This successor to Left 4 Dead risks getting lost in space

Developer/publisher Stray Bombay

Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series

Origin US

Release TBA (Early Access out now)

Technically speaking, they’re not zombies. The disaster that has struck aboard The Anacrusis’ retrofuturist starship is really more of a facehugger situation, allowing the game to have its hordes-of-undead cake while also dressing it up in ’70s science-fiction kitsch. Still, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that this fourplayer co-op survival shooter finds itself in the most crowded marketplace since Dawn Of The Dead’s shopping mall. The Anacrusis arrives in Early Access only a few weeks after GTFO exits it, and precisely one week before Rainbow Six Extraction presents its triple-A take on the formula, with the likes of Redfall and Warhammer 40,000: Darktide also on the horizon.

What The Anacrusis has that those games don’t, though, is a Left 4 Dead veteran on its dev team, in the form of Stray Bombay co-founder Chet Faliszek. Less impressive than Back 4 Blood’s whole band of them, perhaps, but Faliszek hasn’t been afraid to play up the connection, describing the AI gamesmaster that underpins its enemy and pickup deployment as “Director 2.0”, an evolution of the tech developed during his time at Valve.

After a few sessions, it’s hard to judge whether this new Director lives up to the promises that have been made on its behalf. At times, it certainly feels like the AI is doing what it’s not supposed to, and indiscriminately throwing waves of common-or-garden shamblers our way, or spawning so many boss enemies at once that we struggle to follow which are on the field. But maybe that’s just a few bad rolls, the kind of thing that will even out over the course of more games, or else a flaw that can be fixed during Early Access.