Project Zomboid is scarier, nastier, and better than any other survival game

Essentially every survival game is set in the same world - or at least the same atmosphere. In DayZ, State of Decay, and Dying Light, it’s the actual apocalypse, when zombies have overtaken all of civilization. The Long Dark, The Forest, and Rust are more sober and realistic, but the tone and the sense of place remain the same. It’s all about desolation, this sense that the comforts of everyday life have been annihilated, and you’re trying to eke out an existence in a place that’s either completely dead or is entirely antithetical to the modern world. It’s all gone. Or it was never here to begin with. That’s scary and tense in its own way, but it’s nothing compared to Project Zomboid, the best survival game I’ve ever played.