DayZ Standalone gets eight minutes of axey, compassy new footage

I'm reliably informed by my spirit guide Ernest 'Don't Call Me Ernie' Ernie Shackleton that, before the age of iPhones and Sat-Nav and asking people for directions, compasses were once THE way to get around. Seeing as how satellites probably wouldn't work in the zombie post-apocalypse, it seems only right that DayZ's survivors are embracing the humble compass once more, as revealed in this new, eight-minute-long video of the upcoming standalone version. Also featured: the lovely new inventory system, and lots and lots of hitting zombies with an axe.

The DayZ standalone is still in pre-alpha, as mentioned in the FBI-style warning at the start of the video, despite being in development since before dinosaurs walked the Earth. (Alternatively, it only seems like that because of a handful of delays.) Dean 'Dean Hall' Hall and co. rather unreasonably want the game to perform well before they'll slap on the 'alpha' tag and release it into the wild - though if this video is any indication, we might not have too much longer to wait. (Yes, there are bugs present, but they appear to be of the easily-fixable kind.)

Thanks, PCGamesN .

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.