I hope you’ve got your mop ready, because Killing Floor 3 has officially announced its release date. Tripwire Interactive’s zombie-blasting sequel will slop wetly on your PC in two month’s time: The studio revealed the game’s release date on its X channel, simply stating ‘The battle begins on March 25’.
You might be able to get hands-on with Killing Floor 3 sooner than that, however, as Tripwire simultaneously announced dates for a closed beta test. This beta will start on Thursday, February 20, and run through the weekend until February 24. You can sign up for the beta test on the Killing Floor 3 website here. At the time of writing, the site still says the dates for the closed beta are “TBD”. But don’t be confused, it’s happening in Feb.
Tripwire released a brief new trailer to accompany the two announcements, which you can view above. It doesn’t show a vast amount that’s new, although I did sit up slightly at the forearm-mounted grenade launcher that appears 17 seconds in, since the only way to improve a grenade launcher is to physically attach it to your person. It also gives an unpleasantly close look at some of its zeds, the highlight being the walking hotdog filled with teeth that assaults the player at the end.
We’ve kept a close eye on Killing Floor 3 since it was revealed back in 2023. Jake got hands-on with the sequel last year, where game director Bryan Wynia revealed Killing Floor 3 would be less frantic than previous entries, but with a wider variety of enemy shapes and sizes to make combat more tactically challenging. The third game also brings back its fireball-hurling mecha zombies (now with added jetpacks) and even more advanced gore tech that lets players “dismember any limb in any order” and enables zombies heads to “open up” like a flower.
Between this and Doom: The Dark Ages, 2025 sure is lining up to be a gib-fest. Id Software’s shooter launches two months later than Killing Floor 3, but likewise innovates in the field of virtual murder. Whereas glory kills previously locked the Doom Slayer into grisly first-person animations, now they’re completely decoupled from enemies, meaning you can finish them off at any angle and disengage at any time.
