DayZ hasn't been on Steam Early Access for long, but it's spreading faster than a deadly necrotic infection. According to the big counter on the DayZ site , the multiplayer zombie survival horror game now has 201,514 survivors. It sprang straight to the top of the Steam sales chart minutes after release and, according to a tweet from developer Peter Nespesny, surpassed 150,000 survivors in 24 hours. Oh, and has 34,000 concurrent players on Steam. Blimey.

More then 150,000 survivors in 24 hours after release & 34,235 current players on Steam! #DayZ is going to be #huge ! pic.twitter.com/YTDgVI0cxt December 17, 2013

If you thought that DayZ fervour may have suffered from the long stretch since the release of DayZ mod for Arma 2, nope. It's still an enticing prospect, isn't it? 40 humans and an army of zombies on a huge island, scrambling for survival at each other's expense.

Andy logged in earlier, and found himself confronted by three goons dressed in military gear and wearing clown masks. Armed only with a torch, he was unable to fight back. They handcuffed him, stole his hat and then chased him down with an axe.

Last night I crawled into a village in the dark, scaled the highest point and sat watching the distant torch beams of a dozen other survivors scouring the town and surrounding countryside with their flashlights.

It's certainly an early build, but you can reliably log onto servers now, which is a plus compared to the mod. On the negative side, that ridiculous vaulting animation remains. Evan's been playing it, too, and we'll have detailed impressions up soon. Are you playing DayZ? What do you think so far?