Mike Booth Confirms New Left 4 Dead Style Game Is In the Works

Key highlights: 

• Mike Booth, the creator of the Left 4 Dead games is working on a new four player co-op shooter. 
• He didn’t reveal too much about the game, but it’s in early stages of development. 
• Early playtests should ideally go live soon, as indicated by the invite link handed out in the Reddit post. 

Years after the Left 4 Dead franchise disappeared from the gaming world, its creator Mike Booth finally appeared on social media to tease a new co-operative shooter that he’s been working on. There aren’t many details to go on here, but it’s extremely L4D coded, and will contain features which were some of the main highlights of the Left 4 Dead franchise. 

This new title is in early stages of development at Bad Robot, a fairly new player in the world of video game development. The company however, has been a part of multiple successful movies and TV series under their belt, so they’re not new to the world of entertainment. 

Teamwork, Tension and Replayability Are the Main Keywords For Left 4 Dead’s Successor

Mike Booth took to Reddit with a new post on the Left 4 Dead 2 subreddit to promote this new game. He had very little to share about it, and he didn’t share any images or even the name to begin with. However, he did share an invite to the playtests, which is scheduled to happen at a later date. 

From the creator of L4D
byu/M_Booth inl4d2

Given that the last entry in the franchise was back in 2009, fans were naturally elated to hear about a spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead. Although Back 4 Blood from 2021 was considered to be a sequel to the franchise, it didn’t do much, and was quickly lost in the crowd following poor community reception. Developed by Turtle Rock Studios, the game met its demise pretty quickly, thereby putting a temporary stop to the L4D franchise for good. 

With this new announcement, the talk around the game has increased quite a bit. But all this chatter doesn’t seem to have an effect on the game’s player base. The game continues to boast of a strong 27k+ average players on a regular basis according to SteamDB. While one would hope that an announcement such as this would increase interest, like it’s done in the past for games like Hollow Knight, but that’s not the case this time around. 

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Will the Upcoming Game Have Zombies?

The trend of fighting zombies in co-op shooters has gone up considerably over the years. Call of Duty as a franchise is a prime example of this trend. Mike Booth, however, hasn’t mentioned anything about including zombies in the new title. Considering that zombies were one of the reasons why the Left 4 Dead franchise was special, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see if these creatures are included in the new game. 

In essence, it’s been a while since a proper co-op shooter has hit the market. Yes, you have multiplayer battle royales like Warzone and Fortnite, and you also have PvP shooters like Rainbow Six and Valorant, but they’re not co-op centric. Co-op is just another feature that they have. So, a new game that focuses on the co-op system from the very beginning could come off as a breath of fresh air in the modern-day gaming sphere. 

Given that the game is still in its early development days, don’t expect to see a release anytime soon. If they’re just opening up the first round of playtests, then the game isn’t coming out before 2027 at least. If it’s still so far off, there’s always a chance that it’ll drop once the next generation of consoles hit the market. Additionally, since portable gaming consoles like the Steam Deck and the Xbox Ally are gaining more popularity with each passing day, Bad Robot would do good to make their upcoming title playable on these consoles, so that their game reaches a wider audience.

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