game. However, it does take significantly more effort to achieve any level of safety in this game than in others. Structural integrity, wall-climbing zombies, digging zombies, flying zombie bees ffs! While rightfully intimidating and terrifying to new players, these factors keep the experience fresh for way longer than any other survival game has managed IMO - props to Fun Pimps for that.

TL;DR
Pros:

• Varying levels of difficulty. No zombies thru you're terrified of nighttime for several in-game weeks.
  
• Thorough skill / character development systems.
  
• Feeling of impending doom.
  
• Exploration - Several biomes with a plethora of buildings and areas to explore.
  
• A modest approach to 'special' zombies. Spitters, zombie bees, football zombies, etc. all add varying amts. of difficulty to the game without being, well, gamebreaking and antifun.
  
• Bar the occasional quirks here and there, phenomenal crafting and building systems.
  
• Good implementation of voxels. 7DTD walks the fine line of efficient building/digging while still maintaing a decent aesthetic.

Cons:

• Graphics / Animation - The game is certainly very playable and even pretty sometimes when in first person, singleplayer. As soon as you start paying any amount of attention to the details in textures / buildings, animations, or player models, you will see that these things aren't polished (yet).
  
• Multiplayer experience - IMO, 7 Days to Die is so chalk full of things to do that it is best experienced with other players. However, I cannot help but feel that the online experience for this game has been neglected so far. This is only a few implementations away from being resolved, but for now, LAN & private games are still phenomenal experiences.
  
• Early access syndrome - Yeah, I mean, I hate the Early Access model for reasons which you're probably already familiar with yourself. I really wish Fun Pimps would break out of this model - push out a few patches for the 'gamebreaking' issues, maybe a bit more content, and then launch! The 'Early Access' tag gives devs too much cushion, and pushes a lot of users away. The fact that this game is still considered Early Access despite having active development for ~3 years now is extremely disappointing. Please, don't let this game die like so many others.
  
• Nit-pick. I went on and on earlier in this review about the level of difficulty the game is able to maintain, though I'd love to see it get even better. Options to make zombies more aggressive, more specials, other difficulty modifiers, anything to keep the experience interesting and challenging for even the most experienced players.

TL;DR:TL;DR:

Good game. Good zambies. Pls stop early access.