7 Days to Die is a survival horror video game set in an open world developed by the Fun Pimps.

As a survival game, the player character is in constant need of water and food for sustenance, as well as being vulnerable to injury and illness.

[8][9] While the game includes wildlife that can be hunted for food or will hunt the player, the main hazard is zombies, which are affected by the game's day/night cycle—during the day they are relatively slow-moving and easy targets that can only detect the player at relatively close ranges, but at night they become feral, which makes them move much faster and thus greatly increases their threat.

They are also drawn to areas of human (i.e. player) activity, and will relentlessly attack anything that impedes their movement until they are killed or the obstacle is destroyed, including player-built fortifications.

The game's title is a reference to an important Blood Moon event that occurs every seventh day of in-game time, whereby hordes of zombies and wild infected animals attack the player's current location en masse.

Prior to the game’s events in December 2033, a virus known as the Septdiurnal Virus (SDV) had devastated the United States Of America, a year later in 2034 on January 15th, nuclear weapons were dropped onto major cities in a desperate bid to wipe out the zombies, leading to the Third World War.

The player is a survivor of the apocalypse who must survive by finding shelter, food and water, as well as scavenging supplies to fend off the numerous zombies that populate Navezgane.

[17] Since the Alpha release of 7 Days To Die, there have been multiple major updates containing features such as a new snow biome, forging systems, new weapons, general graphical changes and smoother terrains.

[18] Alpha 9 was released on August 19, 2014, and added random generated worlds, new injuries, new light effects, and new graphics.

[2] Alpha Version 11 was released on April 2, 2015, where the developers updated to Unity 5, which includes many graphical improvements, a new quality range system for guns, weapons, tools and armor and a new Zombie called "Feral".

[22] Alpha 14 was released on March 26, 2016, with further improvements and more features, a lot of bug fixes, as well as some performance and graphic optimizations.

[23] Alpha 15 was then released on October 5, 2016, with major improvements to random generated maps, a trader system, a new difficulty scaling and several more features.

[29] Though the update added a lot of new content, there was some criticism levied against the developers for the game remaining in the Alpha stage almost a decade after its launch.

[32] In late 2022, the Fun Pimps announced that the game will be re-released on consoles targeting PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

On September 21, 2018, Telltale Games abruptly laid off most of its staff due to financial problems,[33][34] and on October 11, 2018, began liquidating its assets through Sherwood Partners.

[35][36] A statement by The Fun Pimps on November 13, 2018, via their official online forum stated "upon hearing the news, The Fun Pimps immediately terminated its license agreement with Telltale, which only allowed publishing rights on the console ports of the 7 Days to Die game."

"[37] The Fun Pimps released a statement on October 16, 2019, stating that the developer had re-acquired the publishing rights to the game.

[4] On November 2, 2022, during an interview on a YouTube channel "Guns, Nerds, and Steel", The Fun Pimps, announced that they hired external developers to port the game to Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.