
Developer/publisher Torn Banner Studios
Format PC
Origin Canada
Release TBA
One of the direst enemies in any zombie survival game is familiarity. This, and the contempt it engenders, is a foe that Torn Banner Studios has clearly thought about at length. There’s a lot here you’ll be expecting: you’re dropped into a barren post-industrial wilderness to pick your way through the shambling hordes of infected; you must scavenge weapons, patch up injuries and ensure you never find yourself surrounded. But this is also an eight-player co-op game that you always begin in exactly the same way – alone.
It’s a thrillingly distinct way to kick things off, and dictates the pace. Your first task, after taking stock of your meagre starting supplies (a pipe, a flashlight and a few rounds of ammo), is to work out where everyone else is. A glance at the in-game compass may show a few people within a couple of hundred yards, but then you set off to meet them and the world seems dauntingly dark, the scrabbly American midwestern landscape delivered as a mass of shadows, with only occasional pinpricks of light giving any shape to it.
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