Bodycam zombies return November 13: Zombie Trenches, Village, Asylum and what else is in update 0.9

Bodycam zombies come back on Friday, November 13, 2026, when developer Reissad releases version 0.9 of its body-camera shooter, an update called The Dead and Damned. The mode returns with a brand-new variant, Zombie Trenches, built on the Trenches map, and with two reworked zombie maps, Village and Asylum. Reissad switched the mode off on September 2, 2026, when it shipped the much larger Locked and Loaded update, and had aimed to bring it back for Halloween. The new date carries a joke from the studio: Friday the 13th felt like the right day to bring the zombies back. The update also adds Easy Anti-Cheat, a reworked Public Pool map, two new weapons for the loadout and a lobby room for drones and RC cars. It doesn't include the party system many players have been waiting for, and Reissad hasn't given a release hour.

When does the Bodycam zombies update come out?

Reissad announced the date in a Steam post on October 29, 2026: "Bodycam v0.9 releases on Friday, November 13." A dev diary about the update followed on November 5, 2026, the first of two. The studio calls 0.9 "a smaller, in-between update" and says a big part of its team is still working on larger, long-term projects for the game.

The studio hasn't said what time the update goes live. Its last major release, Locked and Loaded, went out at 17:00 UTC on September 2, 2026, which was 1 p.m. ET and 10 a.m. PT that day. If Reissad keeps the same hour on November 13, after daylight saving time has ended, that would be noon ET and 9 a.m. PT. Treat that as a pattern, not a promise, until the studio posts a time.

Here's how the zombie mode got from Halloween 2024 to Friday the 13th:

Why Bodycam zombies disappeared in September

Locked and Loaded, version 0.8, was the largest update Bodycam had received since it entered Early Access, meaning the game is on sale while still in development, on June 7, 2024. It rebuilt the interface around an in-game tablet, added a loadout system with around 400 weapon attachments, replaced the five-on-five Bodybomb mode with two-on-two Wingman and added the Trenches map. It also moved much of the game's multiplayer code from Unreal Engine's visual scripting into C++, and that touched every mode, zombies included.

Reissad's release notes put it plainly: zombie mode was disabled for the update, with a plan "to reintroduce it for Halloween, potentially with new content." The first patch notes after launch, on September 3, 2026, added two reasons. A few regressions, meaning bugs that broke things that used to work, had hit the mode during the rework, and the team felt zombies "had become too stagnant." Rather than leave the mode in that state, the studio chose to bring it back stronger later.

Halloween came and went without it. The October 29 announcement doesn't dwell on the slip; it simply moves the return to November 13 and fills the update around it.

The mode matters to Bodycam more than its "secondary" label suggests. Reissad shadow-dropped the first version, the Asylum map, for Halloween 2024, meaning it released the mode with almost no warning, and the studio later wrote that around 600,000 players logged on to play it. That turned zombies into what Reissad calls a lab: a place to test ideas, like the crossbow, before they reach the competitive game.

What's new in Bodycam zombies: Zombie Trenches

The headline addition is Zombie Trenches, which Reissad describes as "a brand new game mode built on the Trenches map" and the one players "probably didn't see coming." The studio hasn't published its rules yet and promises more details soon, so its objectives, wave structure and any secrets stay unknown until it does.

The map underneath is known. Trenches came in with Locked and Loaded as a player-versus-player battlefield of flooded and dry trench networks, underground galleries and tunnels, forest, ruined compounds and observation posts around a central church. It mixes close-quarters fights inside the trenches with long sightlines across open ground. That layout is very different from the indoor corridors of Asylum, which is why a zombie version of it is the biggest unknown in the update.

Village and Asylum: the returning zombie maps

Both existing zombie maps come back. Reissad says it went over them to fix much of what players reported, "especially around spawns and how zombies behave," and gave each one a polish pass.

• Asylum is where it started: the October 2024 map of eerie corridors with infinite, round-based waves, generators that power electric doors, weapon and equipment crates, motion detectors and hidden lore.
• Village arrived in November 2025 as the biggest zombie map Reissad had made, with a windmill tower, special enemy types such as sprinters and a scarecrow, a mystery box and a secret that ends with the crossbow.

One change applies everywhere: weapon boxes now hand out weapons with random attachments, drawn from the same attachment system players use in their loadouts. Reissad says that makes what you pull from a box change "a lot more from one run to the next," which matters in a mode built on surviving round after round with whatever you find.

If you're looking for more undead to shoot in a headset, our guide to the best VR horror games covers the genre on Quest and PC VR.

What else is in Bodycam update 0.9

Zombies get the spotlight, but the update touches the rest of the game too.

Public Pool gets the attention because, in Reissad's words, it has been "the least played map since Locked & Loaded." The studio gave it a big visual rework to bring it up to the quality it aims for across the game and adjusted the layout along the way.

Easy Anti-Cheat is the biggest change for competitive players. It's a widely used anti-cheat service that runs alongside the game to detect cheating software, and Reissad calls it "a big one for multiplayer." The studio says it will watch how the system performs after release and keep improving it.

The lobby room is the most unusual addition. For the drone, Reissad worked with the team behind TRYP FPV, which helped add support for FPV radio controllers, the handheld transmitters real drone pilots use, and tuned how the drone flies. If you own one, you can plug it in and fly the lobby race.

Two weapons reach the loadout. The crossbow, until now available only at the end of the Village secret, can be taken onto the player-versus-player maps. The TEC-9 is the first machine pistol, a pistol that fires automatically, that you can carry as a secondary weapon.

Is the party system in Bodycam 0.9?

It isn't. Reissad says the party system, a way to group up with friends before you queue, won't be in 0.9, after it already missed 0.8. The studio is reworking the game's whole multiplayer layer to support proper player groups, and that rework also underpins features it wants to add later. It hit technical blockers that slowed it down more than expected, and what it has is "quite far along" but not ready to ship.

The tech team is looking at how quickly it can put an experimental version in players' hands, and the studio promises news once it has something concrete. Until then, this is how playing with friends works in 0.9:

• Zombies: co-op for up to four players, so you can deploy there together.
• Quick Play and Server Browser: solo queue only for now.
• Bigger groups: host your own game to play with up to 10 friends.

Bodycam price, platforms and PC requirements

Bodycam sells on Steam for $33.32 in the US store, an Early Access game from Reissad, the studio of brothers Luca and Léo, who built the first version of the game themselves before the team grew past 100 people. It runs on Windows 10 and 11 only, and its store page lists full controller support, including Sony's DualSense, alongside mouse and keyboard. More than 68,000 players have left a user review on its Steam page.

The PC requirements on the store page haven't changed for 0.9:

If you want to try a similar tactical shooter before spending money, our roundup of Steam free games for November 2026 lists what's free to play this week.

What we still don't know about Bodycam zombies

Five days out, a few questions remain open. Reissad hasn't said what time 0.9 goes live on November 13, how Zombie Trenches plays, or how big the download will be. The second dev diary should fill in some of that, and the studio says the full patch notes arrive on release day. When the party system finally lands is still the studio's to confirm.