Overkill's The Walking Dead will get a closed beta next month

Payday developer Overkill's zombie-slaying co-op take on The Walking Dead is due on November 6, but anyone that pre-orders will get access to a closed beta that begins next month, the studio has announced.

For now, a pre-order is the only confirmed route into the beta, which will launch on October 9: if you pre-order the standard edition of the game you'll get one invite, and you'll get four if you stump up for the deluxe edition.

The announcement came in a developer livestream yesterday, which you can watch below. There's also a decent chunk of gameplay on offer, which starts at the 8:30 mark.

As a reminder, each player will control one of the four playable characters, and they all have their own special abilities, skills and story arcs. As well as battling through Washington DC you'll be building and maintaining a central safe zone camp.

From what we've seen in previous trailers, it'll give you plenty of combat options, from stealth and sniping to machetes and boots to the face.

Thanks, VG247.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.