'There wasn't really a game or team' when Undead Labs made the now-5-year-old State of Decay 3 reveal trailer: 'The game was in a Word document'

When we saw State of Decay 3's announcement back in 2020, which centered around the hunt for a zombified deer, we naturally assumed that it hinted at undead wildlife. It became a focal point in the weeks, months, and years since, given the previous games didn't feature any animals at all.

But, in an interview conducted by YouTuber Sunny Games, Undead Labs' Philip Holt revealed that "there really wasn't a game or a game team when [the studio was] working on that trailer, it was so early…The game was in a Word document."

Instead, the trailer, created with the help of visual effects and animation studio Blur, was all pre-rendered and it represented "a concept of [the team's] thoughts at the time of what might be cool to explore" in the sequel. "As we've had a chance to build a team and get going on the game, some of those elements I think are going to persist in the game that we deliver and some of those things are just, like, we're not doing zombie animals."

"No zombie deer!", Holt reiterates, long after it's become a fascination in the community. It's a shame, as it had me pretty excited about the idea of zombified wildlife, and that's not in the cards anymore—it never really was.

Nevertheless, this awkward situation surrounding State of Decay 3's reveal makes more sense when considering previous reports about goings on at Undead Labs. For one, the developers reportedly didn't plan to announce the project back in 2020, but Microsoft had requested trailers from key studios as it paved the way for the Xbox Series X/S to launch: “We didn’t want to announce the game because we didn’t even know what it was at that point,” said a developer.

After six years of radio silence, State of Decay 3 is closer to being an actual game, though it's evidently still a while away. Undead Labs has announced sign-ups for an alpha playtest, finally giving fans an early look at the game. There'll be no undead animals, of course, but it will feature four-player co-op, "some new base building and resource strategies," and plenty of combat.