History YMMV / ProjectZomboid

** Once the waterworks are out, player has to scavenge for water and then likely to purify it. However, the water never evaporates and never goes stagnant, meaning that in theory, nothing prevents you from filling up random pots and pans for ''months'' when the system is still operating, and use that later. As long as water is drawn from places that were previously hooked up to county's waterworks, the water will be pure, too, no matter how long ago the services went down. Also, the number of things that the game considers to be a water container is pretty limited and weird - you can use a cupboard full of cups, but you can't fill up a bathtub. Drinking any water that wasn't purified will almost instantly give you food poisoning, too, and the only way to purify it is to boil it (and then it can be stored for months, too).

* NightmareFuel: 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 gunshouts [[JumpScare 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 Knox Infection. Did a zombie manage to get a bite on you? Yeah, you're dead[[note]]Unless you disabled the infection option entirely in sandbox options - but you could still get a regular infection that can easily kill you when left untreated[[/note]]. There's no cure. All you can do now is do your best to prolong the inevitable until you expire [[AndThenJohnWasAZombie and come back as a mindless zombie]]. Even worse, minor scratches also [[ParanoiaFuel have a fairly significant chance]] to transmit the disease too.

*** The first one, happening about the end of your first week, it's 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 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 [[AfterTheEnd it's 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.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: The game went through a lengthy development time, with the trend of zombie survival games dying out by each passing year. One of the main worries expressed was that by the time of a full release, the game will be promptly ignored - until it reached that point while ''still in development''.

*** The first one, happening about the end of your first week, it's 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.

*** The first one, happening about the end of your first week, it's 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.
*** The second one, the "Shutdown", happens by the end of your first month, and will cause the in-universe eletrical grid and waterworks to stop functioning entirely. Not only [[AfterTheEnd it's 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 eletricity/found a generator, you're screwed.

*** The second one, the "Shutdown", happens by the end of your first month, and will cause the in-universe eletrical grid and waterworks to stop functioning entirely. Not only [[AfterTheEnd it's a harsh reminder that the world ''has '' ended and everything left is breaking down]], it's ''devasting'' to long-term survival. Unless you have managed to find an alternate water source/stockpiled enough water AND reduced your dependency on eletricity/found a generator, you're screwed.

*** The second one, the "Shutdown", happens by the end of your first month, and will cause the in-universe etrical grid and waterworks to stop functioning entirely. Not only [[AfterTheEnd it's a harsh reminder that the world ''has '' ended and everything left is breaking down]], it's ''devasting'' to long-term survival. Unless you have managed to find an alternate water source/stockpiled enough water AND reduced your dependency on eletricity/found a generator, you're screwed.

** 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 [[TheReveal 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.

* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: The Life and Living meta. At the start of the game, the player can tune in on the eponymous TV channel to get free skill points. Virtually every playthrough starts with the player keeping up with a schedule so they can consistently watch the show. The devs eventually acknowledged this and implemented video tapes that could do the same thing, freeing up players to focus on other tasks in the first week. Also useful for new characters in multiplayer, or scenarios with later starting dates where the power and water are already out. There are also tapes that cover skills that just don't exist on normal channels, such as the rare home-made tapes that cover First Aid, Metalworking, Tailoring, and Electrical.

* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: The Life and Living meta. At the start of the game, the player can tune in on the eponymous TV channel to get free skill points. Virtually every playthrough starts with the player keeping up with a schedule so they can consistently watch the show. The devs eventually acknowledged this and implemented video tapes that could do the same thing, freeing up players to focus on other tasks in the first week. ALso useful for new characters in multiplayer, or scenarios with later starting dates where the power and water are already out. There are also tapes that cover skills that just don't exist on normal channels, such as the rare home-made tapes that cover First Aid, Metalworking, Tailoring, and Electrical.

* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: The Life and Living meta. At the start of the game, the player can tune in on the eponymous TV channel to get free skill points. Virtually every playthrough starts with the player keeping up with a schedule so they can consistently watch the show. The devs eventually acknowledged this and promised to implement video tapes that could do the same thing, freeing up the players to do other tasks in the first week.

* NightmareFuel: When you go to sleep, the game still advances in real time. And 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 gunshouts [[JumpScare incredibly loud]], they also attract zombies towards the noise. Needless to say, if you hear gunfire in the distance, it's time to move and ''fast''.

** The Knox Infection. Did a zombie manage to get a bite on you? Yeah, you're dead[[note]]Unless you disabled the infection option entirely in sandbox options - but you will still get regular infection that can easily kill you when left untreated[[/note]]. There's no cure. All you can do now is slowly worsen in condition until your game ends [[AndThenJohnWasAZombie and you come back as a mindless zombie]]. Even worse, minor scratches also [[ParanoiaFuel have a fairly significant chance]] to transmit the disease too.

** Overreliance on modern amenities is dangerous. The game is designed in such a way that most modern products will disappear as time goes on. Running water and electricity stop being maintained, complex weapons break down, cars run out of spare parts, gas stations run dry, food spoils, etc. The only true way to survive indefinitely in the game is to live off nature, and those who cannot do so are doomed to perish.

* AccidentalAesop: The game does this with ReadingIsCoolAesop. It's one of the best sources of entertainment and stress-relief in the game, along with making your life and survival not only easier, but simply possible in case of more esoteric skills and abilities. In the same time, being illiterate gives a whooping 10 extra points during character creation and is considered a serious SelfImposedChallenge.

** 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 [[TheReveal 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.

** The ScareChord 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.

** A certain dedicated player decided to track accomplishments of his personal life along the development of the game, to mock the glacial pace of progress going. Thus each of his regular posts consisted of [[OverlyLongGag ever-increasing list]] of his life goals being fulfilled: he managed to finish college, find a girlfriend, find new job, find new girlfriend, marry her, move to different place, find another job, eventually have a son, get promoted, ''years later'' said son entering elementary school... always with the punchline of "and Project Zomboid is still in development". Even if the story is (probably) a full-cloth fabrication, it reached a meme status within the players' community.
** Due to it's legendary long development, the game itself has the dishonour of being a poster child of perpetual beta and endless early access for indie games. It is often used as a cautionary tale to never take full release of any project for granted.

* TierInducedScrappy:
** The electrician occupation. It's outclassed by the engineer in every possible way. Whereas the engineer has both bonus to electrical and access to homemade traps, the electrician only offers two more electrical points at the cost of not having traps. The electrician's main selling point is that it allows the player to operate generators, but any occupation can already do that with a skill book. Generators are also of dubious usefulness throughout the whole game, so an entire occupation based around it is next to useless.
** Engineer isn't much better by itself, since the abilities it offer have close to zero applications beyond being simply cool.

* ScrappyWeapon: Double-barrel shotgun. Guns are last resort, shotguns are GodzillaThreshold, and this gun is best never picked at all, aside maybe unloading the shells from it (if there are any). It can obviously only fire twice before requiring a reload, is pretty inaccurate and, well, it's a shotgun - a weapon so loud, you will attract half the town to your location. There is just no way you will fend off a horde with it and will actively make your situation worse when running away from one.

* MisaimedRealism: Once the waterworks are out, player has to scavenge for water and then likely to purify it. However, the water never evaporates and never goes stagnant, meaning that in theory, nothing prevents you from filling up random pots and pans for ''months'' when the system is still operating, and use that later. As long as water is drawn from places that were previously hooked up to county's waterworks, the water will be pure, too, no matter how long ago the services went down. Also, the number of things that the game considers to be a water container is pretty limited and weird - you can use a cupboard full of cups, but you can't fill up a bathtub. Drinking any water that wasn't purified will almost instantly give you food poisoning, too, and the only way to purify it is to boil it (and then it can be stored for months, too).

