The standalone version of the popular Arma 2 zombie survival mod DayZ is expected to enter alpha testing June or later.

Speaking to Joystiq, creator Dean “Rocket” Hall mentioned, “We’re going to review the situation in June, so there’ll be no release between now and June. And we’re quite hopeful that we’ll go then.” He added, “I know that people get really frustrated because they want to play, but I just think this is the best option.”

Hall detailed the team’s excitement to get things just right, explaining that they are taking their time making sure that the new client-server architecture works properly. He also revealed that while he has 25 people currently participating in a small pre-alpha, he wishes to gather a few hundred before opening up the alpha. He explained that keys will be distributed, in batches of 50,000 or so, in a Kickstarter-style fashion, meaning players can purchase other goodies through various, tiered packages.

“We want to release the keys in chunks of what we have servers available,” Hall explained. “The idea is to very, very quickly try to release something out there, because that allows us to start capacity testing. We’ve got one final thing we’re waiting for with the release date, which is the completion of our client-server architecture. It’s basically making the game into an MMO, and pretty much the moment that’s done, we’ll release.”