Ridiculously ambitious Project Zomboid: Week One mod starts the game seven days before the outbreak

Project Zomboid‘s Build 42 has been a delight so far. Delivering highly requested quality-of-life improvements and features, it’s an excellent step forward and a stellar modding baseline. That’s where the new Week One mod comes into the picture letting you start the game before the zombies rise.

The sheer ambition of Project Zomboid‘s new Week One mod cannot be overstated. Created by Slayer and available via the Steam Workshop, Week One sets you up for seven days’ worth of regular life simulation before the real gameplay loop kicks off. This delivers an entirely different gameplay loop for the early stages of your new Project Zomboid playthrough, and you also get to see NPCs both friendly and hostile and an attempt at simulating a life sandbox early on. The whole thing is far too complex for its own good, but it’s impossible not to enjoy it for what it is. Even if you do need to ignore occasional anomalies, such as instances of NPCs engaging in communal face-washing over the toilet.

Project Zomboid: Week One is utterly broken but infinitely amusing

Crucially, Project Zomboid doesn’t yet have human NPCs as of Build 42. They’re supposed to come out as part of the upcoming Build 43, which makes modded NPCs a remarkable feat of engineering. Week One’s NPCs don’t just exist and walk around, though. They also (attempt to) fulfill their professional duties, drive cars, interact with one another, and even respond to simple player queries. It’s a whole thing!

Playing Week One, you’ll notice postmen walking around the block to deliver mail, policemen patrolling around the neighborhood, hikers exploring the woods, and so on. It feels remarkably immersive at times. Coincidentally, Week One also necessitates a massive suspension of disbelief. Project Zomboid simply isn’t built to simulate regular, non-apocalyptic life. To that end, Week One has to make a bunch of concessions to keep all the NPCs doing what they need to do.

The mod is loaded with custom events that sometimes bug out and lead directly to your character’s death. Simply cussing at NPCs can cause them to pull out a weapon and attack you, and equipping the wrong article of clothing can draw aggro at random. Stealth straight-up doesn’t seem to work, as NPCs are aware of the player avatar at all times, and since Week One also comes with Bandit NPCs integrated by default, it’s not hard to see why this might be a problem.

Many players are having a harder time surviving in Project Zomboid‘s modded civilized society than they do after the zombies start roaming about. I am yet to actually get to the part where the apocalypse begins, but Week One is a hoot regardless.

Week One adds an entirely different gameplay sandbox that plays out regardless of what you do. To call it immersive would be a disservice, at least in the context of Project Zomboid‘s usual jank. As long as you’re okay with just experimenting with NPCs and seeing where that gets you, I cannot recommend the mod enough.

The furthest I’ve gotten in Week One so far is day four, and I can attest to the mod being great at showing how Knox Country is falling apart at the seams in the background. Whereas NPCs do try to keep up their routines for as long as possible, there are more and more accidents, mysterious military interventions, and bandit attacks as days go on. You also can’t really loot whatever you want while there are NPCs around, so you have to keep up with the simulation of “regular” life as well. It’s going to be interesting to see how the zombie infestation spreads from patient zero with this mod and how it transitions into regular Zomboid survival gameplay, but I may well need god mode to survive until then.

Presumably, Slayer will continue delivering improvements and fixes for Week One as time goes on. Just don’t expect all the jankiness to be taken out of the mod anytime soon: Project Zomboid is in a class of its own when it comes to these things, and you really just need to roll with it.