DayZ designer Dean "Rocket" Hall to speak at Rezzed

It's been called a lot of things already. Perhaps it's the best zombie game ever made. To others it's an increasingly rare Actual New Game. Playing it is nothing if not memorable. All this and DayZ is still in alpha.

Come along to Rezzed in a couple of weeks and you can hear from designer Dean "Rocket" Hall and Matt Lightfoot how this multiplayer mod for ArmA 2: Combined Operations has become the hottest thing in PC gaming in 2012.

Dean and Matt's DayZ developer session will take place on the second day of Rezzed, Saturday 7th July, at 2pm, and you can expect a mixture of development anecdotes and thoughts about the future. For those who haven't played it, we'll also have DayZ on the show floor so you can get your head around it.

In short though, it's a post-apocalyptic survival sim where you start on the beach of ArmA 2's massive island state of Chernarus with little to keep you going (a recent patch even removed a pistol as a spawn item). DayZ tasks you with staying alive despite the attentions of a roaming zombie population and the unpredictability of other human players.

It's the latter, combined with each character's persistent state - meaning you can log off and then the next time you log on you'll be in the same position, whichever server you choose - that makes DayZ so exciting. You may be bleeding profusely and stagger into a barn only to find a couple of other human survivors. Will they help you or will they shoot and rob you? When every inch of existence has to be fought for, and with human nature being what it is - especially on the internet - you just don't know.

Rezzed: The PC and Indie Games Show takes place on Friday 6th and Saturday 7th July at the Brighton Centre in Brighton. Tickets are available at www.rezzed.com.

We've still got a few big things to announce, but in the meantime we've already confirmed a huge range of playable blockbuster (Borderlands 2, Far Cry 3) and indie (Krater, Natural Selection 2) games, developer sessions from the likes of Gearbox Software boss Randy Pitchford and Introversion, and a huge indie arcade full of obscure curios like McPixel and QRTH-PHYL.

Oh, and everyone who attends will receive a free Dota 2 beta key after the show.

We're having a party and everything. It's going to be amazing. Come!