Bohemia Interactive

Zombie-infested survival game DayZ has become one of the biggest surprise hits on PC, despite lacking what might be called a complete experience. It's spent longer in an "early access" pre-release state than almost any other game on Steam, but as announced at E3 2015, those days will soon be coming to an end.

After spending more than a year and a half in early access, lead producer Brian Hicks has revealed a new lease of life for the open world epic: the "feature complete" version of the game will be available later this year. What that rather nebulous term means is that before 2015 is out, DayZ will finally have everything in place to be considered a full game, offering players a complete experience in one package.


One of the biggest changes that will come with the full version is the introduction of a single player campaign. At present, the game drops you into a shared online world in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Survival of the fittest is the maxim of the day -- other players are often more terrifying than the walking dead. While this is great for tension, it also makes the game increasingly difficult to get to grips with for newcomers. A solo mode -- described by Hicks as also good for if your internet goes down -- could help address this, giving newcomers the skills they need to scavenge and survive. It will also launch with a trio of vehicles to use, and more importantly the materials necessary to salvage them.

Yet this is no dumbing down exercise. Although "feature complete" DayZ will be more accessible, it will also offer a host of new features aimed at the more dedicated player. The solo mode will be fully moddable, and allow you to test out fan-made tweaks offline before trying to get them to work online. Bohemia will also "fully embrace" the Steam Workshop, encouraging players to make and share their own creations for the game, and deliver tools to allow users to host their own private servers and ultimately have "more control" over the game.

It's a fitting move -- after all, DayZ began life as a mod itself. Created by New Zealander designer Dean "Rocket" Hall in 2012 as a mod for Bohemia's military shooter Arma II, its grim realism and freedom to act on your darkest impulses attracting legions of fans. Set in the fictional post-Soviet state of Chernarus, players have to scavenge to survive, often turning on other players in order to steal items. It emphasises realistic health and fatigue damage, even forcing you to combat hunger and thirst.

Hall announced that Bohemia Interactive was taking over for the standalone version of DayZ only eight months after the mod version launched, when maintaining the increasingly popular title became too much for the one-man team. Although he stayed on as project lead for a time, he left in 2014 to form his own studio, RocketWerkz. Since then, Bohemia has continued refining the game.

Hicks revealed that the continued delay to the full version since then was a result of developing the game's engine in tandem with the game itself, and that future updates should be faster as a result of overcoming that hurdle. However, he also said that the full DayZ will effectively be the beta release for the game, with more tweaks to come in response to player feedback.