Zombie survival horror games have really become something of an addiction for me. There's been a lot of great releases in recent years that have made this genre as strong and fun as it is today. Of course, along with that, there's been a few duds, but it doesn't take much to look past that and play the games that are compliments to the series, and i'm going to talk about a few of those right now.
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H1Z1 & DayZ
Before I begin, I want to say that I really don't see a whole lot of difference between these two games, which is why i'm including them together. H1Z1 and DayZ are two games that are very complimentary to the series of zombie survival games in the best way possible. Both games are still in early access, so if you're thinking of picking them up, don't expect the greatest. You basically start off in the middle of the map, and your goal is to run around, search for supplies, learn new crafting recipes, and as the genre would suggest...survive. The longer you can survive, the more stuff you can find, and the harder it becomes for zombies to attack you and kill you. On death, you lose your items and you have to start all over. The fun of these games comes mostly from the atmosphere they create. You get a sense of loneliness and as you look around the map, you search houses only to find that the building have been abandoned and are set up in ways where the windows, and doors are all boarded up to keep the zombies away. You keep your hunger and thirst up by eating stale and rotten food and disgusting water and you have to deal with the consequences that will bring, be it food poisoning, or quick dehydration. It's a lot of fun to just sit around and play because I've caught myself spending hours just running around trying to find more loot to better prepare myself for the zombies. And of course, there is a day and night feature which can make the game extremely difficult depending on how well you've managed to survive. Another one of my favorite things is a little bit contradictory to what I said about the sense of loneliness and the atmosphere, but when you're playing with friends, the game becomes a lot more challenging, because you're basically trying to either cooperate with each other and split the loot, or you have those friends who will go off on their own and you kind of race to see who can get the better loot. Certainly a lot of fun to play these games, and ones I've definitely put a lot of time into.
7 Days To Die
I'll just make it easy for this one. If you're interested in playing a game that's a little bit more on the difficult side, and plays in first person mode, and is pretty much like the mirror of DayZ and H1Z1, you should definitely pick this one up. To me, the crafting in this game is a little bit easier to get used to, mostly because it uses some of the same formula as Minecraft does with their crafting. Plus, the zombies seem way more difficult in this game, and this one, unlike the other two mentioned, is more about finding a place to base, and survive as long as you can. Obviously, you go out to other abandoned towns and try to find food and water, but you always want to make sure you have proper shelter, especially since there is a horde mode where the zombies come in packs, and they come quickly. I've got 22 hours of gameplay time logged on this, so it's definitely worth the money if you're interested in a game like this.
Other than that, those are really the only 3 games I can think of at the top of my head that are worth some sort of mention that compliment the zombie survival genre. The thing about this genre though, and maybe it's a bad thing, but I don't really think it is. If you're looking for a unique spin on the genre in a game, you probably won't find it in this genre. It's a pretty basic formula for these games. You survive, you loot, you craft, and you survive more. It's definitely not a fault in my eyes though, because like I said earlier, the atmosphere is what makes the games worth it. But that's just my opinion on it.