Why, to me, 7 Days to Die is the perfect survival game

I've posted on this blog years ago about 7 Days to Die. Back then it was Alpha 8 I was talking about, and I already loved the game then. Well, the game has now launched. And it's been one hell of a ride!

It's my most played game on Steam, with, as of writing this, a few hours short of 1300 hours. Yes, not as much as some people, but I think a fair bit enough that I can write this review.

What is 7 Days to Die?

In a nutshell, it's a survival game with intensive crafting options, taking place in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies. This world is voxel-based, meaning it's fully destructible, and every single building and point of interest in the game can be explored. Every 7 days, a big horde of zombies show up, so your task is to basically prepare in the 7 days leading up to that to survive.

Survival

As with any survival game, 7 Days to Die also has the usual features. Hunger and thirst being the two main things to worry about. Now, I say worry about, but in the game these things are never really an issue. Not once have I died because of not finding food or water.

Food comes in all shapes and sizes, with the first piece of food you'll most probably get being a rotten sandwich haha! You can eat it, but it takes away some of your health, and there's also a chance of getting dysentery. A playthrough starts you off with a can of chili in your inventory.

You can hunt animals, like chickens, rabbits, boar, deer and even wolves and bears. These provide you with animal fat and raw meat. Raw meat can be cooked on a campfire to give you charred meat, but finding things like a cooking grill or cooking pot can let you make better versions, like grilled or boiled meat. 

As you progress through your game, you'll unlock better recipes to make better foods like stews, or fish tacos, or steak and potatoes!

As for drink, you can at any time drink from a water source. This too has a chance of getting dysentery though, so only do that when you've just swallowed some vitamins, or have a water purifier mod installed. Some drinks, like beer, or coffee, give you buffs, like faster stamina regeneration, or better performance when brawling. 

Skills and progression

You start as a weakling in the game, but with several options of improving your character. These skills are governed by the main skill it's associated with, like Perception, Strength, Fortitude, Agility and Intellect. Some skills include things like being better with certain weapons, like handguns or spears. Some skills make you less encumbered by wearing certain armor, or can make you jump higher (a very handy skill for survival!) or be better at bartering or crafting.

To level up, simply do stuff in the world - be it looting containers, of which there are a plenty, killing zombies, digging up hidden supplies, completing trader quests, building yourself a house, harvesting resources, etc. Each level up gives you a skill point that you can allocate. 

The game has a skill book mechanic - in the world, you'll constantly find magazines that will provide you with knowledge on how to craft better equipment and gear. Your chances of finding specific skill books improve as you spec into the associated skill. For example, if you want to craft better shotguns, put some points into the Boomstick skill - this will let you find more shotgun parts, shotgun ammo, and the shotgun skill books so you can ultimately craft the best shotgun in the game eventually.

This mechanic has been met with a lot of criticism, but I really like it. It gives a lot more meaning to exploring and looting.

Fighting zombies

This is after all a survival game with zombies. So fighting them is a big part of it. Several of these foes exist, some with better stats and speed and health. During the day, most of the are just walking, but come nightfall, they start running and things become a lot more dangerous. In the early game, it's very common for you to find a place to huddle up for the night and only head out again when morning comes. 

It's not just zombies though, you also have zombie dogs to compete with, they're really scary in the beginning, and wildlife like boars, bears, wolves and vultures.

As you go about your adventuring day, every now and then a wandering horde will show up to make things interesting, and then there's the big horde to prepare for every 7 days.

Later on, stronger and tougher version of the zombies start showing up, upping the challenge even more!

How to prepare for the horde

The hordes you'll be facing every 7 days will get progressively harder as your gamestage goes up - gamestage is a mechanic in the game that is determined by your character level, as well as the biome you're in in the world.

Speaking of biomes, you start off in a forest biome, which is the easiest. You then progress, at your own pace, to a burnt forest, desert, snow and wasteland biomes.

