Could use some polish. There's definitely a base for a good game here so I'm not refunding in hopes that my contributions help make that happen.

Good:
- No crashing or stuck in map (so far)
- Large map to explore
- Building variety
- Day/night cycle
- Dedicated servers

Meh:
- You can avoid zombies by jumping up on just about anything and they don't climb ladders. Hope they get a bit smarter.
- Found a couch and placed it in the environment but beyond that could not interact with it. What's the point?
- Looting containers kind of puzzling. Found three identical ammo boxes next to each other but only one was lootable and it contained nothing.
- Price is a bit steep for what's currently available. Will look better when/if more features get added.
- Not a fan of the spawning system. Mole Zombies or did everyone just bury their dead where ever they fell. lol

Going to recommend for now but waiting to see if it's a keeper. I'd say if you're interested in investing in what could be a great game then go ahead and make a purchase. If you're looking for something that's playable now you might want to try 7 Days to Die or Day Z, come back to this later.

OK ,18 hours of playtime so far, i think i can weigh in.

TL:DR
4/10 stars < for a complete game >
8/10 stars < for a game in beta>
Play with people it's a lot more enjoyable than solo.

---Things i loved---

-The fact that top level clothing (6x6 inv /20kg) comes in 4-5 different versions and 4-5 colors of each version

-Hunger and thirst deplete at a reasonable rate , and don't drop like a stone.

-Stamina depletes at a reasonable < for a video game> rate, and you can run more than 10 ft without passing out . Which is good , you will be running for your life ... a lot.

-Durability on weapons decreases at a reasonable rate < weapons are not made of cardboard and tissue paper>

-Repair kits for weapons seem to drop often enough that it hasn't been a issue .... yet

---Things that need work--- < these are just my opinions>

-Zombie spawn rate is ridiculously high. While playing solo a zombie spawned once every 3-5 seconds , within 10-30 ft of the player. Which made scavenging more of a smash and grab. Looting everything from all containers i could without even looking to see what i was grabbing . Then running off to try to find a car or crate to hide on while tossing half of the items out to make room for things i might need or find.

-Item stacking in inventory. More than not i would open my inventory to see my bag full of stacks of ammo or cloth that were 10 or less.And i would have to manually stack them into one pile so i had open space to pick more stuff up.

-Zombies chasing you forever. Couple this with the short spawn rate , and the fact they can spawn in front of the player. And you might be running ,walking, running again , walking some more , and then running again for a long long time.

-No character creation/customization -yet. ( i realize this is a beta and that's not high prio for game testing )

-The day night cycle is more annoying < for me > than it is enjoyable/fun. It just means that when it gets dark everyone stays in the base or camps out of a car or stack of something until day light . The flashlight beam is to dim and narrow.

-Custom game modes needed. Other games of this type have sliders to adjust loot and enemy span and HP, damage taken and dished out. Some days you want to struggle for every yard you get . Some days you wanna wiffle bat zombies while unwinding with friends . Its nice to have options.

-No third person view.

-No player maker on map. It makes finding new players in world very very difficult. I realize this is a design choice , it was still really annoying to track down new to the game players so we could group up.

For a game that has been out less than a month its really fun. A little over 2 weeks after launch , they patched/hotfixed a lot of stuff , thats better than most triple A studios i know of.....

First game I ever played where the DEV's truly care for the game. Just check out ZSGO discord and you'll see the DEV's in the chat answering and helping the players. I made a suggestion for a streamers section in discord and within 5 minutes, they added the section. Not only that but on of the DEV's hopped in my stream and gifted 4 KEYS to my viewers for FREE. The community is amazing and not toxic like other survival games where if not in a group you'll just get demolished. I foresee this game having a very bright future.

This is horrible.
Just unplayable.
Spend 90 minutes trying to find ANYTHING of value. All I got was radiation. Tons of it.
Looted an entire town while smashing zeds and shooting them with the 20 bullets and gun I found. Ran out since Zeds infinitely spawn, literally on top of you. Constantly.
What did I find? A cat backpack and T-shirt. Some cans of beans that gave me more rads. Mostly unusable garbage. Each house had like... one thing in it. Waste of time.
Got to the trader. Nothing to do there. Tons of missions that require resources I could never find. Found a shower that cleaned my rads. So I wasted 17 minutes of my play-through just sitting there waiting for it to go down. it reduces 1 rad per second. you can have up to 1000 rads before death. so thats 15 minutes... plus waiting around for 15 minutes wastes food, and all the food I found added rads. So even more time...

Huffed out of the Trader with nothing more than a bottle of water, and died walking over some rocks.
Couldn't get back to my body, because being near the rocks killed me.
Not from radiation (Which was my first thought). looked like fall damage? But... I didn't fall. So whatever.

