On the heels of the 14th anniversary of Dead Island, developer Dambuster Studios and publisher Deep Silver have released the first apparent teaser for Dead Island 3, or at least some sort of Dead Island 2 follow-up, which is seemingly already in active development or pre-production.
In a Steam post, the developer writes: "It's been 14 years since Dead Island first splattered onto the scene, stranding players in the blood-soaked paradise of Banoi."
Dead Island was first released on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC back on September 6, 2011 in North America, so the initial anniversary has only just passed. Today, September 9, marks the PAL release, though.
"Since then, the zompocalypse has crawled from tropical shores to the sun-drenched chaos of HELL-A in Dead Island 2, where over 20 million Slayers have left nothing but carnage behind," the studio continues.
This is notably 20 million players, not sales. Dead Island 2 is on Xbox Game Pass, for one, which surely accounts for a big chunk of that audience.
"This isn't the final cut though," the teaser concludes. "Dambuster Studios are already carving out what comes next. For now, the details stay under wraps, the outbreak is far from over..."
A Twitter post from the studio, shared by Deep Silver, uses similar, but meaningfully distinct verbiage. "The next outbreak?" the official Dead Island 2 account says. "Dambuster is already drenched in the work. The journey is far from over..."
14 years ago Dead Island made its gory debut. Today, Dead Island 2 has dragged 20 million Slayers into the sunny chaos of HELL-A.The next outbreak? Dambuster is already drenched in the work.The journey is far from over...#DeadIsland pic.twitter.com/W7CuHpK49rSeptember 9, 2025
If the devs are "carving out what comes next" so hard that they're "drenched" in the juice of it all, surely that means the next Dead Island is more than an idea on a whiteboard somewhere. It's worth noting that nobody has actually said the magic words "Dead Island 3" on the record here, but "the next outbreak" implies a bespoke new title, rather than a re-release or spinoff, in my mind.
The teaser art features Dead Island 2 Slayer Jacob hitching a ride along a dusty highway. "When there's no more room in HELL-A," it reads. If the image hides any inkling of where the series is headed next, I sure can't find it, but the series' social media manager suggests there's something there.
"That's a pretty picture we attached to the post huh," the account replied to one inquisitive fan.
Dead Island 2 was released in April 2023 to middling-to-average reception. The fact that it came out at all was a miracle. The sequel had famously spent nearly a decade in delays, bouncing between developers and creative visions.
One former Deep Silver lead reckons the game could've avoided such an exhausting fate if player feedback had been acted on sooner in development.
Dead Island has seen much more than the two mainline games, but most of them are quite bad. Still, the main games are pretty serviceable buffets of zombie slashing, even if the best thing to come from the IP is still arguably that one trailer.
Our Dead Island 2 review was bang-on, for my money, with our own Leon Hurley calling it "a one-note thrill, but it's a note that absolutely sings."
In other zombie-filled fields, Dying Light 2 has removed stamina use from the game's parkour, and I'm just wondering why this wasn't the case all along.