I would suggest you build your first base in the forest biome, as it's noticeably easier to be here hehe :)

Most people find an existing building and convert it to their started horde base. The main idea here is to be off the ground and some kind of barrier between you and the zombies so you can hit and shoot them. Ammo will be scarce to start with, so you'll have to resort to melee attacks to fend them off. 

Defeating the horde provides you with loot bags that some of the zombies drop, and more importantly, experience and level-ups. 

Traders

A big part of the game is finding each biome's trader. This is like a questing hub from where you can get jobs to do, as well as buy and sell stuff. Trader compounds are also safe havens, in that zombies cannot penetrate their walls - but, only during the day! At night time they close and you'll have to seek shelter elsewhere.

The kinds of quests you can pick up from these traders are:

• Retrieve the supplies
• Kill all the zombies
• Retrieve the supplies AND kill all the zombies
• Dig up buried supplies
• Infested clear (buildings with lots more zombies than usual)

You can only do one quest at a time for a specific trader, and once you've completed the task, you'll be provided with a reward and experience. What you get can also be improved with relevant skills. 

As you complete more and more jobs, you'll increase the tier of the quests you have access to, raning from tier 1 to tier 6. Completing a tier gives you the location of the next trader in the next biome, as well as a bigger reward.

Getting around

In the beginning, you'll walk and run everywhere. Which is slow and tedious, but fret not! Better modes of transport become available, the first being a bicycle - hey it's better than nothing! You can either craft one, or unlock one by completing the tier 1 jobs with your trader.

Next up, there's the minibike, the motorcycle, 4x4 and ultimately the gyrocopter. These all use gas, which you can harvest and loot in the world, or eventually craft yourself. Each vehicle also comes with storage, something that's very handy if you go out looting!

Loot!

This is a big part of the game! Besides leveling up, finding better gear will pretty much be one of your main priorities! There are weapons, tools, armor sets and mods to go for:

Weapons and ammo

You have the four main types of weapons: Melee, Ranged,Throw-ables and traps.

You can start off by crafting primitive weapons, like pipe-guns and a primitive bow. This can go all the way up to Sniper rifles, SMG's, M60 Machine guns and even rocket launchers. Finding or crafting these is one of the big joys of the game, so I won't spoil too much here! Each can also be modded that can improve things like accuracy, damage, handling etc.

Melee weapons are a big part of the game too, ranging from better reach spears, to heavy hitting sledge hammers, to shocking stun batons. They also all have different tiers in their own right, and they too can be modded :)

Traps can be done too - like spike traps (always handy to have a bunch in your inventory!), blade traps, dart traps and electric fences!

Armor

There are tons of different armor sets you can collect, each giving individual buffs, like better carrying capacity or faster run speed, and when wearing a full set (each set has 4 pieces) provides an additional buff. As with weapons, these too can be modded to improve their stats and give the player buffs.

Tools

Various tools are available. As you need to gather resources, these will come in handy. These are your typical axes, like a pickax, wooden ax, to things like hammers and nail-guns, and even electric tools like augers and chainsaws.

Crafting

This is of course a massive part of the game. Crafting can be done from your inventory for basic things, and then there are several kinds of work stations to unlock and build, like a forge to smelt down iron and lead, a workbench, cement mixer and chemistry station. Some recipes require certain work stations to be able to craft.

And, get this, as a player you have access to everything needed to build any building you see in the game. There are well over 1700 building block shapes you can play around with, and make your base really stand out from the rest! 

Physics is also a thing, you won't find hanging in the air blocks here like Minecraft, here if something isn't structurally sound, the whole building can come tumbling down - speaking of that, you can literally tear down a sky scraper if you want!

The world

The game takes place in a fictional county in America called Navezgane. This is a hand built map you can play on. But wait, there's more! The game has a really extensive random world generator! So each and every playthrough can be completely different and new, and maps can be small or massive! 

100's of hand built POI's exist, from a small tent next to the road, to a massive skyscraper that can take several in-game days to fully explore and clear! And with every minor update, more and more of these get added. You can even use the level editor and make your own, so if you're the creative type and want your own house to appear as an explorable poi in the game, nothing's stopping ya!

