History YMMV / ProjectZomboid

** 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 more esoteric skills and abilities ''possible''. Being illiterate gives a whopping 10 extra points during character creation and is considered a serious
SelfImposedChallenge.

* FishingforSole: Socks and shoes are the two items the player can catch while fishing.

* AKA47: The only guns in the game that doesn't have a slightly different, legally-distinct name is the M16, M1911, and M14.

* NoisyGuns: Although many people still acknowledge how powerful they can be, guns are widely-regarded are being more dangerous to the player than the zombies; as even zombies currently inside of buildings can get attracted to gunshots.

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/projzomb_2.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:The official game cover, depicting who is believed to be Bob Smith.]]

->''"These are the end times. There was no hope for survival. This is how you died."''
-->-- '''The Project Zomboid loading screen quotes''
With development dating back to 2011, Project Zomboid is an isometric zombie survival game taking place in Knox County, Kentucky; with many of the prominent areas being that of Muldraugh, West Point, Riverside, Rosewood, March Ridge, and Louisville.

The plot, loosely revealed to the player through various TV news channels and radio broadcasts, revolves around Knox County being quarantined through heavy military presence after a disease referred to as the "Knox Infection" had began rapidly spreading through the area. The disease, being theorized of either being bio-terrorism, a prion, or act of God, would immediately start as a high-temperature fever before graduating to death and homicidal aggression.

Each game begins on July 9th, 1993; three days after the military blockade had been established, unless the player specifically uses the game's Sandbox mode to change it or plays on the 'Six Months Later' scenario. Although there's no ending other than death, the ultimate goal set on the player is to survive as long as possible.

----

** 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 more esoteric skills and abilities ''possible''. Being illiterate gives a whopping 10 extra points during character creation and is considered a serious SelfImposedChallenge.

** The crowbar is a weapon that may be borderline [[GameBreaker overpowered]] due to its good damage and having the most durability out of all the vanilla weapons, not helped by the fact that it has a 1 in 70 chance of losing its durability even when the player's ''long blunt and maintenance skill is at 0.''

* GameBreaker: Cooperative Multiplayer makes multiple aspects of the game significantly easier. Not only playing alongside friends is a [[NightmareRetardant great way to break the gameplay's tension]], it makes combat, scavenging, base-building and defense much less challenging simply by basic teamwork and having extra hands to work it. Futhermore, coop-ing is one of the best ways to break the AntiGrinding, since you and each of your allies can especialize in a single field.

** Once the waterworks are out, the 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 every day while 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 (whereupon it can be stored for months, too) - and until an update, you could only do so as long as the water was in a specific set of containers (e.g. saucepans could boil water to purify it, but tin cans couldn't).
** Carry weight capacity is an important element of the game. However, it is directly tied with the weight reduction stat of various bags and containers, rather than anything else - and said stat is fixed. When they are used as backpacks, this works perfectly fine with the logic of using proper strapping and frame to spread the weight of the cargo differently. But it goes completely out of the window the second a backpack is used as a secondary object, carried in one hand, leading to blatantly arbitrary outcomes. For example, a military bag loaded full with 27 units will only take 4 weight units from carry capacity when carried in hand, but a school bag, which can only contains 15 units, will take 6 weight units - solely because the military bag uses the old [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-purpose_Lightweight_Individual_Carrying_Equipment ALICE system]]. You can end up with a situation where you can transport around 70 units of weight with two military packs, one carried in hand, or get encumbrance penalty by the weight of two handbags and your weapon at a total weight of 16.

* DoNotGoGentle: A common outcome if one discovers a bite or begins suffering signs of the Knox infection.

* GameBreaker: Cooperative Multiplayer makes multiple aspects of the game significantly easier. Not only playing alongside friends is a [[NightmareRetardant great way to break the gameplay's tension]], it makes combat, scavenging, base-building and defense much less challenging simply by basic teamwork and delegating tasks. Futhermore, coop-ing is one of the best ways to break the AntiGrinding, since you and each of yor allies can especialize in a single field.

* CheeseStrategy: Sneaking is normally pretty tough to rise. However, the game takes into account the player characters being ''hidden'' from the zombies, not the zeds ''looking'' for the [=PCs=]. So things like just crouching on a rooftop, while a horde is passing down the street allow you to score a few ranks of the skill within mere seconds, as there is, in theory, a huge crowd that you've just managed to successfully "sneak" past. In fact, the normally dreadful helicopter event can be milked for loads of easy Sneaking experience, as all it takes is being inside any given building and watching the horde passing through from a second store window or a balcony - the zombies won't even bother raising their heads.

