If you want to see how H1Z1, Sony Online Entertainment’s contender in the survival MMO arena is shaping up, then look no further than this 50-minute Twitch stream the publisher released this week.

SOE game designer Jimmy Whisenhunt and Technical Director Tom Schenk drive the gameplay, offering us a first look at the by now very familiar rusted and ruined rural environments and abandoned structures of this kind of game.

Also: axes.

H1Z1 is still super early, but you can see some of the multiplayer elements, a little driving, the switch between first- and third-person views, the day/night cycle, gunplay, and, of course, zombies.

Right now, it doesn’t look all that different from Rust or DayZ, but according to Whisehunt, the studio is trying to focus on the basics of the genre and “push out from there,” building out more towns modeled on real cities which will be interconnected, allowing players to set up shops.

HT: Destructoid