Turtle Rock Studios surprised the gaming populace with the reveal of its upcoming game Back 4 Blood releasing this year. Back 4 Blood was announced during the Game Awards 2020 this past December, and shares plenty in common with the creators' previous experience developing Left 4 Dead games.
Being a spiritual successor, Back 4 Blood will be incorporating several features from Valve's popular co-op zombie shooter series. Some features carrying over include a cast of four survivors as playable characters facing undead hordes. Players will face a range of enemies from common to special infected, and Back 4 Blood will apparently add the "game director" feature from the Left 4 Dead series as well.
Left 4 Dead's game director feature utilized an artificial intelligence nicknamed "the Director" to manage level-pacing, item placements, and enemy spawn rates. Allowing the game director to spawn enemies and items in different areas instead of at fixed locations mixes things up for each level. The game director added a lot of replayability to Left 4 Dead, and Turtle Rock is bringing that into Back 4 Blood's familiar gameplay.
Turtle Rock will be expanding on the game director idea by adding a new mechanic called Corruption Cards. The Corruption Cards will be used at the beginning of each level by the director to either buff up infected enemies or add more obstacles for the players to deal with. The cards can also change the map's atmosphere by affecting visibility and making the environment foggy, or it can add new zombie enemies to the mix, whether it's regular zombies or the large Ogre from Back 4 Blood's cinematic trailer.
Players will get their own deck of cards to counter the game director's Corruption Cards, which can affect their health, damage, and stamina. They can mix and match their cards and try various combinations, and Turtle Rock Studios says it plans to expand upon the core game mechanics from Left 4 Dead for Back 4 Blood.
This is part of Turtle Rock Studio's efforts to have Back 4 Blood evolve as a title over time. Turtle Rock said it intends to do more with this new game and continue to push the genre forward, which includes bringing back some features from past games like the game director.
For example, players can control the Back 4 Blood's new zombies, specifically the special mutated zombies, similar to Left 4 Dead's Versus Mode. This includes the lumbering Bruisers, the four-armed pouncing Hockers, or the acid-spitting Retches that can each impact gameplay differently. Overall, Turtle Rock's goal is to make sure no player's experience in Back 4 Blood is ever the same.
Back 4 Blood is set to release June 22, 2021 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: YouTube