** 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.

* AngstWhatAngst: Unless the Survivor is bored for an extended period of time or eats something bad they never actually become sad despite being right in the centre of a zombie apocalypse.

** 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 crowbar is a weapon that may be borderline [[GameBreaker overpowered]] due to it good damage and having the most durability out of all the vanilla weapons, not helped by the fact that it has a 1 in 70 chance of losing its durability even when the player's ''long blunt and maintenance skill is at 0.''

** The crowbar is a weapon that may be borderline [[GameBreaker overpowered]] due to it good damage and having the most durability out of all the vanilla weapons, not helped by the fact that it has a 1 in 70 chance of losing its durability, even when the player's ''long blunt and maintenance skill is at 0.''

** There is an entire set of extensive mechanics for growing, hunting for and preserving food. Except if you plan to use just about any other method of preserving than pickling in vinegar in a specific model of jar and getting seeds from any other source than a seed packet. This includes even such bizarre situations like the inability to plant potatoes from the tubers or to get seeds from a grown plant rather than finding more seed packs. There is an entire selection of mods dedicated solely to solving the issue of how arbitrary the whole aspect of the gameplay is.

** 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 (whereupon it can be stored for months, too) - and until an update, you could only do so as long as the water was in a specific set of containers (e.g. saucepans could boil water to purify it, but tin cans couldn't).
** Carry weight capacity is an important element of the game. However, it is directly tied with the weight reduction stat of various bags and containers, rather than anything else - and said stat is fixed. When they are used still as backpacks, this works perfectly fine with the logic of using proper strapping and frame to spread the weight of the cargo differently. But it goes completely out of the window the second a backpack is used as a secondary object, carried in one hand, leading to blatantly arbitrary outcomes. For example, a military bag loaded full with 27 units will only take 4 weight units from carry capacity when carried in hand, but a school bag, which can only contains 15 units, will take 6 weight units - solely because the military bag has [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-purpose_Lightweight_Individual_Carrying_Equipment ALICE system]] to it. You can end up with a situation where you can transport around 70 units of weight with two military packs, one carried in hand, or get encumbrance penalty by the weight of two handbags and your weapon at the total weight of 16.
*** And then there is the general abstraction of the weight system, where your two backpacks can carry more than a trunk of a passenger car or even ''smaller vans'', because weight reduction only applies to bags, but not to containers (such as trunks). It's also possible for a vehicle's maximum weight load to degrade as it takes damage, which leads to cases where a vehicle that's been banged up enough will let you take out a case of ammo, but then won't let you put it back in.
**  There is an entire set of extensive mechanics for growing, hunting for and preserving food. Except if you plan to use just about any other method of preserving than pickling in vinegar in a specific model of jar and getting seeds from any other source than a seed packet. This includes even such bizarre situations like the inability to plant potatoes from the tubers or getting seeds out of a bell pepper (or from the plants you can even get via seed packs). There is an entire selection of mods dedicated solely to solving the issue of how arbitrary the whole aspect of the gameplay is.

* MostWonderfulSound: The uplifting banjo sound that plays when the Survivor reaches a new level in some skill.

* 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.

*** And then there is the general abstraction of the weight system, where your two backpacks can carry more than a trunk of a passenger car or even ''smaller vans'', because weight reduction only applies to bags, but not to containers (such as trunks).

** 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 (whereupon it can be stored for months, too) - and until an update, you could only do so as long as the water was in a specific set of containers (e.g. .
** Carry weight capacity is an important element of the game. However, it is directly tied with the weight reduction stat of various bags and containers, rather than anything else - and said stat is fixed. When they are used still as backpacks, this works perfectly fine with the logic of using proper strapping and frame to spread the weight of the cargo differently. But it goes completely out of the window the second such backpack is used as secondary object, carried in one hand, leading to blatantly arbitrary outcomes. For example, a military bag loaded full with 27 units will only take 4 weight units from carry capacity when carried in hand, but a school bag, which can only contains 15 units, will take 6 weight units - solely because the military bag has [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-purpose_Lightweight_Individual_Carrying_Equipment ALICE system]] to it. You can end up with a situation where you can transport around 70 units of weight with two military packs, one carried in hand, or get encumbrance penalty by the weight of two handbags and your weapon at the total weight of 16.
*** And then there is the general abstraction of weight system, where your two backpacks can carry more than a trunk of a passenger car or even ''smaller vans'', because weight reduction only applies to bags, but not to containers (such as trunks).