Uninstall/Refund.

better than the day before

This game has potential but in the 20-30ish minutes I've played it, I have 3 big issues. The zombies will literally spawn on top of you. Likewise, you can never really clear an area as zombies will also spawn inside a building you just cleared 45 seconds prior. The zombie spawn amount should remain high but the frequency needs adjusting.

2nd issue, about 80% of the time, the zombies make such little noise that you aren't aware of their presence until they're already damaging you from behind. Zombies, as fast as they run, need to make louder noises when they're barreling down on you. I'm not sure if this is a gameplay decision or an oversight, but you cannot hear them unless they moan, which very rarely happens.

Third issue, melee combat is a death sentence. There is no stagger on zombies which means if you are in melee range, it becomes a battle of attrition where you're hitting them and they are hitting you and whoever has more health wins. There is an issue with zombie's attacks where if the zombie begins an attack animation, you are going to take that hit regardless of how far away you are. I can be 8 feet away from a zombie who did the attack animation and still be hit by it. The only way to circumvent this issue I have found is to circle the zombie. This isn't reliable by any means but sometimes saves you a hit. Normally in most zombie games, backpeddling and hitting with melee will stagger the zombie or keep them just out of arms reach. There is no stagger, so nothing to prevent zombies from beginning an attack animation, and once they've begun the attack animation, you're getting hit. The melee combat feels worse than 7 Days to Die on console, if that means anything to anyone.

These are issues that can be easily worked out I feel. The game has a lot of potential and I would love to spend more time playing and recommend to others, but for myself, these issues make the game not fun at all.

There are other issues such as there hardly being anything to actually loot, though I can accept this if it's intentional as it IS a zombie survival game and too much loot makes things too easy. But for example, you'll find a house and not a single container is lootable besides one refrigerator. The loot you receive WHEN you actually are able to find something to loot is generally always helpful in some sense, but there's just nothing to loot.

I really do have high hopes for this game and I wish I could give a 'neutral' but again, these issues have completely turned me away from the game. I wish the devs the best in hoping they're able to iron out these issues and I will happily return once the game is in a better state.

Greetings! Welcome to Zombie Survival Game Online, or, ZSGO. As if Rust, 7 Days to Die, and DayZ had a baby...sort of.

While fun, the bugs currently outweigh the pros, so that's where I will start.

There appears to be a fatal error upon launching the game, even after verifying game cache and reinstalling the game. No specific error code(s). Fatal error appears on other PCs as well, which have never had ZSGO installed on them.

Once you can get past the fatal errors upon launch, you're greeted with some newfound bugs in-game.

These all occur in both Singleplayer and Multiplayer and are listed as follows:

-Zombies spawning and attacking you...from under the world in random places (none specific, just random).

-Item pickup shrinking animation jittery.

-Game will randomly freeze for 2-4 seconds around Lag Lane (look on map)....no pun intended. Game Process utilizes 100% CPU, RAM and Storage (in this case, NVMe) upon this happening.

-Cannot unlock Biometric Achievement. This can be tested by enabling Steam Console and removing the achievement from your account using console commands, and then trying to obtain it within the game. Hand Scanner doesn't work either, as it used to.

-Water by Express Way (pond) as well as water all around the map is not water. Just a plane which is visually unappealing to look at and disappears or has no post processing or any effects when under water. No swim animations either.

-Bandits(??) shoot.....nothing, or next to nothing? No bullet tracers visible 99% of the time. Sometimes they spawn under the map. Map icon for them is not accurate whatsoever.

-Fall damage way too much for little falls (half health for 3 ft drop?!).

-FPS locked at 120 no matter what even with VSync off. No in-game console to even force this via a console command, thus I can't take full advantage of my monitor's refresh rate.

-Blueberries have icon that does not match game style, whereas all other items have their own custom icons.

Here are some YouTube videos, showcasing the item animation bug, and the water bug:

https://youtu.be/DPYVXcriH5Q
https://youtu.be/5dZey5akv5Q

Now, onto the Pros:

-Fun with friends. Though, servers and co-op (player hosted) games seem to need a reboot quite often (about every 2-4 hours with active players). Perhaps some better garbage collection implementation would be needed within the game's code.

-Building is good, easy to grasp. Resembles Rust.

-Exploration is okay, there should be more quests, NPCs, and POIs, though. Sewer system interestingly reminds me of the sewer system in the Russia map in the game Unturned, and also of an idea I had pitched to the ZSGO developers at one point.

-Inventory system is okay. Though, it makes no sense that as little as a few sticks, a few berries, and 2 rocks will weigh so much when in your inventory that you can't hold anymore items, some of which are needed to craft things. This makes it a pain and you're constantly having to juggle around or drop different stuff. I get realism, or whatever the goal is by this design, but at some point there also needs to be an option where it's easier for the player, especially when they just want to play the game to have fun.

