Left 4 Dead Review: Turtle Rock Studios’ Zombie Survival Shooter - “I’m proud that we’ve prepared future generations for a zombie apocalypse”

left 4 dead the original zombie shooter

Turtle Rock Studios’ Zombie Survival Guide

Left 4 Dead is a cooperative survival horror game developed by Turtle Rock Studios and published by Valve in 2008. The game was released on PC and Xbox 360. While not an Xbox exclusive, it was notably excluded from a PS3 release. Valve had limited interest in developing games for the platform until the release of Portal 2 in 2011. Left 4 Dead won many awards and was well received by both players and critics for its gameplay and replayability. Given its success, Left 4 Dead quickly saw a sequel released one year after the first installment pushing the franchise to sell over 12 millions copies by 2012. The sequel Left 4 Dead 2 was developed in-house by Valve but additional content was provided by Turtle Rock Studios before moving on to their next game.

From Left 4 Dead to Back 4 Blood

Founded in 2002, Turtle Rock Studios started their early developer days as contractors for Valve. Before Left 4 Dead, their most notable projects included an Xbox port of Valve’s popular game, Counter-Strike in 2003 and its remake Counter-Strike: Source in 2004. After the release of Source and with Valve’s support, Turtle Rock Studios started working on their own original game. Initially, they began work on a wizard combat game but this was dropped in favor of a survival first-person shooter after developing and playing a Counter Strike mod with zombies.