Useless Island 2’s growth cycle is notorious at this level. Initially revealed in 2014, its journey has been virtually as treacherous as a runner attempting to make it alongside Venice Seaside within the midst of a zombie outbreak. Two studios tried to place a sequel collectively however have been met with little greater than a gory catastrophe. However whereas these tasks died, hope didn’t. And so, the reins have been handed to the workforce at Dambuster Studios.
Over the course of 9 years and three builders, the long-awaited zombie-killing sequel has stored working (or strolling) on. And now, it’s lastly on the end line. That is the Inside Story of how Useless Island 2 was introduced again from the lifeless.
The Useless Island 2 we’re enjoying immediately is unapologetically pulpy – a simple homage to B-movie horror that builds on the tone established within the 2011 unique. It’s each a love letter to the zombie style and a chew again towards the extra human-centric tales which have dominated it extra just lately. For the reason that launch of its predecessor, zombie video games similar to The Final of Us, The Strolling Useless, and Days Gone have focussed extra on the complexities of humanity in post-apocalyptic worlds than the straightforward pleasure of taking up the undead headfirst with a hatchet.
Regardless of respecting the tales that these video games have to inform, the workforce at developer Dambuster Studios is way more within the latter. For them, there’s little extra satisfying than the straightforward thrill of punching a zombie within the face and seeing your fist crunching by means of the again of its cranium.
“I believe we actually simply wished to focus the eye again on the zombies”, explains Dave Stenton, recreation director at Dambuster Studios. “I believe through the years, current years with say, Strolling Useless for instance, which was a massively widespread collection, the eye, I believe, had moved positively extra to people, and humanity, and that type of post-apocalyptic survival, and getting by means of the trauma of the outbreak. I imply these tales have been advised, proper?”
Dan Evans-Lawes, Useless Island 2’s technical artwork director, agrees: “I believe they’ve achieved a very good job of it within the Final of Us and stuff like that, the place they’ve type of balanced that, so the fight and the violence does really feel actually brutal in a method that’s fairly practical, I believe. However that is a distinct factor to what Useless Island 1 was, and it was a distinct factor to what we wished to do. We wished to make it enjoyable, mainly, make all of the violence enjoyable fairly than make you unhappy.”
We wished to make it enjoyable, mainly, make all of the violence enjoyable fairly than make you unhappy.
Earlier than Dambuster was granted the chance to execute their imaginative and prescient, nonetheless, the story of Useless Island 2 was a tragic one. Nearly a decade of troubled growth led to a second few noticed coming – a grand re-reveal at gamescom 2022. It was an thrilling time for the studio to showcase what they’d be working so laborious and so quietly on, however one which got here with its justifiable share of nerves. How wouldn’t it be obtained? Did folks even care about Useless Island 2 anymore?
“It was torture being on on the finish, all these implausible video games approaching earlier than us, however we knew that we have been type of closing the present there”, remembers design director Adam Duckett.
“Up till that time you might be all the time type of asking your self, ‘Properly, I believe it is enjoyable, however I do not know the way that is going to type of pan out after we give it to different folks,’” Evan-Lawes remembers.
The Useless Island 2 revealed that day was nothing greater than a pipedream again in 2011, the yr the unique recreation was launched. Developed by Polish studio Techland, Useless Island positioned the main target firmly on butchering its plentiful hordes of zombies in artistic methods with satisfying melee fight. An enormous business hit, it bought over 5 million copies in its first two years and nurtured a passionate fanbase because of its over-the-top violence and echoes of basic zombie cinema.
“I believe Useless Island 1 was slightly bit type of lightning in a bottle”, says Stenton. “One in every of my favourite zombie motion pictures is Zombie Flesh Eaters by Lucio Fulci. That had that type of desert island seashore vibe, type of sparsely populated and with the zombies rising up. Useless Island 1 positively evoked that fantasy for me.”
