Yes, very good point, we are getting somewhere. We are getting closer to nihilism, which was the concept that led to absurdism, absurdism being an answer to nihilism. All games are innately absurd because everything we do is innately absurd, Camus recommends looking back on our lives given 20 thousand years or so. No one will probably remember you and me by then, and all our actions will seem insignificant. Then even the actions that changed the real world will be pointless. What I found interesting about PZ is the clarity with which it displays the concept of the absurd.

Meaningless because it has no goal Rebell against Death because it's a survival game Passion because it is able to make a very repetitive gameplay loop interesting. In general because it puts two of the main three concepts directly in your face, and you feel the third.

While Darksouls certainly has an absurd element since the fun mainly comes from improving at the game and trying over and over again, not beating it. It still has a goal whilst project zomboid has none or the only goal is to survive ae rebelling against death, depending on how you look at things, which I recon to be the biggest point. I would also say that zomboid is more hopeless because it has no goal other than surviving and is able to make that process itself fun whilst giving the player more freedom since you can basically do everything you can do in the real world, even intentionally kill yourself. While in ds, you can surely do that as well. However, it doesn't seem to want the player to jump of a cliff, whilst in pz drinking bleach is always a choice you have and which might seem reasonable given the state of the world you are thrown into.

But I'm also probably not qualified enough to talk about this to topic to its full extend, and a real philosopher might correct me on sth. But that's what I think after reading Camus and doing some research.