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is where the game really shines! Clearing out poi's with friends, and building that ultimate horde base is just the most satisfying thing you can ask for! There are tons of servers to tune into, or you can host your own private games that your friends can join. PVP or PVE or both, go for it! It's a blast for sure!

Modding community

7 Days to Die was built from the ground up with modding support included, and boy has the modding community made some incredible mods. Some popular ones are Darkness Falls and Undead Legacy. Some mods completely overhall the game, while some just introduces quality of life tweaks. 

Each game can also be customized to your hearts' content - want it easier and less hectic, dial down the horde nights to be only every 10 or 20 or 30 days, or turn them off completely. Want a higher challenge, try horde every night! Want progression to be slower or faster? Tweak how quickly you gain experience. The sky's the limit, and if you do hit a limit, chances are there's already a mod for that! 

Conclusion

I keep coming back to 7 Days to Die for a new playthrough. They've just absolutely nailed it on the head! It has everything you want in an open world survival game. Nothing comes close!

9.5 out of 10 for me!

Star Chronicles: Delta Quadrant mini Review

Edit: Full disclosure - since writing this review I've joined up with Jayson and we're now both part of Alister Software. So, when I wrote this I was just writing a review for a friend's game, but now I'm part of the team and actively working on it. Armed with this knowledge, I hope you can still find something useful in my review below:

My good friend Jayson and I have been playing around with the elusive art of Indie Game Development. It all started when Terraria was released, and I learned that it was coded in XNA. That got me to start tinkering around with it as well, and boy oh boy, what an interesting thing it turned out to be!

One of the first major things I realised was that the maths I so hated at school, actually had a place in this kind of programming. Working with sin, cos and tan, and calculating degrees and radians all of a sudden had a real place in my life!

Anyway, I didn't delve too much in it (although I still want to!), but Jayson carried on. A few years ago he started playing around in Unity 3D, and have recently finished his first proper game. It is called Star Chronicles: Delta Quadrant. And for a first title, it's damn fun indeed!

(visit Jayson's blog)

One nice thing about Unity is that you can compile your game for several platforms, including Windows, Linux and Android.

The game is about 2 years in the making, and I know the effort, time and love that went into making it. I was even lucky enough to give some inputs about the game to Jayson, and to help play test it on my PC and phone.

Check this videos out:

The game might look simple at first glance, but there's some deep mechanics at work underneath. First and foremost, it's a turn based game. You have a certain amount of moves, then you hit the end turn button, and the enemies get a go. Secondly, it's Roguelike - you will die often. Thirdly, there are RPG elements present, such as leveling up by gaining XP, finding loot, such as better equipment (like afterburners, long range sensors, bigger shield generators) and weapons (ion pulses, mass drivers, beam weapons and missiles), and earning skill points to improve various aspects of your ship. Lastly, all of this is in a great Science Fiction setting in the Star Chronicles universe (watch this space!).

The main goal is to survive and get stronger, all while searching for a new home world for your people. Each sector (level or stage if you will) has a certain goal, for example kill X amount of enemies, or escape the sector alive, or hack a station for intel, etc. After each sector, the game gets saved, and you have the opportunity to quit to the main menu and assign your newly earned skill points (stuff like making your weapons stronger, or increasing shield capacity or cargo space), and then carry on with your mission.

If you die, you have to start over, but the XP you've earned, along with any skill points, remain.

I really like Delta Quadrant, and it was rather special for me to see my friend write the game from scratch, and see what it really entails doing something like that! The biggest challenge you would think is the coding part, but in my friend's case it was graphics. He is sadly not an artist, but I really think he did an admirable job. The graphics is a little bit on the basic side, but definitely not enough to make it any less fun - the core of the game is absolutely the game play mechanics that Jayson created, and it makes for an excellent time waster that turns many a bathroom break into at least a half hour affair...

To prove to you how much faith I have that many people out there will also find the game enjoyable, I put forth the money needed to get the game on Steam's Greenlight ($100) - and I parted with my money gladly (something I don't easily do!).

