If you’ve ever wondered how you’d fare when the inevitable zombie apocalypse hits your city, Infection Free Zone aims to put your abilities to the test. Taking the survival game elements of Project Zomboid, DayZ, and 7 Days to Die but transposing the action onto maps based on real-world data, it allows you to turn any location into the setting for your dramatic holdout attempt. Now the game’s second major update has arrived, incorporating a new survivor skill system and the ability to enter and better lock down large buildings.
Lock down a base of operations, deal with friendly and hostile survivors alike, and secure yourself the eponymous Infection Free Zone. It’s everything you’d expect from the best zombie games, but with the added spice of setting it among familiar locales. It’s a great twist and has already landed to a positive reception on Steam since its early access launch in April, and developer Jutsu Games is hard at work on further improvements and upgrades.
The second major overhaul for Infection Free Zone features a few key additions. The first among these is indoor movement, which allows your squads to pass through buildings or, in larger structures, move to specific locations within them. This should give you a lot more freedom to navigate around places that feature bigger structures, and should also make it easier to defend large objects that were previously proving problematic.
Following on from this comes a new skill system for squad members. As they take part in actions such as scavenging, driving, and fighting, they’ll earn a range of additional perks that will make them more proficient in the future, granting them bonuses such as higher chances to find valuable resources or improved weapon accuracy. There’s also a new polearm weapon that gives your survivors more of a range advantage.
Scavenging has been boosted, with a rework to vehicle scavenging that allows you to assign a group to a vehicle and move them together between buildings. The potential results have also been improved for cases where you encounter locations with a high number of resources.
There are plenty more adjustments to be found elsewhere, including a map info panel, a mood visualization, a ‘repair all’ option for buildings or structures of a matching type, buffs to the defensive capabilities of various walls, and new building types including bars and a kindergarten. You can also adjust your difficulty setting without needing to start a new game.
If you’ve made it through the hordes, here are more of the best survival games to test your mettle. For plenty of other free-form creative playgrounds, the best sandbox games are the place to be.
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