Forget ‘The Walking Dead,’ This Zombie Survival Nightmare Is Officially Taking Over

Image via AMC 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. Sign in to your Collider account 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. Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Is Your Biggest Horror Nightmare? Elm Street · Chucky · Scream · The Conjuring Four horror franchises. Four completely different ways of scaring you. One waits until you fall asleep. One makes sure nobody believes you. One is already in your group of friends. And one is in the house with your family. Answer eight quick questions about how you actually watch horror, and find out which nightmare was built for you. 😴Elm Street(Freddy Krueger) 🧸Chucky(Child's Play) 📞Scream(Ghostface) 🕯️The Conjuring(The Warren Files) FIND YOUR NIGHTMARE → 01 Which horror scene makes you cover your eyes? Four classic images. One of them is worse than the others for you. ASomebody falling asleep when they really should not. BA toy that has moved, and nobody touched it. CA phone ringing in an empty house. DA child talking to somebody who is not there. NEXT QUESTION → 02 You are home alone and you hear a noise. First thought? Everybody has one. It arrives before you have decided anything. AI am exhausted and my mind is playing tricks on me. BSomething in this room is not where I left it. CSomebody is in here with me. DThis house has never felt entirely right. NEXT QUESTION → 03 Which horror movie rule would you break first? Everybody thinks they would survive. Almost nobody actually does. ANever fall asleep. BNever leave it out of your sight. CNever answer the phone. DNever go down to the basement. NEXT QUESTION → 04 Something genuinely frightening happens. What do you do? Not in a film. In your actual living room, tonight. AConvince myself I imagined the whole thing. BTell someone, and brace for them not believing me. CWork out which person I know could be behind it. DGet everybody in the house into one room. NEXT QUESTION → 05 How do you actually watch a horror film? Be honest about this one. Nobody is checking. AFine during. Wide awake at two in the morning. BShouting at the screen that nobody is listening. CCalling the twist out loud before it lands. DThrough my fingers, holding on to something. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Somebody offers you serious money. Which do you still refuse? The amount does not matter. There is one on this list you are not doing. AFall asleep in a room I have never been in before. BKeep an old doll on the shelf facing my bed. CAnswer every unknown number that calls after midnight. DSpend one night alone in a house with a history. NEXT QUESTION → 07 Which feeling stays with you a week after the film? Good horror does not stop when the credits do. ANot wanting to turn the bedroom light off. BNot trusting one particular object in my house. CLooking twice at people I have known for years. DFeeling like something came home with me. NEXT QUESTION → 08 Something wakes you at 3am. What is the worst possibility? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your nightmare. AThat I am still asleep, and it knows it. BThat the thing nobody believed me about is here. CThat somebody with a key is downstairs. DThat something is in the doorway, watching us sleep. REVEAL MY NIGHTMARE → The Lights Just Went Out Your Nightmare Is…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. Elm StreetYour 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. Freddy is horror's cruellest idea: a threat that lives in the one place you cannot guard, cannot lock, and cannot avoid forever. You are the one who is fine during the film and wide awake at two in the morning. Your own head is where this does its damage. These films understood exhaustion as a horror engine. The kids on Elm Street do not lose because they are weak. They lose because they are tired. You can lock every door in the house. You still have to sleep. ChuckyYour 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. Chucky works precisely because he is absurd. That is the trap: the more accurately you describe him, the less anybody is going to believe you. You are the one shouting at the screen because the characters are not listening. You know that feeling from real life too. The franchise is at its best when the adults in the room are the real obstacle, and you have met those adults. By the time somebody finally believes you, you will have handled most of it on your own. ScreamYour 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. Scream is the only one of these where the killer takes the mask off and turns out to be somebody who was at the party. You are the person who calls the twist out loud before it lands. You watch people the same way you watch films. The franchise made the rules of horror part of the plot, which means the survivors are the ones paying attention. You would be paying attention. Everybody is a suspect, including the person who just offered to walk you home. The ConjuringYour 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. The Conjuring films are domestic horror. The house, the family, the perfectly ordinary room that quietly stops feeling ordinary. Your instinct is to get everybody into one room. Your fear is protective rather than personal, which is rarer than it sounds. This is the one franchise where belief is the weapon. The people who come through it are the ones who are not alone and refuse to be. Whatever is here did not come for you. It came for the household, and you are the one standing in the hallway. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ ‘Project Zomboid’ Is Still Drawing Huge Crowds Ahead of Halloween Image via The Indie Stone 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. Release Date 2010 - 2022-00-00 Network AMC Showrunner Frank Darabont, Angela Kang, Scott M. Gimple, Glen Mazzara Cast Melissa McBride Carol Peletier Directors 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 Writers 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 Franchise(s) The Walking Dead