State of Decay 2 Launch Trailer Shows New Off Co-Op Gameplay

The official launch trailer for the Xbox One exclusive zombie survival game State of Decay 2 has been revealed, showing off new gameplay for the bloody, co-op focused game.

The original State of Decay was a very similar sort of zombie survival game originally released in 2013 on the Xbox 360 as an Arcade title, before making it’s way to PC a few months later, and receiving a remaster on PC and Xbox One two years after that.

The trailer shown above outlines some of the key gameplay elements both returning from the original and new to the sequel. The biggest addition made in State of Decay 2 is the addition of co-op multiplayer, and many tweaks made to the original’s formula in order to benefit the shift. Players are free to roam an open-world environment filled with the roaming and deadly undead, doing their best to optimize their use of resources, rescue any survivors there are to be found, and ideally fill a specific role in the team in order to guarantee their survival. Players will still have the option of playing solo, though the game’s newly implemented drop-in/drop-out multiplayer has been heavily promoted by developers Undead Labs and Microsoft.

The unique draw of the State of Decay franchise is that players have the option of picking and playing as any member of the game’s established community, all of whom have varied backstories, individual personalities, and differing stats to allow for numerous approaches to each situation on top of the game’s core elements of combat, stealth, and resource and settlement management. This mechanic is also heavily linked with both game’s emphasis on keeping your growing community feeling close, safe, and strong enough to survive. Manage relationships between survivors in order to elevate your chosen characters to positions of leadership, and tweak the hierarchy of power in your settlements to ideal conditions in order to survive the apocalypse.

State of Decay 2 is planned for release on both Xbox One and PC on May 22.

This post was originally written by Greyson Ditzler.