DayZ creator Dean Hall wants to make a game about mountain climbing, with Kerbal Space Program his primary inspiration.

Speaking with PC Gamer and having recently returned from climbing Mount Everest, Hall said that he was keen to make a “different” game that didn’t involve shooting.

“There’s a game called Everest, a really shitty game, that I played a long time ago, and I was like, ‘God damn, why don’t they just make this properly?’,” he said.

“When I played that game I was like… I’ve always wanted to make this Everest game, so… I look at the Kerbal guys and I look at the Prison Architect guys and I’m like, ‘I want to make a game like that. A different game’.”

Hall said that he envisioned that the game would run in the Unity Engine and feature an isometric viewpoint with the option of going into first-person.

“You’re basically guiding some little AIs and stuff around, and your friends can come in and help you,” he said.

Kerbal Space Program would be the model for the game, Hall added.

“I love Kerbal Space. I talk about it all the time. I probably talk about it more than DayZ at this point," he said.

“Kerbal went in one direction, but very slowly, leaning quite a lot on the base of what the community feedback was. I want to follow that model – come up with this design, try it out on something quite simple, and see if maybe it’ll steer in the direction of being more of a simulation or not.

“Maybe it’ll steer more in the direction of being a more, dare I say it, arcade type of experience that’s in a much shorter time frame," he added.

"I still think it’s going to have quite strong elements of strategy and survival in it. It’s kind of like DayZ, but a level up. Not in an apocalypse scenario. It’s survival, but it’s survival strategy.”

Hall is only signed to Bohemia for DayZ, and his ultimate aim is to open his own studio.

“To make this game, I’d want to find people to do it with… There’s been a few people I’ve met here [at E3] who’ve said, ‘Wow, I’ve always wanted to do this mountaineering game’. I’m trying to assemble people who really want to do that.”

Hall estimated that he had about 12 more months of work to do on DayZ “particularly if a console port came in”.

DayZ does not yet have a release date.