Six years ago, fans of survival games and more specifically, State of Decay fans were excited when the next game in the franchise, State of Decay 3, was announced. The game has been quiet since then, until now, with Undead Games announcing series of playtests will be coming throughout the year, starting next month. The developers have said that the game will be mixing in the best parts of the first two games but it will not be doing some things like zombie animals, something that was shown off in the announcement trailer.
Talking with Sunny Games, Undead Games Studio Head Philip Holt explained the big differences between the announcement trailer and what will appear in the game. As Holt notes, there really wasn’t a game when the trailer was released. Mostly everything was still conceptual at the time.=
“So that trailer – there really wasn’t a game or game team when we were working on that trailer, like, it was so early, there was four or five people” on the project at the time.
“You know, the game was in a Word document,” he adds. “It was really the very beginning of [the] software. The trailer was done by Blur, it was all pre-rendered, it represented, I think, a concept – our thoughts at the time of what might be cool to explore in State of Decay 3. And as we’ve had a chance to build a team and get going on the game, some of those elements I think are gonna persist in the game that we deliver and some of those things are just, like, we’re not doing zombie animals.”
Holt noted that State of Decay 3 will put a bigger emphasis on makeshift survival strategies and repurposing crafting materials to sustain players’ communties. The first wave of playtests will be limited but more opportunities will be available throughout the year.