State of Decay 3 wasn't in development when it was announced
, by Thibaut
We have to go back to July 2020 for the announcement of State of Decay 3. After a long silence, the Undead Labs title received a new trailer in June 2024. So it had been almost two years since we'd heard anything about the project.
Last week, State of Decay 3 made headlines again with the confirmation of an “Alpha Playtest” for May. This highly fragmented communication was explained by Philip Holt, the head of Undead Labs, during an interview with Sunny Games.
He clarified that State of Decay 3 simply wasn’t in development at the time the first trailer was released. Only a “Word document” contained the information and ideas about the game.
"There really wasn't a game or game team when we were working on that trailer, like, it was so early."
"You know, the game was in a Word document."
"he 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.".
In fact, the trailer showed infected animals that the player could have tracked down. Ultimately, this will not be the case in the final game.