JJ Abrams has teamed up with Sony and L4D creator Mike Booth to develop the new 4-player co-op shooter 4:Loop.
The Game Awards not only honor the best games of the year, but are also one of the places where new projects are presented. Sci-fi director JJ Abrams and Mike Booth, who launched Left4Dead in 2008, did just that. During the awards ceremony, they showed what their new co-op shooter 4:Loop is all about.
Alien invasion in a vicious circle
Mike Booth asserts in his speech that the shooter builds on what he learned from Left4Dead, yet is something completely different.
What it’s about: In 4:Loop, you are one of the last survivors after an alien invasion, and it’s up to you and your team to save Earth. To do so, you have to accept that you will die, and more than once.
But that’s not so bad, because a mysterious machine reprints you every time, allowing you to turn your insights into hard-hitting progress. The goal of the game is to attract the attention of the mothership in three acts by disrupting its mining operations and upgrading your equipment. At the end of each act, a boss battle awaits, and finally, the epic skirmish with the mothership.
In PlayStation Blog, Mike Booth reveals more about the ideas from Left4Dead that he is building on for the new game.
When I was developing Left 4 Dead, the biggest risk was whether random players on the internet would actually cooperate the way we wanted them to – saving each other from Hunters and Smokers, helping fallen players, rescuing players from chasms, and so on.
Many of these game mechanics are now familiar and expected, allowing us to push the boundaries even further in 4:LOOP. While the environments in Left 4 Dead essentially offered linear paths to bring players together, the environments in 4:LOOP are expansive and open.
In addition, 4:Loop will take a roguelike approach, allowing you to try out new strategies again and again – in keeping with the time loop theme. Nevertheless, the shooter is intended to remain straightforward, allowing you to jump right into the game without much preparation.
4:Loop will be released for PlayStation and PC, but the release date has not yet been announced.
