Open-World Zombie MMO The Day Before Delayed To 2023, Switches To Unreal Engine 5

The open-world MMO survival game The Day Before has been delayed amid a big change for how it's being made. Originally set to launch in June 2022, the game has now shifted to 2023, while developers at Fntastic are now using Epic's Unreal Engine 5 to create the game.

In a statement shared with IGN, the studio said it feels and understands the "great responsibility" of living up to fans' expectations. To that end, development is shifting to Unreal Engine 5 and the game is being push to a new release date of March 1, 2023. The studio said the change to Unreal Engine 5 will allow The Day Before to have gameplay that is "even more fantastic."

The Day Before gives off some major The Last of Us vibes, as we saw in a previous 13-minute gameplay demo. It is set in a post-pandemic America where zombies are a constant danger and the remaining humans are fighting to control what precious few resources remain.

The game has a lot of hype behind it already, as The Day Before is Steam's most wishlisted game.

Developer Fntastic is headquartered in the coldest city on Earth--Yakutsk, Russia. The developers don't all live there, however, as Fntastic is an all-remote studio. The Day Before is not the first large-scale zombie MMO game, as it follows the likes of DayZ, Rust, and others.

The Day Before is not the first 2022 game to be delayed to 2023--check out GameSpot's roundup of delayed games to see more.

As for the Unreal Engine 5, it was officially released in April. There are lots of games in development using the engine, and you can see all of them in the gallery above.