I return to Project Zomboid exactly like an emaciated survivor crawling back to the undead-ridden town they abandoned many moons ago, having finally exhausted their wilderness stocks of cabbage and duct tape. I poke my head into the Steam forums as though cracking the door on a suspiciously silent mall.

It’s been six whole years since we last wrote a news article about an isometric prepper frightfest that still features on our list of the best PC survival games. (It’s on your list, as well.) Why is now the time to return? Because developers The Indie Stone are about to drop a chonky new version, Build 42, which they are grandly calling “one of the broadest updates in Project Zomboid’s long development history”. For context, the game has been in early access since 2013.

Out 29th July, the Build 42 update has been two years in the making, alongside several smaller, “unstable” (beta) updates. It marks the official debut of animal husbandry, together with revised and expanded crafting and building systems, new and reworked areas, extra backstory to uncover, a posher lighting system, and an overall tidying of the menus and interface. Why, Project Zomboid, you are looking positively hearty, for all your advanced state of decomposition.

“Build 42 has been a huge undertaking for the team, and we are all incredibly grateful to the community for sticking with us: testing, surviving, dying, and then doing it all again, while providing valuable feedback all along the way,” The Indie Stone’s design director Christian Allen comments in a release.

I’m most interested in the new crafting and building elements, which range “from short-term fixes to more ambitious attempts at self-sufficiency”. More details are coming closer to the update’s release. In a Steam post, the devs caution that existing saves on Build 41 won’t be compatible with Build 42. If you want to keep going with Build 41, you’ll need to sign up for the special beta channel “legacy41”.

If you’re new to Project Zomboid, Hayden (RPS in peace) wrote a quick introduction back in 2022, explaining why everything we have ever learned from The Walking Dead is wrong.