The success of the unique naturally paved the street for a sequel. However from the very starting, the follow-up was in an odd place. Techland and writer Deep Silver had conflicting concepts concerning the artistic course of a second recreation – a disagreement that noticed Techland take their zombies elsewhere and begin work on a model new zombie recreation, Dying Gentle. And so when Deep Silver revealed Useless Island 2 at E3 2014, it got here with the shock announcement that it will not be developed by the collection’ creator. As a substitute, German studio Yager Growth of Spec Ops: The Line fame would helm the sequel, with a model new studio – Yager Productions – created purely to work on Useless Island 2.
However the change in developer wasn’t the factor everybody was speaking about. Useless Island 2 was revealed through considered one of video video games’ most memorable trailers – a slapstick stroll with the undead alongside Los Angeles’ iconic Venice Seaside. It made a splash, to say the least – successful IGN’s award for greatest E3 2014 trailer on the time and sticking lengthy sufficient within the reminiscence to have been parodied as just lately as 2022 by Goat Simulator 3.
“It was a terrific trailer and it carried on that Useless Island custom of nice trailers”, says artistic director James Worrall. “The primary one was very hanging, and the one set in LA was hanging, however the factor that, as a artistic and a story specialist, I used to be actually struck by was the change in tone, and that type of actually appealed to me.”
“We have been truly at E3 concurrently Useless Island 2 was being proven. I had no notion that these years later I might truly be on the helm engaged on that sequel”, laughs Stenton.
The joy was palpable and issues have been trying brilliant for the collection. Useless Island 2 was set to construct on what gamers cherished from the unique – an expanded eight-player co-op marketing campaign, an enormous vary of weaponry, a plethora of zombie sorts, a extra comedic tone, and sure, heaps and plenty of blood.
Within the months that adopted, dozens of online game journalists went hands-on with Useless Island 2 at PAX and gamescom 2014. IGN was amongst them, and our preview enthused that “Useless Island 2 lastly appears to ship on the promise made by the blood-soaked trailer”. Sadly and frustratingly, although, that promise wouldn’t be delivered on anytime quickly.
Useless Island 2 was scheduled to launch in Spring of 2015. However by the summer season of that yr, there was nonetheless no signal of it in any respect, regardless of it having been playable at a number of recreation conventions. And in July, Useless Island 2’s first main catastrophe was made public: Yager Productions had severed ties with the challenge after three years of growth.
In an interview with GamesIndustry, Yager managing director Timo Ullman spoke of a state of affairs that echoed the fallout between Deep Silver and collection creator Techland just some years prior: “The workforce labored with enthusiasm to take Useless Island 2 to a brand new degree of high quality. Nonetheless, Yager and Deep Silver’s respective visions of the challenge fell out of alignment, which led to the choice that has been made.” Yager Productions would file for insolvency simply weeks later.
Regardless of this main setback, Deep Silver stored religion in Useless Island 2. The search started for a brand new developer, and in March 2016 it was introduced that Sumo Digital was taking its flip to have its crack at respiratory new life into the still-warm corpse. A UK-based studio recognized largely at the moment for sports activities video games and LittleBigPlanet 3, it was a stunning match, to say the least. Nonetheless, Deep Silver assured that issues have been going easily at Sumo’s studio in Sheffield, though little or no else was being mentioned publicly.
In the meantime, in Might of 2016, down the street in Nottingham, the workforce at Dambuster was navigating by means of a tough time in their very own historical past following the disappointing reception of Homefront: The Revolution – their bold however finally flawed first-person shooter.
“I believe it is honest to say it did not launch within the state that we might’ve actually wished”, Stenton admits. “It was a fancy recreation, it was an bold recreation. There have been a lot of emergent techniques at play in it. Discovering the enjoyable of the sport, the type of simulation of it got here fairly late, I believe, within the growth of Homefront.”
“Clearly, that recreation did not launch in pretty much as good a method as we might hoped”, Evans-Lawes agrees. “It was disappointing for everyone who’d been engaged on it for fairly a while. So we have been attempting to determine what course the studio was going to go in and we might type of prototyped a bunch of stuff and have been attempting out varied concepts.”
