Project Zomboid was created as a realistic and Nintendo Hard Zombie Apocalypse simulator. And zombies, no matter how you slice it, are scary as hell.
- When you go to sleep, the game still advances (albeit at a highly accelerated rate). Let's just say there is a good reason why you should not sleep next to a broken window or an open door...
- Randomly during gameplay, you might hear distant gunshots. Not only are these gunshots incredibly loud, they also attract zombies towards the noise. Needless to say, if you hear gunfire in the distance, it might be time to move somewhere quieter - or at least keep a low profile.
- The Scare Chord each time your player character is surprised by a zombie. There is nothing more horrifying than opening a door in a house that you think is abandoned, only for two zombies immediately lunge at your character while that sound effect plays. This was eventually acknowledged by the devs and the sound cue was changed to more low-key... making it just as frightening for people used to the old cue, since there is now no familiar warning.
- The Knox Infection. Did a zombie manage to get a bite on you? Yeah, you're dead.note There's no cure. All you can do now is do your best to prolong the inevitable until you expire and come back as a mindless zombie. Even worse, minor scratches also have a small but non-zero chance to transmit the disease, while lacerations have a significant chance of doing so.
- Pay attention to the couple that appears on the menu screen: they are Bob and Kate Smith. At first glance it looks like Bob is comforting Kate... then a flash of lightning reveals that he is a zombie, and is in fact eating her! Both the scene and the Background Music convey the dark and hopeless atmosphere of the game.
- In the early game, you can watch and listen to various TV and radio stations and see the situation rapidly deteriorate day by day. All it takes is around eight days for the last radio stations and TV networks to shut off for good. For some stations, you can tune in exactly in time to hear the last moments of the station hosts. After that, there is nothing but emergency broadcasts played over the air on repeat. You are more alone than you could possibly imagine. The world has disappeared beneath a tide of shambling corpses. This was never a story of triumph; this is the story of how you died, and how the world died around you. Have fun.
- If the player survives long enough, a number of in-game events will cause your character's situation to go From Bad to Worse, each worse than the last.
- The first one, happening about the end of your first week, is the infamous "Helicopter Event" where a chopper will fly by, causing dozens if not hundreds of zombies to pass through your area. Unless you have a decent shelter and/or have the means to move quickly, this will likely be the end of your run. If you are in the open when this event happens, you are pretty much dead, since the helicopter will follow after you, bringing all the zombies after you, too.
- The "Expanded Helicopter Events"
mod introduces hostile helicopter crews that will shoot you on sight. The raiders in particular can sometimes play music (such as "Ride of the Valkyries") or outright maniacally laugh at you from a distance as you either try to escape on a car or slowly die from multiple bullet wounds and/or zombies feeding on you.
- The "Expanded Helicopter Events"
- The second one, the "Shutdown", happens in default settings by the end of your first month, and will cause the in-universe electrical grid and waterworks to stop functioning entirely. Not only is it a harsh reminder that the world has ended and everything left is breaking down, it's devastating to long-term survival. Unless you have managed to find an alternate water source/stockpiled enough water and reduced your dependency on electricity, you're screwed. In the most extreme cases, you don't have enough skills to build rain catchers and that will simply kill you via dehydration.
- The first one, happening about the end of your first week, is the infamous "Helicopter Event" where a chopper will fly by, causing dozens if not hundreds of zombies to pass through your area. Unless you have a decent shelter and/or have the means to move quickly, this will likely be the end of your run. If you are in the open when this event happens, you are pretty much dead, since the helicopter will follow after you, bringing all the zombies after you, too.
- Playing with "sprinters" (i.e. fast zombies) turned on makes an already tense and stealth-focused game much worse. Even if you're playing with all other zombie lore options on default, you can be jumped and overwhelmed very easily. Not helped by the fact that that the fast zombies don't really make much more noise than the default ones.
- Hidden in the game files are the sounds that were rumored to be used for an "Insanity" moodle, which would cause the player character to hallucinate the sounds of rampant whispering, demonic gurgling and short-but-loud shrieks. One of the whispering noises has also been deciphered.
- The "Knox Plague Retexture" mod that was uploaded in February 2024 replaces the traditional zombie infection with a rather horrifying fungal infection, with its own lore in the description: in the early stages, the fungus forces the infected to rip off their own jaws and causes them to become progressively more irrational and insane, while also giving them overwhelming photosensitivity causing the hosts to flee to darker areas so the fungus can spread, which gets to the point where they also claw at their eyes from the burning pain. And the purpose for this process is to give space for the fungus bulbs, which strikingly resemble human teeth, to grow in the infectees' throat (and eventually the chest) and produce highly-infectious spores that can spread mycelium through the veins of their target. The retextures themselves are definitely not a pretty sight to behold, and the fact that the infected are still human and you're practically compelled to put them out of their misery does not make it any easier.
- If you have "Superb Survivors Continued Remastered NPCs" installed from the Steam Workshop, the game will include other survivors that are also trying to fend off the undead or die trying. There are survivors who will help you out, but if they get bitten and turned... you'll essentially be forced to put them out of their misery. But the zombies would be the least of your concerns when both Raiders and hostile survivors are put into the mix, and if the Raiders are armed to the teeth and take a shot at you, you WILL NOT survive. And when these Raiders are large in numbers, you'd better hope you're armed and ready to fend them off because they take a thrill in killing you for nothing more than a sick sport.
- In Sandbox mode, if you disable the zombies altogether (not counting the inclusion of a mod that introduces NPCs), you'll notice that Knox county is... empty. Completely devoid of any and all life. You're all alone, with no civilization whatsoever. Unless you're with other players online, it doesn't help the eeriness of nonexistent human population that makes this setting already as bleak as it is.
