The Big Glow Up: Project Zomboid 42.20 hits stable branch July 29

Project Zomboid's Build 42.20, "The Big Glow Up," reaches the public stable branch this Wednesday, July 29. The update pushes the Knox Event Exclusion Zone far beyond the Unstable beta: the Kentucky setting has been heavily expanded and reworked, with rebuilt towns and a map that has doubled in size since Build 41. The stable plan post goes into the full rollout details.

Seven towns are entirely reworked in 42.20: Riverside, West Point, Rosewood, Fallas Lake, Muldraugh, Ekron, and Dixie. They follow the new map standards:

• Each town has its own idiosyncratic style.
• All buildings and houses are unique.
• Landscaping between buildings is consistent.
• Unique tiles are used where needed.

These standards grew out of the Unstable period's western expansion, which added Brandenburg, Ekron, and Irvington. Art Director Ayrton Orio says the positive reaction to Unstable triggered an enlarged art team and the much broader overhaul arriving now.

Other locations to find include an abandoned orphanage, an entirely new prison, a revamped logging compound, and a boy scout camp.

• The map's surface area doubles compared with Build 41.
• 1,400 new unique buildings.
• 20,000 new tiles, bringing the total to 35,000.
• 400 procedural basements and 75 unique basements.
• Hundreds of posters and wall decorations, light overlays for any light source, snow overlays, burned tile variants, 30-degree roofs, more window types, and new crafting tiles.

Some current Challenge maps leave the rotation for now, while "A Really CD DA" and "Winter is Coming" return with improvements. Two new challenges are available:

• "Top of the World" starts you at the top of a skyscraper.
• "28 Seconds Later" drops you into a world full of sprinting zombies.

The Unstable branch's menu art was removed after players spotted AI-generated artifacts. Since then no AI has been used in the art processes, the team says, and 42 stable will launch with a new title screen in Project Zomboid's "rendered style" — the same look used on in-world flyers, newspapers, and leaflets. It is the first iteration of a main menu the team plans to improve further alongside the spawn map and front-end UI.

Orio discusses the map's future and his art-director role in an interview with MrAtomicDuck; new Design Director Christian Allen was recently interviewed as well.