Every Monday afternoon, I get just a little bit excited. At some point during the day I know that an email from the Indie Stone will drop into my inbox and let me know what the Project Zomboid developers have been up to that week. Sometimes it’s news regarding important bug squashing, other times it’s coding developments that I’m not even going to pretend to understand. Occasionally, however, it’s something that gets me all excited. This week was one of those times.

Whilst other survival games brag about adding new monsters or new over-powered weapons to their arsenal, this week the Indie Stone showed work on something I’ve been hoping they’d add for several years. It’s not a new weapon. It’s not a new monster.

No. It’s cocking things up.

Not everyone in life is a parkour master, effortlessly scaling high fences and rooftops without breaking a sweat. Not everyone can run for miles without pause, or dodge nimbly between the trees in a dense forest. No, some people, people like me, will fuck things up.

Many years ago, when I was still in school, I recall the dinner bell ringing and everyone hurrying over for morning registration. Not me, however. No, I was too busy tripping over my own shoe-laces and landing flat on my own face, there in the middle of the playground for the entire school to see.

It’s a moment that’s lived with me for many years. I know if a zombie outbreak were actually to occur, I’d probably be first in line to walk straight into a glass door without first checking it was actually open. Either that, or I’d spend two minutes pulling furiously at a door handle before noticing the sign that says ‘push.’ I’m not scared of zombies – I’m scared of myself. Ironically, this is actually the second time I’ve written this post – the first time I managed to accidentally close the window by mashing an obscure combination of keys I didn’t even know existed. I’m that kind of a guy.

Horror movie aficionados will know that often it’s not the monsters that kill you, it’s your own incompetence. Within Project Zomboid, the Indie Stone are adding the ability to trip over, stumble, run into things and generally mess things up for yourself and I couldn’t be more excited.

You may have designed the perfect safehouse, you may have food to last the decade and ammunition enough to bring down the devil himself, but if you’ve got two left feet? They’ll get you in the end.