Here is a link to the Greenlight Page: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=413705011

And demos can be downloaded from the IndieDB page

Edit: The game is now available on Steam - Buy Star Chronicles: Delta Quadrant on Steam

If you are in any way fans of LITE Roguelikes, Scifi, RPG and turn-based games, you might just like Delta Quadrant as well, so give it a try!

Long distance Wifi networking with Ubiquiti NanoBridge M5

One of my clients had an interesting request - he wanted to share his internet connection to another building about 400 meters away - now this is, I'm sure, a very easy task if you're a wireless network guru, and I thought it would be, for me, quite an undertaking (I was extremely curious on what it would take to set something like that up, that's why I agreed to do it!), but in the end, the hardest part was actually installing the hardware.

After chatting with some experts at one of my suppliers, I decided to buy two Ubiquiti NanoBridge M5's:

Luckily the two buildings have line of sight, and 400 meters isn't that far, considering that they can handle up to 30km according to their the website!

Anyway, after finally mounting both dishes at the two buildings, and more or less pointing them at each other (we just manually aimed them, didn't use any calibrating tools or stuff like that), we were ready to get the stuff talking to each other.

The radio is powered by a POE (Power Over Ethernet) adapter - this then connects with a normal network cable on your network.

And, once that is done, you basically need to connect to the NanoBridge M5 through your browser - out of the box it has a default IP address of 192.168.1.20, so if you want to connect, the PC you're connecting from should have an IP address in the same subnet - I made mine 196.168.1.50.

Connecting to the NanoBridge was as simple as visiting http://192.168.1.20 in your browser - this connects to the NanoBridge's AirOS software - the default username and password is ubnt - good idea to change this as soon as you can.

The first thing I did was to change the NanoBridge's IP address to be the same as the network it's going to be on (in this case it was the 10.0.0.x range).

Here's how to do that - when logged in on the AirOS software, go to the Network tab:

Once there, your screen should look similar to this:

Change the IP address and netmask and gateway IP to be on your own network range - once you're done with that, click the change button at the bottom - note, the changes aren't saved just yet, a blue bar at the top will appear that looks like this:

Hit the apply button to make the actual changes on your NanoBridge - now, if your IP range is different than the default one, you'll have to change your PC's IP settings back to what it was before, so that you can once again access the device.

Note - by default the protocol for the AirOS software is HTTPS and not HTTP - this might cause some weird warnings in your browser. Also, in my case, it caused Internal Server errors with code 500 - to fix that, I changed the NanoBridge to not use HTTPS anymore, and that solved the problem for me - simply go to the Services tab, and untick the Secure Connection checkbox:

Ok, so now to set up the two NanoBridge's - the first one (the one where the internet will be coming from basically) will be set up as an Access Point, and the other one that will be connecting to the AP will be set up as a Station.

Let's do the setup for number 1 first - go to the Wirelss tab, and set the Wireless Mode to Access Point, and be sure to tick WDS (Transparent Bridge Mode) below it. Enter a SSID that is going to be used to identify your network to others (you can choose to hide this if you want).

At the bottom, in the Wireless Security section, ideally you want to secure your network, otherwise anyone can join in!

Set Security to WPA2-AES, and WPA Authentication to PSK. Then, type in a WPA Preshared Key - this is what people will have to type in if they want to connect to the Access Point.

That should do the trick, so hit Change at the bottom, and once again, don't forget to Apply the changes.

Make doubly sure that on the Network tab network mode is set to Bridge.

Now, for the second NanoBridge, we must set that one up as a Station - it's quite similar to the AP settings, but here you'll choose a SSID from a list (if  you hit select, a box will pop up, and scan the surrounding area for wireless networks - simply choose the SSID you typed in on the first NanoBridge from the list):

Remember to enter your Preshared Key at the bottom, otherwise it won't work. Also, make sure this one is on the same Network subnet and IP range.

If you did everything right, you shouldn't have a problem connecting to each other.

My client's network performs very well - to test it, we copied a 1.4 gig file over in about 3-4 minutes - not bad at all (around 40mbps on average!).

