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Zeverland is not out. There is no release date, no price and no open build. Everything anyone has played was one of two closed pre-alpha tech tests, and both were wiped in full at the end. That makes a conventional beginner's guide impossible to write honestly, so this page covers two things instead: how test access has worked, and what the opening hours actually contained when the game was playable.
How Access Worked
Both tests were gated and both were small. The first was covered by a non-disclosure agreement that forbade public screenshots, video and streams. That agreement was lifted for the second test, so footage from mid-2026 exists publicly while footage from November 2025 does not.
Test | How access was granted | Dates |
|---|---|---|
Applications through a Discord form from 1 to 4 November 2025 for 200 or more testers. Results on 7 November, Steam keys by direct message on 13 November. Selection weighted gaming experience and hardware | 14 to 17 November 2025 (UTC+8) | |
Extra slots | Twenty additional slots were added at the November 2025 wishlist milestone, split ten and ten across different platforms by region | November 2025 |
Sign-ups from 12 to 18 June 2026 with codes sent from 22 to 24 June. Launch day ran a hundred slot lottery that drew over a thousand applications, after which access was opened to anyone meeting the hardware requirements | 25 June to 2 July 2026 (UTC+8) |
There is no announced route into a third test. On 3 August 2026 the studio said the next playtest date had not been finalised and that it was heading into a long stretch of heads-down development, framing the choice as one more week of testing meaning one less week of building content. Announcements for both previous tests went out through the Steam page and the official Discord, which remain the places a future call would appear.
The Hardware Bar
The current store listing asks for Windows 10 64-bit, an Intel Core i7-9700, 16 GB of memory and a GeForce GTX 1650 at minimum, rising to an i7-13700K, 32 GB and a GeForce RTX 3060 as recommended, with 64 GB of storage either way. The figures published for the first test in November 2025 were a separate, test-only set: 16 GB of memory, a GeForce RTX 3060 or Radeon RX 5700 XT, and 40 GB of storage. System Requirements keeps the two apart. During the second test the studio also warned that NVIDIA drivers numbered 32.0.15 or older could crash or freeze the game, recommending 32.0.16.1047 or newer.
The Opening Minutes
The first test dropped players at random spawn points on a procedurally generated map, which meant no fixed starting town and no shared opening route. The immediate loop was the survival one: find water, find food, find something that can be swung, and start taking objects apart. Survival Needs were tuned harshly in that build, with hunger, thirst and stamina all draining faster than testers expected, and the studio's stated fix was to lower base consumption as a character progresses.
The second test had a harder opening than intended. Its first main story quest sat on the far side of an infected zone, and players died repeatedly trying to reach it without a gas mask or antidote; Infected Zones covers the protection those areas require. The first test had a comparable problem in a different shape, an opening boss that effectively required a team, which the studio promised to weaken while pointing new players more clearly toward mining.
Menus and Keys Confirmed So Far
Control | What it does |
|---|---|
U | Opens the Shelter and Team menu. Players in the same shelter share their home location and see each other's live positions and mission progress |
Ctrl | Held to multi-select items for bulk dismantling. See Crafting and Modification |
ESC | Opens the menu carrying Feedback, Report Issue and Player Survey, which were the official routes for test feedback |
Self-Terminate | An in-game button for escaping a character that has become stuck |
The first test shipped without in-game voice or text chat of any kind, so co-ordination happened outside the game. Buildable communication devices such as radio stations and PDAs, and voice channels organised by language, have both been announced since but neither has been reported as shipped.
What Carried Over
Nothing. Both tests were wiped in full: no progression, items, recipes, structures, territory or companions survived, and no balance figure from either build should be read as the finished game's. The studio put the state of the game at about twenty percent of the full plan in November 2025 and has warned more than once that the build does not match its trailers.