In February,Back 4 Blooddeveloper Turtle Rock Studios announcedend to supportfor the 2021 co-op zombie shooter. In a gaming landscape filled with constant updates and new seasons, why would any developer helming a Triple-A title carrying the legacy of the critically acclaimedLeft 4 Deadfranchise on its shoulders drop this hot potato?
Simple: the developer wanted to move on to a new game. Now, every developer has a right to try new projects, but doing so not much more than a year after the initial release of an online shooter with so much fanfare leading up to its release isn’t a great look. On the other hand, Back 4 Blood has come a long way since launch, so can we at least say that they’re leaving the game in a healthy state?
While there were some quality-of-life issues at the time of release, the devs have since made many improvements to address player concerns and enhance the overall experience. So let’s take a closer look at the game’s 15-month journey, examining how much content was released during that time, the meaningful changes and improvements that were made, and the key updates that were implemented to try and keep the game alive.
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Ultimately, did Turtle Rock Studios do enough to keep Back 4 Blood afloat?
One of the early complaints around Back 4 Blood was the high difficulty of the campaign, so between October and December 2021, Turtle Rock reduced the spawn rate of the special infected because players were getting obliterated. It would take a few more updates to get that spawn rate right, but they got there in the end. The AI for the solo campaign improved quite a bit over time as well.
Each update brought with it several changes to card effects. Exploits and duplicate cards that provided some players with an unfair advantage over others, were some of the main card issues that had to be addressed.
Burn cards were added as a new card type in one of the first updates. These burn cards are one-time use cards that can be used in saferooms, granting a player some special trait, weapon, or effect during their campaign run. It was a welcome shake-up that could really make things interesting for the player, even turning the tide in a losing run.
Back 4 Blood’s first expansion, Tunnels of Terror, didn’t arrive until April 2022, and with the game having lost a big chunk of its audience by that point, you have to wonder if it came a bit too late. The expansion took players into the depths of the Earth. These tunnel areas became accessible within existing maps through new Hive entrances. The amount of new routes you could take really made each level feel less linear, which was a welcome addition, although some players were disappointed by the lack of new chapters. It added new maps, weapons and cards, even two new playable characters who were surprisingly likable—-pretty much everything you’d want from a DLC, while not offering anything groundbreaking.
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One of the more interesting features of Tunnels of Terror was the membrane you had to cut down to move onto each Hive area. Ridden could still get through these, which could cause your team to get trapped, adding to the suspense. A ‘No Hope’ difficulty rounded off the key features for this DLC, but overall the package didn’t exactly ‘wow ’people.
Probably the best initiative put forward for Back 4 Blood is that only one player needs to own the latest DLC for your whole team to gain access to the content. And this was the case for all the DLC going forward.
The next big expansion was released in August 2022, introducing the crazy Children of the Worm Cult. You joined new playable character Prophet Dan, as over six chapters he took on enemies who were neither Cleaner nor Ridden, but another human faction coming in four varieties of enemy— Sniper, Crone, Pusflinger and Slasher. Things could get tough out there, even on lower difficulties, as you could find yourself overwhelmed by the Ridden while also having to contend with the cultists. Dufflebags were added as a new mission reward system; functionally, they were similar to loot boxes, except when a player finds it they must bring it with them to the end of the mission to receive rewards like new weapons, skins, cards and effects for the whole team. It was a nice little addition and a new objective for players to enjoy.
The setting was a welcome change from Fort Hope, as your journey took you to a seaside shanty town, from where you eventually made your way to a high security prison. The tight and claustrophobic confines therein are functionally similar to the tunnels of terror, but you’ve also got to contend with all the traps laid out by the cultists which you didn’t have to deal with in the base game.
The final DLC, River of Blood, came out in December 2022, taking players on a journey further from the base game setting of Fort Hope than ever before. Players work with Tala, a new Cleaner, and a Ridden Tall Boy she’s somehow befriended, to locate her brother and finally eliminate the Children of the Worm cult—-putting a nice bow on top, wrapping up the story. She can summon the Tallboy to help aid in a fight. This DLC features some of the most diverse and interesting locations from a small rural community, dense forested paths, a news station highrise in the heart of the city, a museum with all kinds of funky exhibits, and a massive sports stadium. The new Ridden enemy type, the Sentinel, is a horrific mass of worms with powerful variations, and probably the best monster design in the whole game.
The new game mode, Trial of the Worm, allows players to vote from three choices of four random missions to play in sequence and select from a variety of modifiers to increase scores–the harder the difficulty, the greater the rewards.
You get four modifiers to choose from for each playthrough, and Permadeath applies here, raising the stakes. You could do fun things with modifiers like, for example, making Ridden really weak but making horde sizes 10 times larger. To top it all off, you could give your Cleaners unlimited ammo to really ramp up the chaos. The mode diversified the experience in a fun and meaningful way, and was a great way to encourage competition between players as they fought for the high score.
So did Turtle Rock Studios do enough to keep this game afloat before they ended game support? Well, when you look at comparable games, probably not. According toSteam charts, Back 4 Blood has more players at this point in its lifespan (15 months on from release) than successful ongoing games likeVermintide 2,Deep Rock Galactic, andDying Light, and that’s not even taking into account the fact that it’s been on Game Pass since Day One, where it no doubt also has a significant audience. To its credit (even though this should really be a standard across all games), Back 4 Blood lets Steam and PC Game Pass players play with each other–something thatWarhammer 40,000: Darktide has apparently found an immense struggleto implement.
The point is: there’s clearly still enough interest in Back 4 Blood that, with a bit of a push, Turtle Rock could still turn it into a success story. Ending support after 15 months, they just haven’t given the game enough time, despite clearly pouring effort into it during its short run.
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