I'm super impressed with the Ubiquiti NanoBridge M5, and if you want to set up a longer than normal range wifi connection between two buildings - as long as you have line of sight, this one should do the trick nicely. And the NanoBridge M5 is quite cheap too, in South Africa they go for around R1300 each, and it comes with almost everything you need (all the brackets, you basically just need a pole or something to mount it on of course). No network cables of course, those you'll have to either buy or make up yourself (you'll need 4 in total, 2 for each NanoBridge).

Now, I'm no expert in networking at all (I can set up a LAN and do some basic troubleshooting), but with my limited knowledge and watching a youtube clip or two, I managed to set this up no sweat! A lot easier than I though it'd be!

Android Game Review: Spellfall

It has been a while since I last posted something on this blog, but I have good reason! My son was born on 3 October, and boy oh boy, what a ride it's been! He is also, in part, the reason I started playing Spellfall. On one of the many nights where I was awake at two just after changing so my wife can feed him, I checked out the Google Play store, and discovered this little gem of a game...

Firstly, it is a free-to-play game, but there are real money that you can spend on items and coins, which is the in-game currency.

Personally, I really do not like the whole free-to-play kind of games. Especially when the company charges absolutely ludicrous amounts for an in game item. In the case of Spellfall, there are these fancy weapons you can buy with real money, and they go for around $80-$130! I mean, who in their right mind would ever spend that on an in-game item! There are also things like recharging your health quicker for a dollar, or buying some additional coins to help you buy that nice new rune or armor.

Anyway, it's of course optional if you want to fork out real money for the game or not. I have now played the game for exactly 30 days. I have lots of free "snippets" of time to quickly play a game of Spellfall, and I've actually been able to log in every day. The nice perk about doing that is after 20 days, you get to choose one of the $80 weapons to be added to your arsenal! Miss one day though, and you start all over again...

Another nice feature of the game is you can have 3 different games, or save slots, at a time. That means it's not like other games where if you're dead, you HAVE to wait for your health to recharge before playing some more, chances are very good that one of your other saves will have a fully charged and battle-ready mage with which you can play.

So, more about the game. There is some or other story behind the thing, but I didn't bother to actually read up on it, I was just looking for something to keep me occupied while my boy has his midnight snack and I have to burp him afterwards... Basically, you're a wizard, and you battle these monsters. You have a set amount of turns, in which you can move around tiles on the board to make matches. The tiles available are Gold, Frost, Water, Fire, Poison and Lightning. It's a typical match-3 game, but instead of just being able to swap adjacent tiles, you can move any tile to anywhere on the board - a nice refreshing touch to the genre if you ask me - plus you can set up some crazy combos for massive damage! Once you run out of turns, the enemy attacks you, after which your turn counter resets, and you can go again if you survived the onslaught.

There are two kinds of equipment your wizard can use - armor and a weapon. Each of these have a specific number of slots, into which you can place various runes. I really like the whole runes feature of the game, makes it something different!

You get two kinds of runes, active and passive. Active runes, like Heal and Poison, for example, charges as you match tiles of the rune's colour. The Heal rune charges when you match water tiles, Poison rune when you match poison tiles. While battling the enemy, only one rune can be active for that specific turn, but you can switch freely between them as the battle progresses. This is something to keep an eye on, because sometimes you make a huge combo of a specific colour, and then the rune wasn't equipped and your awesome move didn't charge it.

Passive runes function in the background, and gives you, for example, boosts to your damage, or allows you to drain some health from the enemy and heal yourself.

Runes also levels up, but extremely slowly. After a battle, you earn rune points, which helps your runes level up. The Active runes have 3 levels, and as far as I can tell, for passive runes it varies...

When you equip a new weapon or armor, not all of the rune slots are available from the start, so you have to purchase those slots with coins. Sometimes that can be quite a pricey story, and each slot on the item becomes progressively more expensive...

