Features

Every item has weight. Carry too much and you slow down. You arrange the slots yourself; search and filters help you find things, stacks can be split.

Search crates, pick items off the ground, drag loot into your inventory and it finds the right slot. Several players can loot the same crate at once without items being duplicated. What you find depends on the place: houses, forests, vehicles, military, police and medical spots each have their own loot, rarer things turn up less often, and looted spots slowly fill up again while nobody is around.

Your pockets come from your clothes: a hoodie has two, cargo trousers six, and you see what is in which. A backpack adds eight, sixteen or twenty-four slots and lets you carry more weight. A piece with something in its pockets fits into no slot: drop it and it lies on the ground with everything still in it, for you or anyone else to search or put back on. Hoodies, trousers, shoes, three backpacks and a miner's helmet are found as loot, and others see what you wear. The left hand waits for a torch or a flashlight.

Five quick slots for the essentials, assigned by drag and drop, used with 1–5.

A calm, dark interface that shows condition and rarity at a glance, with vitals as ring gauges at the edge of the screen. They also show how deep you are into dehydration or starvation. A small hint next to the crosshair names whatever you are looking at and the key to use it.

Weapons wear down with every blow and hit only half as hard once they break. Fresh food spoils over time, wherever it lies, and eating it spoiled makes you sick. Condition shows on every item and stays with it, whether it lies on the ground, in a crate or in your hands.

Hunger and thirst drain steadily, and sprinting burns through both faster. Run dry and it gets worse in stages: dehydrated, your stamina recovers slower, then you can no longer run, then you start losing health. Starving cuts your stamina, stops your healing, then hurts you too. Eat or drink and the stages reset at once. You only heal when you are fed and watered.

Going through your pockets, rummaging through a crate, cracking open a can and drinking it: every action has its own sound, and the item decides what it sounds like. Your footsteps change with the ground under you, from grass and leaves to gravel, wood, metal, snow and water, kick up dust, mud or snow, and grow louder the faster you move; a hard landing is heard. Players nearby hear you walk, loot, drop and use things, so careful also means quiet.

You play a realistic person: a weathered survivor in a hoodie and cargo trousers. Every step is picked from motion-captured movement as you go, so starts, sudden stops, sharp turns and the lean into a curve look like a person moving, not a puppet. You see what you do: the bottle goes to your mouth while you keep walking, you bend down for what lies on the ground and reach into the crate you loot. For now every survivor has the same face and body and only their gear differs; choosing your own face comes later.

You jog by default. Toggle to a walk and your steps go quiet, which matters when the dead listen. Sprint and you outrun them, as long as your stamina lasts. A jogger gets caught.

When you die, everything you carried stays where you fell, in a bag anyone can search for 30 minutes. You start over at a random place with almost nothing: two cloth strips, half a bottle of water and an energy bar.

The infected shamble through the land, each in its own gait, until they notice you. Then some stop to roar, and all of them run. They see far by day and little at night, in fog or in rain, and they listen: a sprint, a hard landing or a clattering can carries much farther than a careful step, while rain and wind cover your noise. Break their line of sight and they search where they last saw or heard you. They cannot swim: get into deep water and they pace the shore, then give up and wander off. A swing can be dodged by stepping back. Breaking through barricades comes with base building.

When they get close, you hit back: with your fists, or with whatever heavy you found, a crowbar or a length of steel pipe. You take a weapon in your hand by placing it in your gear, and others see you carry it. Every swing costs stamina and needs a moment to wind up, so timing matters. A solid hit knocks the infected back and stuns it for a moment, interrupting its own attack, but it will come for you. Swings and hits make noise. Standing, your whole body goes into the blow; on the move only your arms do.

A full day-night cycle. Nights are genuinely dark: without a light you see little more than shapes, and the interface is often the brightest thing on screen.

A murky river winds through the meadow into a small lake, both cut into the land, and rain has left puddles in the grass. Wade in and the water holds you back: the deeper it gets, the slower you walk and the faster a sprint wears you out, and every step splashes or sloshes. Where your feet lose the ground you swim, and you only catch your breath again on land. Drinking from it is not in yet.

The weather changes on its own: clear skies, clouds, thick fog, rain from drizzle to downpour, storms and thunderstorms. Bad weather turns the world dark and grey, the wind bends grass and trees, rain drops ripple the lake, the river and every puddle, and in a thunderstorm lightning strikes around you, its thunder arriving seconds later depending on how far away it hit. Everyone in a world shares the same sky and the same lightning.

Birds sing by day and crickets at night, and both fall silent when it rains or the wind picks up. The wind roars louder among the trees, rain patters, swells and drums. Step into a hut and the storm outside turns into a muffled roar while the rain hammers on the roof.

A world survives being shut down. Survivors keep where they stood, their vitals and everything they carry; crates keep their contents, dropped items stay where they lie, and the time of day goes on where it stopped. Worlds are saved regularly and keep backups, and servers can wipe on a schedule.

Craft tools, weapons, bandages and the parts for a base from what you carry and from your storage crate nearby. Some things need a tool or a workbench, crafting takes time and the hammering is loud. Wood comes from log piles, plank heaps and furniture you break up; old things can be taken apart for their materials.