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Back 4 Blood is the spiritual successor to the smash hit co-op zombie shooter series, Left 4 Dead, and Turtle Rock wants to make it into the best damn co-op experience there can be.
As the studio that revolutionized co-op shooters and spawned dozens of imitators and spin-offs to the hordes shooter genre, Turtle Rock has set a high goal for themselves.
To help achieve this goal, they’ve released a small dev video outlining their vision and the process behind making Back 4 Blood.
Making Back 4 Blood stand apart from Left 4 Dead
There’s no way for Back 4 Blood to avoid comparisons with Left 4 Dead; the games are just too similar. Because of this, Turtle Rock isn’t pushing Back 4 Blood as just another spin-off game styled after the innovations of Left 4 Dead. Instead, they’re marketing it heavily as the unofficial sequel to Left 4 Dead.
This is probably good, given that Left 4 Dead is one of the most recognizable party games out there. Were it not for Turtle Rock’s later separation from Valve and Valve’s alleged disdain for the number “three,” it’s likely that this game would have been an actual sequel.
During the showcase, Turtle Rock showed how Back 4 Blood would share a number of design features, such as an array of firearms, melee weapons, special infected, obstacles, dark interiors, and most importantly, the AI director. All these features, familiar to fans of Left 4 Dead, have been given a higher degree of polish for current-gen PCs and consoles.
New to Back 4 Blood is how the game incorporates more significant modifiers to the game in order to shake up the experience. Additionally, Back 4 Blood has more class-based characters, allowing players to tune the game to their liking.
Working on Back 4 Blood is playing Back 4 Blood
One thing that stood out during Turtle Rock’s discussion of their development process is how the developers have been aggressively playtesting the game.
This makes sense, given that their goal is to make a game that has nearly endless replayability. Hopefully, the recent alpha test they organized provided some useful information to the developers.
Fan outlook on Back 4 Blood seems to be cautiously optimistic, with the game looking refined and fun to play with a group of friends. One major concern is that the game is currently listed at $60, a price point that many players aren’t willing to pay for multiplayer games.
Given the high number of free to play or at least cheap to play party games currently available, the high price may scare away some players. A playgroup would need to spend a collective $240 just to have a full group for this game.
But Turtle Rock knows their game and how much they want to value it at, so fans will just have to wait for the release to see if it lives up to the price.
