State of Decay 3 was among the few surprising reveals during the Xbox Games Showcase. We’ve been waiting years to hear, or see, well, anything from the zombie survival management sim since the moment it was initially announced – which was nearly six years ago.

And because that 2024 CG trailer doesn’t count, developer Undead Labs knew it needed to wow those of us hungry for information with some honest-to-godness gameplay. And that’s what we got.

Following the gameplay debut, creative director, Kevin Patzelt, revealed some more details in an interview with Xbox Wire. To begin with, Patzelt confirmed that 100 percent of the trailer’s footage was captured in-game, though some angles were adjusted for effect. In fact, those over-the-shoulder shots show what you’re going to see when you play.

For a game that’s been in development as long as State of Decay 3 has, the developer understandably wanted to prove it ‘exists’ by going all-out with a gameplay trailer.

“In this trailer, it was important to knock people’s socks off with the quality of the game,” said Patzelt.

“The other thing I’d like players to notice is the quality bar of the moment-to-moment experience is higher than anything we’ve achieved in Undead Labs’ history,” he added.

“State of Decay 3 is being built in Unreal Engine 5, and we’re creating better quality versions of what makes our game the survival sandbox it is, and the combat experience is really, really important to us, and I think you can see it coming through in this trailer.”

As anyone who played those games will tell you, of course, combat is only a small part of the equation. The real depth comes from the resource management, settlement building and maintenance, and the crew and community TLC elements. Those are present, and will be shown in due course.

Speaking of which, settlement building and management get major upgrades in State of Decay 3. Co-op players now have the ability to share the same tasks, and set out on a shared goal. Or, they can exist in the same world, each doing their own thing in different corners of the map.

This level of untethered co-op is a big upgrade for the series, and it allows for contributions from multiple players to be tracked simultaneously, all without affecting individual goals.

The biggest new addition, however, has to be the shared world, which gets us ever closer to the ultimate goal of turning the series into an MMO. The shared world is the evolution of co-op, an environment where any player can affect the world: make changes to the facilities, build new settlements (up to three) and so on. That work can even be done asynchronously, in much the same way you might find in other online survival games like Rust, essentially giving multiple players access to the same save.

As for when we can actually get our hands on it, Patzelt revealed that there’s already been a limited alpha test. The studio is understandably mainly focused on a small, core group of longtime players at this time, but the alpha will expand to more players in due course. There’s also going to be a beta at some point prior to launch sometime in 2027, which Patzelt clarified is what the studio is currently aiming for.

State of Decay 3 is in development for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.