Steam’s most wishlisted game has been delayed until 2023

You may not have heard of the open-world survival MMO The Day Before, but somehow it’s made it to the top of Steam’s most wishlisted games list, ahead of games such as Starfield and Hollow Knight: Silksong. Originally due for release on June 21st, developers Fntastic have now told IGN that the game will arrive on March 1st 2023 due to development shifting over to Unreal Engine 5.

Announced in January last year, The Day Before looks a lot like your typical open-world zombie survive 'em up. You’ll be jogging about, picking up supplies and offing its wandering brain-eaters. It all looks very The Division 2, so it will be interesting to see how its MMO elements make it stand out compared to Ubisoft's live service game.

In a statement about the game’s delay, developer Fntastic and publisher Mytona said that since "millions of people" have added The Day Before to their Steam wishlists, they now feel a "great responsibility" to deliver on their original premise. "The transition to a more advanced and adapted open worlds engine, will make the gameplay of The Day Before even more fantastic," they said.

Survival games seem to be Fntastic's bag, as they also made an Alaskan wilderness simulator that's not The Long Dark, called The Wild Eight. Brendy cooked a lot of mushrooms in it back in 2017. It’d be nice to see a post-apocalyptic America that starred Bigfeet or Loveland frogs occasionally pop up, though zombies are more shootable for this kind of thing.

The visuals already look pretty pleasant - Nvidia released a 4K ray tracing trailer for it back in January this year - but given what we've seen of other Unreal Engine 5 games, the change in engine could work wonders for it. Expect a graphical zhuzh when The Day Before is next shown off.

To find out more about The Day Before, you can, of course, visit its Steam page. If you’re among the wishlist-happy, then you can see that longing fulfilled when The Day Before launches in March next year.