Project Zomboid posts striking before-and-after screenshots for Build 42

Project Zomboid developer The Indie Stone has been hard at work on the game’s next major update, Build 42, for years, and it’s finally due to release sometime in 2024. According to the latest development blog post, in fact, it may be coming soon, and it’s loaded with graphical improvements.

Notably, The Indie Stone has explained that Project Zomboid‘s hugely improved crafting system is the last major blocker for Build 42’s unstable candidate release, and that the team has decided to separate the feature into two stages to ensure a timely launch window. “As such we’ve decided it would be a better approach to polish up what we have, and continue the process of bug fixing and polishing the build to the point it would be able to go into the Unstable branch,” says the blog post.

What this means, in effect, is that a portion of Project Zomboid‘s new crafting system won’t be out until Build 43. On the flip side, this will also mean that there shouldn’t be any undue pushbacks for Build 42, which is good news indeed. This shouldn’t be a huge concern, granted, as a massive chunk of the new crafting system will still make it into Build 42, and to spice things up further, we now have an even better taste of some of Project Zomboid‘s upcoming visual glow-up.

Project Zomboid Build 42’s visual improvements are a delight

Certainly, the fact that Project Zomboid‘s Build 42 will both look and run much better is a known quantity. The bit we didn’t know, though, is that The Indie Stone is also working on a comprehensive visual tune-up of the game’s existing locations: “With all the improvement, and the new tiles going toward this improvement, then our existing towns were starting to look a little threadbare. Until now, of course,” says the blog.

To get a sense of just how transformative the upgrade is, check out the old version of Zomboid‘s Muldraugh police station above, and then compare it to the Build 42 version of the same building, featured below:

The lighting and rendering improvements The Indie Stone has promised for Build 42 were plenty exciting on their own, but to see old locations brought back up-to-spec to such an extent is something else entirely. If there was any doubt that Zomboid‘s Build 42 would be a must-play for fans of the game, the featured comparison ought to dispel it.

For more comparisons of the current Build 41 and the upcoming Build 42’s overworld map, be sure to check out the latest Thursdoid blog from The Indie Stone over on Steam. Also featured are some lighting demos, new baggies and boxes, and novelty keychains – because why not?

Now that the inevitable scope creep of Project Zomboid‘s Build 42 has been reeled in, and The Indie Stone has outright mentioned an unstable playable build of the game, it’s obvious that we’re closing in on the update’s release. Any month now…