Project Zomboid and the "Among Us" effect or how a game from 8 years ago is making a comeback thanks to Twitch and a single mod

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The survival genre is accompanied, in most cases, by the zombie subgenre. We are talking about an almost perfect mix. A leisurely style of play, of checking our inventory dozens of times and how to face the confrontation against a beast that wants to devour our brains. That is why titles such as The Indie Stone took the baton from countless previous games to launch Project Zomboid on the market.

However, we are talking about a 2013 title, with no less than 8 years behind it. Its launch was quite restrained, with a peak of 2,658 simultaneously active players in June 2014. A game that went unnoticed among the huge mass of proposals on Steam, despite the fact that its opinions were Very Positive. But why has it risen from its ashes?

The phenomenon of streamers is not only understood from the most purely economic point of view, but sometimes they manage to breathe life into titles whose golden age has passed, or never came. Among Us "suffered" from this phenomenon and now it's up to Project Zomboid. If we look at the graph offered by the Twitch Traker page —where we can inspect the performance of visits from different channels and games—, Project Zomboid is far from its maximum peak of more than 66,000 viewers on the platform, but its growth is doubly notorious.

In just under a month, Project Zomboid has reached 43,125 concurrent viewers on Twitch, which translates to 323 channels streaming the game. An incredible success that is transferred to the Valve platform, where the title has slipped into the 28th position of the most played titles on Steam in the last week.

I've spent all morning looking up how to be a park ranger, I just want to be a fire watcher

— zevner Tue Jan 12 19:55:40 +0000 2021

A boom in viewers or a good game?

The truth is that not all the success is due to Twitch and the retransmissions of the streamers who have seen in Project Zomboid an almost unique and fun experience 8 years after its launch. We are talking about a survival game framed in a zombie apocalypse with RPG overtones. A solid, remarkable, slow experience and far from the rest of the "walking dead" proposals that recently premiered their Build 41.

The success of the game may be due to Twitch to a greater extent, but the life that its new update has managed to breathe into the game is worth mentioning. We are talking about its Build 41 and it is that although Project Zomboid has been on Steam for 8 years, it has not left early access in that time frame. This new update doesn't make him abandon early access, but his small studio has remastered the netcode, improved its graphics, gameplay and sound.

According to its own developers, we are facing "a radical change, it feels more like a sequel than a simple patch for Project Zomboid". This has made it possible for many players to experience a practically new title that has been nourished by mods to survive over the years. In fact, much of its success is shared with the Raven Creek mod.

This mod enables a new game map for Project Zomboid and has delighted those streamers and users who are looking for massive experiences far from any multiplayer mode - despite the fact that the game has recently released the online mode. Raven Creek takes us to the city of the same name, one that is not only twice the size of the main city of the game, but also expands the original experience in a way rarely seen before. You can consult its spectacular map at this link, with a resolution of 22.715x12.315p resolution

There are three zones of varying difficulty on the map, and all of them have a different spawn number of infected and other features. This map may be too difficult for some people, as this is a mod that is not designed for beginners. Its developers pride themselves on creating a tough experience, where respawning can mean being surrounded by zombies.

A title that will greatly benefit from the Steam Winter Sales, where we can find it at a price of 9.37 euros, which translates into a 33% discount. Its technical requirements are just as minimalist as its experience, with just 2 GB of VRAM memory and an Intel Quad-Core processor to be able to enjoy this zombie survival game.

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