Published Oct 11, 2026, 9:00 PM EDT
Hannah covers horror, sci-fi, and games at Collider, where she writes news and features, reviews new releases, and interviews the people who make them. She’s helping build out Collider’s gaming coverage, with Pokémon as one of her specialties. If she isn’t writing about a monster, she’s probably watching one on a tape from her VHS collection.
The Walking Dead has spent years proving that surviving the initial outbreak is only the beginning of the problem. Eventually, someone needs food, the supplies run out, and the supposedly secure place everyone has settled into stops looking so secure. Getting through another day often depends on a decision that seems perfectly reasonable until someone opens the wrong door.
Watching those decisions unfold also makes it very easy to believe you could do better. Surely *you *wouldn’t waste ammunition, leave a perfectly good shelter, or risk everyone’s lives over a supply run that could have waited. Halloween offers a good excuse to test that confidence, especially for viewers who have spent years insisting they’d last longer than the people on television.
Project Zomboid is giving plenty of players that opportunity, recording a 24-hour peak of 64,086 concurrent players on October 9, according to Steam Charts. The Indie Stone’s zombie survival game has also averaged 50,069 concurrent players over the past 30 days. That’s a substantial audience for a title approaching the thirteenth anniversary of its November 8, 2013, Steam release, and it follows an even bigger summer for the long-running survival hit.
Four franchises, four completely different ways of getting underneath your skin. This is the one built out of your particular fear, why it works so well on you, and what it would leave behind.
Your nightmare does not wait outside the door. It waits for you to close your eyes, which you are going to have to do eventually, because nobody has ever won that particular argument.
Your nightmare is not really the doll. It is the face of the person you tell, and the way they decide, very kindly, that you have imagined all of it.
Your nightmare has your number, knows your name, and has almost certainly been inside your house before. The worst part is that you already know them.
Your nightmare is not really about you. It is about the people asleep down the hall, and the feeling that whatever is here is not interested in leaving.
Project Zomboid reached its all-time concurrent peak of 124,506 players in August, when its monthly average climbed above 76,000. Activity has cooled since then, with the rolling 30-day average down approximately 8%, but it remains well above July’s average of roughly 30,000. The October figures show that the game is maintaining a sizable audience after that record-breaking month, even as the initial rush subsides. For The Walking Dead fans, the premise should sound familiar. Set in a zombie-infested region of Kentucky, Project Zomboid asks players to scavenge supplies and establish somewhere safe enough to survive. Hunger and illness can become problems long before a zombie reaches the front door, while the eventual loss of electricity makes getting comfortable a dangerous assumption. A gun can help with an immediate threat, but the noise can also bring more trouble.
Playing with friends adds another complication. Players can survive alone or join others online, turning questions about supplies and safety into decisions everyone has to live with. Knowing when to abandon a plan matters just as much as making one, particularly when another player’s mistake can put the group at risk. Anyone who spent entire episodes questioning Rick’s leadership now has an opportunity to see how their own holds up. The player response remains strong alongside those attendance figures. The game’s Steam listing shows 91% positive reviews over the past 30 days, earning a “Very Positive” recent rating.
Project Zomboid is still available in Early Access, with no announced release date for version 1.0.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
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2010 - 2022-00-00
Frank Darabont, Angela Kang, Scott M. Gimple, Glen Mazzara
David Boyd, Ernest R. Dickerson, Billy Gierhart, Guy Ferland, Laura Belsey, Jeffrey F. January, Michael Cudlitz, Sharat Raju, Alrick Riley, Michael Slovis, Michelle MacLaren, Rosemary Rodriguez, Seith Mann, Tricia Brock, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Daniel Sackheim, Fred Toye, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Jon Amiel, Kari Skogland, Kevin Dowling, Tawnia McKiernan, Larry Teng, Julius Ramsay
Channing Powell, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Glen Mazzara, Jim Barnes, Vivian Tse, Robert Kirkman, Erik Mountain, Evan Reilly, Kevin Deiboldt, Julia Ruchman, Nicole Mirante-Matthews, Nichole Beattie, Eddie Guzelian, Geraldine Inoa, Magali Lozano, Curtis Gwinn, LaToya Morgan, Eli Jorne, Adam Fierro, Frank Renzulli, Ryan Coleman, Jack LoGiudice, Charles H. Eglee