Worm girl’s tutorial YouTube series was what finally got me started. A lot of early survival is just “avoid all combat”. Skills are everything in this game. A little melee skill & a reasonable weapon (such as a wooden cudgel) can be the difference between easily killing a zombie and dying to it. You can get both of those in the basic shelter without ever leaving.
Body encumbrance & move cost (such as luring an enemy zombie into tall grass before engaging) can also make a huge difference.
Then Paradox was developing it. They own the studio. Who else is going to build the game? An executive?
I am sure that everyone would agree that Paradox owns/developed/published Europa Universalis 4… But that was made by “Paradox Tinto” or Stellaris was “Paradox Development Studio”… The publishing wing of Paradox doesn’t develop games. Obviously. But I don’t understand why thats in any way relevant to the discussion. Paradox (the company, not specifically the publishing wing) was 100% responsible for the development, the testing, and the publishing of Life by You. They built it, they took it down.
Zomboid was originally inspired by CDDA. Much of the game flow and ideas are 1 to 1 copies. The biggest difference is that CDDA is a turn based game that is played on tiles (think rogue or nethack). From the inventory system to crafting to base construction to reading books, it’s all there.
Oh. Except bites aren’t instant death. There’s no zombie virus. Dead bodies rise up (including yours!). You can still get infections and die from them, but you can also just clean your wounds. 1v1-ing a zombie is suicide though unless you have a decent weapon.
Also, zombies evolve… So they scale well into the late game. Having a zombie hulk throw you through a concrete wall and breaking every bone in your body is usually lethal.