Back during Blaugust 2018, I wrote about the Fun Pimps during Developer Appreciation Week. I noted that my first ever post on their game 7 Days to Die (7D2D) was back in the summer of 2014, and how even then, my gaming group (we call the Posse) was still playing the game years later.

Fast forward to 2021. Two weeks ago, the Posse got together for yet another new game of 7D2D. We don’t play the game constantly, but we’ve played it consistently for the past 7 years. It’s also the game I’ve clocked the most time in over any other on Steam.

Valheim is a very distant second, apparently.

That’s all taking into account that over the past 7 years, 7D2D has not yet left alpha. It’s still being actively developed (hoping for a A20 drop soon!), but it’s still one of my favorite Steam games despite the fact the devs don’t think it’s finished yet. I’d argue – it has bugs now and then, but it plays better than some released games!

All this to say, I would be remiss not to give some appreciation to the Fun Pimps who have created a great survival game that balances building, exploration, zombie killing and strategic tower defense so well. There’s something for every one of the individuals in the Posse to do at all times, no matter what their interests are.

I’m the builder of the team. I make sure my friends have solid walls around them on horde nights. The tower defense part of the game is my main focus, and I’ve taken to building a second “War Fort” so that if something does fall through (thanks to exploding zombies – you read that right), our main base and supplies don’t take the brunt of the damage.

Other people prefer to explore and hunt for supplies. There’s tons of Points of Interests (POI) in the game, and mods such as KingGen add even more variety based on locations that the community has built.

Others enjoy the gardening, cooking, crafting or the mining (think Minecraft with real physics). Yet others love the science tracks where you can build vehicles and traps to slay zombies.

There’s really so much to do in this game, and it just continues to get better. While we haven’t had a release in a while, we’re still patiently waiting and seeing the updates the team provides on their Twitter account. I’m really looking forward to the Alpha 20 drop. Yet another alpha, that’s not an alpha. 🙂

Anyhow, thanks for years of fun Joel and the Fun Pimps! Keep up the great work and we’ll keep playing.

(The best $12.99 I’ve ever spent…)