DayZ
In the online survival game DayZ you spawn on the map in plain clothes with a glow stick, a bandage and a piece of fruit. You search houses for food, water and weapons, and you fend off zombies and other players.
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The game came from Dean Hall, a New Zealand soldier. During survival training in the jungles of Brunei he ran out of food. He ended up trying rotten fish and ferns and lost about 25 kilograms.
Hall wanted games to prepare soldiers for the emotions waiting for them, but army leadership showed no interest. So he added zombies and released it to everyone as a mod for the shooter Arma 2. By August 2012 the mod had more than a million players.
The standalone game spent almost five years in early access, until December 2018.
Critics were harsh at release. One reviewer liked the stories the game creates on its own but not the twitchy shooting and buggy zombies. Several reviewers faulted the PS4 version for technical problems. Players leave 78% positive out of 390,662 reviews; critics give it 31 on Metacritic. By our Recommended Score it is #3,533 of 4,736 games.
Liked it? Try Rust, which its creator says started as a DayZ clone, and Unturned, a zombie survival game Nelson Sexton released in 2014, at sixteen.
Major updates
DayZ Badlands Expansion is Out Now! · Oct 2026All 5
System requirements
Minimum GTX 760 · 8 GB RAM · 25 GB✕Steam Deck UnsupportedMin & recommended
| Minimum | Recommended | |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 / 11 64-bit |
| Processor | Intel Core i5-4430 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Six-Core | Intel Core i5-6600K or AMD R5 1600X |
| Memory | 8 GB | 12 GB |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 or AMD R9 270X | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD RX 580 |
| DirectX | 11 | 11 |
| Storage | 25 GB | 30 GB |
From the game’s Steam store page.