Aside from all of those pros and cons, there's a few more cons I would like to touch on.

The PR on the game's Steam Hub is rather unorganized and messy. For example, the game's developers should know whether their game has a feature or doesn't... not "believe" that they don't have a feature implemented in their own game - regardless of how 'big their project' may be. Lots of other game studios, whether small, or large (check out Rising World, for a one-man operation as an example, on how he does his PR, and check out Space Engineers/Keen Software House on how they do their PR, they are a larger operation) know what is in their game, and what is not.

Unfortunately, because of the current bugs I have mentioned in this review (as well as on a Discussion I created on this game's hub), and the PR problem mentioned above, I cannot recommend this game at this time. I will keep an eye on this game, and update it accordingly, with both the bugs, and the PR problem being taken into account.

Edit: 2/23/2025:

It appears that you will be banned permanently (without reason, too, see screenshots below) for pointing out flaws of the game and/or it's developers. While I did work on ZSGO for a short time, as an independent contractor/freelancer (about 3 months, specifically their Dedicated Server portion of the game), I am still a regular player as anyone else, and since I am no longer on the development team, my only channel of reporting bugs is via their Discord or Steam Hub through public channels. So, I feel the permanent ban on both the Steam Hub and their Discord for pointing out bugs and flaws, is not justified. They have also since deleted my post pointing out the bugs that I had noticed and found in-game. Buyer beware of this.

https://yellow51.dev/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-23-124519.png
https://yellow51.dev/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-23-123536.png
https://yellow51.dev/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-23-123718.png

They have since updated my ban reason, as of 30-45 minutes later with the following reason:

https://yellow51.dev/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-23-130641.png
https://yellow51.dev/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-23-130835.png

This reason makes no sense, as other players are pointing out bugs and flaws in their Steam Hub, and they are not enforcing this bug report form "rule".

Edit 2/23/2025 - 3:54 PM MT:

It appears that after these bans were carried out, they are trying to remove any trace that I had done work for ZSGO, and one can surmise, are trying to claim it as their own works. Posts about Dedicated Servers being worked on are being removed, as well as their release post which I had written up also got removed, both from their website (playzsgo.com) and Steam, when just a day ago they were all up and on their website (playzsgo.com) and Steam. It appears that screenshots I had taken in-game and uploaded publicly to Steam are also being removed, screenshots which did not violate any rules or terms of service, screenshots which were simply screenshots of in-game POIs or buildables.

This here is an archive of one of the posts in which I am referring to:
https://web.archive.org/web/20241209152530/https://www.playzsgo.com/dedicated-servers-plus-kickstarter-round-2/

And here is the link currently:
https://www.playzsgo.com/dedicated-servers-plus-kickstarter-round-2/

Edit: 3/17/2025:

It appears they still have me removed from the credits and website on stuff I had worked on. It appears they are also now removing works I had done within ZSGO.

Their latest update fixes nothing mentioned in this review, or what the majority of the community is reporting. So much for "listening to the community". Characters are still bugged out when driving, the game still crashes with a Fatal Error with no error code when trying to launch it. With all this, and the previously mentioned issues, I don't see how my review can change to recommended any time soon.

This literally feels like Rust & DayZ had a low poly baby that could actually be better than both of those games in the future if the Devs keep it up. I do have crappy frames for some reason no matter what i do, & need an ADS sens slider. Other than that solid start.

also since noone will see this, i'm gay.

Game is new and all those who say that game is boring or bugging. Well it's first day fellas.. Devs did really good job. The gameplay is fun and its survival so you can spend hours in this game.. game mechanics are good, pvp is awesome as well. build mechanics are great! You can build base, you can lock it, upgrade from wood to stone and to metal. So others will need a lot C4 to brake into metal ones. ( wood wall needs 500 hits from axe ).

On other hand yes games has bugs and all that minor stuff nothing too much crazy.. if you lean right while aiming, your gun will start glitching but if you lean to the left it will be all good. Sometimes it's hard to understand from where sound comes ( I mean others shooting or walking ).

To summarize all, the game is new guys and it's early access game, Devs are really great in their discord and already listening for people. Price is fair now for 15$. I would think 15$ maybe should be without discount idk. I think they will start updating those minor issues very soon! But in my opinion its worth buying, you can have really great time playing either solo or with friends!

Dead game. 3 servers total, no players. Remove the online PVP tag from the game. Its a solo / co-op game. Movement is fluid, shooting is cool. Looting is trash. Zombies are sponges. Not for me. At all. Im sure its for someone tho.