As a studio, we have been regrouping, we have been rebuilding.
“As a studio, we have been regrouping, we have been rebuilding”, explains Duckett. “We might moved from CryEngine to Unreal Engine, so it was new tech for us as properly. We might misplaced a variety of good folks. You already know, it occurs on the finish of most dev cycles, however I believe on the finish of Homefront, we misplaced greater than we might’ve anticipated. So we have been bringing in recent expertise, and with that recent concepts and recent information of instruments.“
The years following Homefront’s launch was a tricky studying interval for Dambuster. After Homefront’s multi-layered ambitions fell brief, the studio acknowledged {that a} slim, targeted imaginative and prescient could be key to a comeback success. Studying from the error of its methods, the very first thing that Dambuster vowed to do when beginning work on its new challenge, no matter that was to be, was to search out the enjoyable immediately. That enjoyable was present in a prototype for the extremely gross and gory Absolutely Locational Evisceration System for Humanoids, extra catchily generally known as FLESH.
“We might been engaged on the FLESH system and the gore. It was solely tremendous, tremendous early stuff”, Evans-Lawes remembers. “The entire prototypes we have been doing had some type of idea behind them. I believe this was the one which went furthest and it was a zombie-themed recreation.”
Worrall expands on the temper on the studio: “What was Dambuster going to make? What sort of video games can we need to make? However the flesh engine and that type of exploration actually began to make folks excited. Now, there was nonetheless a variety of soul-searching at that time. What does a gore engine imply for a recreation and the way do you add one thing to that so it would not simply turn out to be like a corpse-mashing simulation?”
Dambuster had crafted a enjoyable core, nevertheless it wanted a recreation. And that recreation would arrive within the type of Sumo Digital’s quiet departure from Useless Island 2 in 2018. With no additional sightings of the sport for years by that time, rumours had rumbled on that the zombie smasher might by no means see the sunshine of day once more, regardless of repeated statements on the contrary from Deep Silver. However in 2019 the writer broke its silence and publicly revealed that historical past had repeated itself and Sumo had turn out to be Useless Island 2’s newest sufferer. No clarification for why the developer left the challenge was supplied, and Sumo’s personal imaginative and prescient for Useless Island 2 stays a thriller.
Stricken by growth points that had now seen not just one, however two totally different studios divorced from the challenge, it will certainly now be the flip of Dambuster Studios to try to get the sequel into the fingers of gamers. It was an thrilling problem for a studio seeking to put their freshly prototyped gore system into play, however a problem nonetheless.
“Clearly, there’s a specific amount of trepidation of like, ‘Properly, this can be a recreation that is been across the homes, it has been type of semi-canceled a few occasions and now we’re taking it on,” says Evan-Lawes. “Is {that a} little bit of a poison chalice?”
It has been type of semi-canceled a few occasions and now we’re taking it on, is {that a} little bit of a poison chalice?
Stenton shared related considerations. “I imply, you are type of considering that type of factor very early on in growth,” he says. “It simply comes with the type of strain of the franchise, proper? It is a very fashionable franchise. There is a fan base that’s actually devoted and obsessed with it. Clearly, you need to do it justice.”
However there was confidence, as Worrall explains: “You all the time fear if there have been just a few missteps or maybe relationships, artistic relationships, have damaged down with these missteps type of factor however Deep Silver was actually eager to only give us the house to provide you with what we wished to do. We had a fairly good concept of what we wished to do, maintain it laser-focused, maintain it easy. And so, we have been simply given the time and the house to just do that.”
The truth that Dambuster had been working for a while on the FLESH system meant that it was instantly in a very good place to hit the bottom working with Useless Island 2. The workforce had the fervour and the drive to make an undead smasher, even earlier than such a large IP had been supplied to them.
