Why Early Access?

“WARNING: Dead Matter will contain bugs and other unpolished features that can drastically alter your experience while in Early Access. Please take this into account when you are buying the game. Otherwise, we strongly suggest you pick up a copy later if you are seeking a more refined experience.

Launching Dead Matter in Early Access is a crucial step in our development process. While we have achieved what we feel is the very bare minimum for a zombie survival game of this scope and scale, we believe that the journey towards creating a truly immersive and realistic zombie survival game is a collaborative process between us, the developers, and you, the players.

Entering Early Access allows us to share our vision with a wider audience and gather feedback that is essential for fine-tuning the game mechanics, fixing bugs, and shaping the future development of Dead Matter. It provides us with the opportunity to test the game in real-world scenarios, with a diverse range of players, hardware configurations, and play styles.

Our goal is to create a zombie survival game that strikes the perfect balance between immersive gameplay and realistic mechanics, while maintaining the delicate balance of simulator vs game. By entering Early Access, we are committing to an ongoing process of iteration, feedback, and improvement, to ensure that Dead Matter evolves into the best possible version of itself.

Your support and feedback during this phase will be invaluable in helping us to identify and prioritize the most important features, fixes, and improvements. Together, we can create a zombie survival game that sets a new standard for the genre.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“We’re planning to keep Dead Matter in Early Access for 36 months. This timeline is not a deadline, but rather a rough estimate based on our current development pace and the scope of the features we plan to implement. As developers, we are incredibly proud of the progress we have made so far, but as players ourselves, we understand the immense amount of work required to build a game of this magnitude and complexity.

Our team is extremely small, and while this allows us to maintain a tight-knit and focused development environment, it also means that progress can sometimes be slower than we would like. We are committed to taking the time necessary to develop Dead Matter to its fullest potential, without compromising on quality or rushing to meet arbitrary deadlines.

During the Early Access period, we will be releasing regular updates to improve the game, add new features, and respond to feedback from the community. Our goal is to use this time to refine and expand Dead Matter based on your feedback and our own internal testing.

We believe that this approach will result in a more polished and enjoyable final product, and we are grateful for your support and understanding as we embark on this journey together.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“We aim to achieve the following feature-set by the time we exit Early Access, in additional to providing a full release version that is free from bugs, graphical glitches and performance issues.

• Completed 15km x 15km map with various regions and locations for players to explore in.
  
• Modding and Steam Workshop support.
  
• Polished experience with all Early Access features working correctly, without bugs, hitching, performance issues, etc.
  
• Large scale multiplayer support aiming to support 128 players.
  
• Fully fleshed out zombie behavior, and optimizations to allow servers to always simulate some sort of data for every single agent across the world map.
  
• Additional crafting recipes
  
• Additional jobs and storylines for the player to experience.
  
• Random encounters system, breaking up the monotony of exploring a large world.
  
• Editable appearance in Character Creation, including the ability to edit facial features, hair color and eye color.

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What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Our current version of the game is rough, but you will be able to get a taste for what Dead Matter aims to bring to the table.

• 6km x 6km slice of our world map.
  
• Basic 4 wheeled vehicles such as cars and trucks.
  
• In-Depth Medical System
  
• 2d grid based inventory with containers, pouches, and a unique way to equip items.
  
• Fight against hundreds of zombies at a time.
  
• Claim various buildings throughout the map to barricade and defend.
  
• Tents can be placed in world and used for storage.
  
• Craft various items utilizing our crafting system.
  
• Character Creation that allows you to select your former occupation along with some perks, detailing your characters life before the world slowly slipped into madness!

There are many bugs and issues that you're likely to encounter, and some systems such as the vehicles and base claiming / building.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“The Early Access version of Dead Matter will be at a lower price point to reflect its current state. We will be incrementing the price of the game periodically and participating in minimal sales throughout Early Access.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“We are going to be providing access to our nightly development branch and engage with our community directly on our forums, the Steam forums and our Discord server.

Feedback from the community is extremely valuable to us and we would not be able to launch Dead Matter into Early Access in any shape or form without the feedback loop of nightly builds and direct community engagement.

Ultimately, we believe that no developer has yet built the ultimate first-person zombie survival game, and that has lead to a coherent yet fragmented vision that is held by people passionate about the zombie survival genre. We aim to collect feedback, curate it and innovate using the information provided to us.”