The game world is divided up in several areas, and your goal is to conquer each one. Don't worry, I've been playing for a month now, and I've only conquered the first 4 areas. It takes a while to go through them, because after each battle you need to wait for a good 30 minutes for your character's health the replenish, but also, this is not a game where I sit and play for hours on end. It's a perfect time waster for me, and that's great!

A nice thing about conquering an area on the map is you can then start earning coins off that area. So every time you log in, you get a quick bunch of coins, which can really help with your upcoming battles!

After conquering the 3rd area, it becomes possible for enemies to slowly start taking over your previously conquered areas again, one stage at a time. For me this keeps it rather interesting.

Getting back to the various items you can get, you have two inventory slots - armor and a weapon. These can have special abilities as well, like a boost in your critical chance, or additional protection against a certain element, or even a chance to score an additional move while playing. Most items have around 5 rune sockets, so you can equip the ruins you've purchased in those sockets, but you need to purchase the slots first like I mentioned earlier...

Anyway, this is my top time waster at the moment (Blocky Road is a close second!). I haven't spent a single cent on the game, and that's how I like it. And I still feel it's unethical to charge such ludicrous amounts for in-game items. Rather charge $3-$5 for the game, and allow you to earn those items in a reasonable way. But, I guess the whole "make the game addictive so people cannot resits spending money for more lives/turns" is a business model that works (sadly) - it's just not one I'm in the least fond of.

Get it for FREE on Android here - I can heartily recommend it, and if I were to assign a score to it, I'd give it a solid 4 out of 5! Reviewed on my Samsung Galaxy Note 3

Product Review: D-Link 1360 Wireless Access Point

We recently moved into a new place, which is quite a bit bigger than our previous place, and our study is on the one end of the house, and our main bedroom on the opposite end. My ADSL router's wireless just doesn't reach our bedroom, and I decided to remedy that by getting the D-Link 1360 Access Point, specifically to use as a wireless signal repeater, which according to their website it can do.

It cost just over R400 here in South Africa, which is around $35-$40 for those interested... Anyway, I opened the box, which has a very short network cable, the power supply, a manual (with 3 pages of English) and the two antennas.

According to the manual, you should connect it via the LAN cable to your PC to do the initial setup - you then access the device by either going to http://dlinkap or 192.168.0.5 - doing that for the first time allows you to do the setup for it - you can select from 3 options - one of which is Wireless repeater, which supposedly boosts an existing wifi signal - the sole reason I bought the device.

I used the manual setup option, and it found my existing wireless SSID without a problem, and I entered my password, and the device rebooted.

The first time, it worked ok. Rebooting takes a good few minutes, and after that, my PC connected to my network via the device wirelessly, so I assumed that it is working.

I powered down the device, and moved it to the living room, which is in the middle of the house, and our bedroom is one room over. Switched it on, and it looked like my phone connected to it without a problem, and it actually worked fine in our bedroom - full signal strength. I was impressed. "Was" is the word I want to put my emphasis on in that sentence. When we turned in for the night, I wanted to connect again, but nothing. It kept saying "obtaining IP address" and just didn't get passed that. It did eventually connect to the wireless network, but I couldn't access the internet, and my Note 3 just kept on saying "your internet connection is unstable". The iPad also connected eventually, but didn't work.

I was tired of struggling with the thing, so I went to sleep, hoping I could figure out the next morning. Once again I tried everything. Rebooting, resetting and setting it up again. It's just not working as it should.

I didn't try to use it as an access point or so, but as a wireless repeater it sucks. It's a useless device, and it seems many other on the internet experiences the same issues (serves me right for not properly researching it before buying).

And I thought the fact that my ADSL router is also a D-Link device would make the two "more compatible" with each other, but no such luck. I even tried updating the firmware from D-Link's site - but my device's version is F1, and they only have options on their site for A, B and C.

So, if you plan on buying the D-Link DAP-1360 to use as a wireless range extender, don't. It doesn't work, even with a lot of fiddling. I'm returning mine.

As for a score, since it is not doing what I want it to, a cool 2/10 (the 2 points was pure generosity from my part, it worked for a few minutes at first...)