Back 4 Blood isn’t shying away from comparisons to co-operative zombie FPS classic Left 4 Dead – developer Turtle Rock Studios is responsible for both, after all – but the team is aiming to deliver more than a carbon copy of its earlier game. And one of its innovations comes in the form of an intriguing deck-building card system, which it’s now detailed in its latest trailer.
Borrowing one of Left 4 Dead’s most innovative features – an AI-driven Game Director – Back 4 Blood works behind the scenes to monitor players’ “health, actions, and choices”, and responds by, as Turtle Rock puts it, “choreographing the world around them”.
However, judging by the game’s new trailer, Back 4 Blood’s Director is able to pull from a much wider set of variables and is considerably more transparent about what these are at the start of each play-through. Before a level kicks off, you see, players are shown the Game Director hand of Corruption Cards, each of which influences how the proceeding action will unfold.
Some cards might, for instance, introduce environmental modifiers – disabling electricity to plunge all interiors into darkness – while others might dictate the enemies players will encounter, game-impacting events (such as a endless onslaught of zombie hordes), even optional objectives to complete along the way. On the latter front, the trailer shows a challenge known as Hasty Exit, tasking players with reaching the end of a stage within the allotted time.