DayZ creator Dean “Rocket” Hall has confirmed that a small-scale alpha of DayZ Standalone – the separate version of his popular ARMA II zombie mod – has started, with a public alpha still planned to begin in June.

In a lengthy interview with Gamasutra, Hall mentioned that the limited alpha test is already underway.

“We gave free keys as a gift to the forum moderators, the Reddit moderators, people who helped out with DayZ development, and stuff like that. I guess there’s about 30-100 people involved with that,” Hall said.

When asked if they testers have started playing yet, Hall said, “They’re already in. They’re already playing it. It’s good… We’re only running one server. We are doing content updates all the time.”

The public alpha is still on track for June, he added.

DayZ Standalone will use a Minecraft-esque payment model: “People pay X amount of dollars and they get early, cheap access to it, and then once it’s beta, price goes up, maybe, say, $10, and once it goes retail, the price goes up $10.”

Standalone has no release date.