Remember when zombies were cool? There was this half-decade period between the release of Dead Rising and about the second season of the Walking Dead TV series where the undead were the cornerstone of pop entertainment, and culture as a whole hadn’t yet gotten sick of them.
The original Dead Island, a mostly-solid open world action game, came out in that window. But the series’ returns have been diminishing. Dead Island: Riptide was a glorified expansion pack that didn’t fix any of the original game’s problems. Escape Dead Island was an attempt at stylish spin-off that nobody seemed to like. Dead Island: Epidemic was (oh god) a MOBA that nobody even seemed to want, and was shut down before even leaving Early Access.
Plus, Dead Island 2 is still in the works! Somewhere, by somebody. Development on the title was torn away from Yager Development–the company best known for the impressively meta Spec-Ops: The Line–leading to the death of one of their studios. Who’s developing the game now? Who knows!
If you’re thinking that nobody should want to make another Dead Island at this point, I’m right there with you. Unfortunately, Destructoid dug up an Australian classification for Dead Island Retro Revenge. There’s very little in the way of detail, other than that it’s set to be rated M and is under development by a small company called Empty Clip Studios, whose catalog currently consists mostly of port work. Based on the title, maybe it’s a throwback 8/16-bit platformer. It’s the only way I can think of to drive the series any deeper into the ground.
