For the benefit of preppers desperately training virtually for the apocalypse, here comes another sandbox survival MMO. The newly-announced Nether for PC is somewhat different to the prevailing zombie scenario, in that it's set within a city and you're fighting against mindless mutants which are definitely not zombies.

It's the basic DayZ idea: scavenge for supplies and try to survive when both not-zombies and up to 64 players would like to eat what's on or in each others' corpses. Taking place in a city will change the dynamic somewhat, though.

"The city being so vertical and three-dimensional and dense really is a very different gameplay experience," developer Phosphor Games' creative director Chip Sineni told PC Gamer. "A lot of our guys were big fans of DayZ early on... but they're very complementary kinds of games. It's not like one kind of game is necessarily better than another, they're just very different kinds of experiences."

The monsters are more tricksy than zombies, too, hunting by sound and able to teleport and leap.

Beta signups are open on the official website.