The zombie horde attacks in 'Back 4 Blood' game trailer

Last year’s The Game Awards 2020 may have gifted many winners and game reveals, but for fans of the zombie genre only one game stood out in particular.

Back 4 Blood is a new zombie co-op shooter developed by Turtle Rock Studios, the same studio responsible for the massively popular Left 4 Dead franchise. Dubbed by many as the “spiritual third entry” of the L4D lore, the game features the same first-person shooter (FPS) narrative but with a bunch of cool additions to give you and your team endless hours of cooperative zombie-slaying fun.

In this post-apocalyptic game, a parasitic outbreak has wiped out most of the population, killing people or turning them into infected flesh-eating zombies known as ‘Ridden.’ Each monster has a particular set of skills:

• Hocker – shoots webbing that traps players in place
• Retch – vomits acidic goo that attracts a Ridden horde to the players
• Snitch – screams to alert the Ridden horde
• Bruiser – tall being that mauls you with a huge club-like arm, and
• Ogre – tough, 20-foot tall mutated monsters that can throw projectiles

Meanwhile, players can choose to become any one of the ‘Cleaners’—a group of fighters tasked to eliminate all of the Ridden through various small arms and a lot of bullets. Out of the eight Cleaners, five have been revealed so far:

• Evangelo, a young man with brown fluffy hair and glasses on his head
• Walker, a bearded middle-aged man with a backwards baseball cap
• Holly, a young redhead woman with a backwards baseball cap
• Hoffman, the oldest man in the group with glasses
• Mom, a middle-aged black-haired woman

There are also new additions like an in-game currency and a deck system that gives you cards that can be used as power-up buffs for you and the team.

 Here’s a brief description from the game’s website:

Back 4 Blood is a thrilling cooperative first-person shooter from the creators of the critically acclaimed Left 4 Dead franchise. You are at the center of a war against the Ridden. These once-human hosts of a deadly parasite have turned into terrifying creatures bent on devouring what remains of civilization. With humanity’s extinction on the line, it’s up to you and your friends to take the fight to the enemy, eradicate the Ridden, and reclaim the world.

Back 4 Blood arrives on Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Steam on Jun. 22, 2021.

Watch the creepy reveal trailer and the Closed Alpha gameplay demo below.