The full Back 4 Blood experience may no longer be on course to consume your free time throughout the summer months, but that doesn’t mean Turtle Rock Studios is going to leave fans completely bereft of zombie-slaying entertainment. Officially unveiled during last year’s Game Awards hosted by Geoff Keighley, the co-op shooter is considered a spiritual successor to Valve’s Left 4 Dead IP, tasking players with surviving against an onslaught of undead and jacked up monsters with a preference for human flesh.
Similar to its precursor, progress will involve moving through an eclectic series of environments and reaching safe rooms scattered around the map in order to take a breather and restock for the challenges still to come. In an effort to account for modern tastes and afford would-be survivors more gameplay depth, avatars can be customized via the use of a card system. These confer various basic benefits such as health and damage buffs as well as mutations facilitating wildly different playstyles.
Outfitting your character with an EMT Bag and Antibiotic Ointment, for example, makes for a potent support kit with which to keep teammates healthy and similar supplementary cards exist for damage-dealing and defender/tank archetypes. All of this will be available at launch in the fall, but if you just can’t wait until then, it might be worth jotting down August 12th in your calendar.
That date marks the commencement of Back 4 Blood‘s four-day open beta and everyone can participate regardless of whether they’ve pre-ordered. Folks who fall into the latter camp will, however, get some additional time to play the trial, though it remains to be seen which platforms the test will be accessible on. Expect further details to surface in the near future but until then, you can check out WGTC’s coverage of all the latest developments by heading through here.
Back 4 Blood released October 12th for Xbox One, Series X|S, PS4, PS5 and PC.