** The Knox Infection. Did a zombie manage to get a bite on you? Yeah, you're dead. There's no cure. All you can do now is slowly worsen in condition until your game ends [[AndThenJohnWasAZombie and you come back as a mindless zombie]]. Even worse, minor scratches also [[ParanoiaFuel have a fairly significant chance]] to transmit the disease too.

* MisaimedRealism: While the game was originally sold on its SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome approach to zombie fiction, over its lengthy development, variety of factors made at first glance the game "realistic" turned out to not be so real in the end. Particularly, anything that relates to "survive on your own, without modern society and amenities" quickly falls apart. To make things worse, majority of those were addressed by mods ''years'' ago, but never implemented into vanilla:
** Water never goes stagnant nor evaporates. In the same time, drinking raw water once the services are shut down will lead to almost guaranteed poisoning, no matter the source. Speaking of water, you can raid toilet for water in it, but ''from the bowl'', rather than the flushing container. You also can't store water inside a bathtub while water is still running nor as a tank for whatever other water you collected anywhere.
** Having its origins in the early 2010s crafting craze, the game requires to produce variety of objects, no matter how complex or labour-consuming, while in the same time won't allow to simply loot a related store. Want a wired fence? You won't find it in a home depo store - you'll have to [[ViolationOfCommonSense hand-craft one]], tile-after-tile.
** The only source of jars for pickles are... store-bought, empty jars. Admittedly, the dev team explained later they [[CriticalResearchFailure didn't know]] you can use just about any jar with a solid lid for pickling, but ''never'' addressed that in-game. Whatever jar-contained food you loot won't leave behind an empty jar once eaten.
*** Jars also used to be scavenged separately from lids, even in stores.
** Similarly, the only source of flour is the one you can loot. You can't plant any cereal crops and you can't mill anything into flour either.
** The game is all about stealth and moving fast, yet is also one of the prime examples of NoBikesInTheApocalypse. That despite spending ''years'' on adding loud, gas-guzzling cars to the game, while ignoring players demand for bicycles. Mods addressed that around 2016, whole two years before cars were added on official level.
** The only source of electricity is a gas-operated generator. There are no solars, wind mills or even most primitive bike dynamos. Said electricity is rendered completely useless, as the main way of keeping food are jar-stored preserves (which ''never'' perish), rather than freezing (will perish in few months).
** The only crops you can plant are broccoli, cabbages, carrots, radishes, tomatoes, potatoes and... strawberries. Now check gardening and seeds section in your nearby, small grocery store. You also can't use things like fresh bell peppers to gain seeds.
** Gardening can be only done in open air. Potted plantations don't exist, just like green houses. Despite that, plants have to be watered as often as if they were potted.
** As far as the game is concerned, you can survive indefinitely eating nothing but strawberries, if only you have enough of them. In fact, you can survive on just about anything, eating just that one produce or dish and nothing else. That despite there being a nutrition sub-system in the game.

* TierInducedScrappy: The electrician occupation. It's outclassed by the engineer in every possible way. Whereas the engineer has both bonus to electrical and access to homemade traps, the electrician only offers two more electrical points at the cost of not having traps. The electrician's main selling point is that it allows the player to operate generators, but any occupation can already do that with a skill book. Generators are also of dubious usefulness throughout the whole game, so an entire occupation based around it is next to useless.

** Water never goes stagnant nor evaporates. In the same time, drinking raw water once the services are shut down will lead to almost guaranteed poisoning, no matter the source. Speaking of water, you can raid toilet for water in it, but ''from the bowl'', rather than the flushing container. You also can't store water inside a bathtub while water is still running.

** Water never goes stagnant nor evaporates. In the same time, drinking raw water will lead to almost guaranteed poisoning, no matter the source.

** Gardening can be only done in open air. Potted plantations don't exist, just like green houses. Despite that, plants have to be watered as if they were potted.