I am aware that what I will suggest below is extremely unimportant and unnecessary and I'm totally OK if nobody agrees with me, but I'm gonna post anyway!
Whenever I start a new game, I always play with the Normal settings the first time. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but that would be the setting the developers used throughout the development, so is how the developers wanted the game to be played, so to speak.
When the user starts a New game in Project Zomboid (v40.43), this is what he sees:
Obviously in PZ's case, the normal setting would be Survival, thanks to the "The Recommended Zomboid Experience" part.
I worked as an UI/UX developer before, and for me, there's nothing wrong with this screen. It is all very detailed and well explained, in simple phrases.
But I will suggest this not based on my personal preference, but thinking at the larger audience that is all the past and future Zomboid players.
The three classics difficulties could fit like a glove in here (again, I don't know if would be the desired since the game targets a specific audience that probably doesn't care about this):
Easy > One Week Later + Easy starting conditions
Normal > Survival + Normal starting conditions
Hard > Six Months Later + Hardcore starting conditions
Instead of having the Tutorial as a different type of new game, it could be just a checkbox "Skip tutorial", not checked by default.