No matter if Dambuster had secured the rights to Useless Island 2 or not, it appears as if the studio was naturally drifting in direction of a zombie challenge. “Fairly presumably [we would have made a zombie game anyway]. Nothing was concrete at that time,” Evans-Lawes reveals. “Once we heard that Useless Island 2 was perhaps coming our method and we had this type of preliminary prototype that had a lot of components that we may take throughout, we have been like, ‘Properly, that is nice as a result of it suits with what we have.’”
At this juncture, Worrall joined the studio: “I used to be introduced in simply after that call and, mainly, Dambuster confirmed me the gore tech and I simply noticed the gore tech and the proposals for the way in which they wished to change the tone from the unique Useless Island and I assumed, ‘Yeah, that is me. That is actually, actually good.’”
With their need to make a zombie recreation already in full bloom, it appeared that the celebs had aligned as Sumo’s loss grew to become Dambuster’s achieve. And so, sharing an workplace with zombies of efforts previous, the workforce started work on Useless Island 2. The studio had a transparent concept of what they wished to do from the beginning – make the zombies, and particularly dispatching them as disgustingly as potential, the star of the present. And so regardless of having playable builds of each Yager and Sumo’s efforts obtainable to them, the choice was made to tear all of it up and begin once more.
“I suppose there have been two different types of takes on what Useless Island 2 was going to be and we have been in a position to play each of these,” says Stenton. But it surely was by no means a sensible purpose on our aspect to hold any of that ahead. We simply had our personal distinctive tackle what our Useless Island 2 was going to be like.”
It was vital for us to only do a recent begin and simply type of wipe the slate clear.
“Clearly, a few of these builds have been fairly previous by the point we bought them”, provides Duckett. “And as a way to do the IP justice, and to place out a Useless Island 2 that I believe the followers will recognize, it was vital for us to only do a recent begin and simply type of wipe the slate clear.”
Worrall was desirous to keep away from previous errors. “It wasn’t essentially the content material or the tone or the stuff like that,” he says. “Quite a lot of it was maybe they took a too advanced strategy, perhaps. It was one thing that we targeted on and I believe this can be a downside that is dealing with video games, generally, is simply blossoming complexity and it comes again to chew the studio once they’re attempting to get that recreation out the door. And so, early on after we simply determined, ‘Proper. No, [it’s] simply going to be folks versus zombies, we bought a gore engine, we’ll make the fight actually, actually visceral and tactile and in your face.”
Evans-Lawes additionally had the previous on his thoughts. “On Homefront I spent a very long time engaged on dynamic day/night time cycle, dynamic climate techniques, all this sort of stuff,” he remembers. “And it took ages and we bought it to a fairly good place, nevertheless it made no distinction to the sport actually. It did not make any distinction to what you have been enjoying minute to minute. And so I used to be actually eager to place my efforts into one thing that I felt was completely a core a part of the sport.”
There have been features of the earlier variations of Useless Island 2 that Dambuster appreciated, however seeing as they have been successfully beginning once more from scratch anyway, they caught to their weapons and selected a singular, slim imaginative and prescient – aiming to keep away from the bloat that Homefront had succumbed to, but additionally cautious of not falling foul of the identical errors their predecessor studios had. For instance, Dambuster settled on three-player co-op, whereas Yager’s unique imaginative and prescient again in 2014 was to have eight-player.
“We positively needed to consider what was there and go, ’Which options can we need to have within the recreation?’” says Evans-Legal guidelines. “And positively, there have been some attention-grabbing concepts that we checked out from earlier iterations of the sport that did not make it in, however primarily for scope causes and attempting to get the challenge achieved in an inexpensive timeframe.
“There was some automobile stuff, like driving automobiles, issues like that, the place it was definitely attention-grabbing what we noticed in a earlier construct and there have been some fairly good concepts,” he continues. “However when it comes to the extent design and retaining ranges on the scale the place the hand-to-hand melee fight works, you design a degree otherwise if you happen to’re driving round it.”
We had discussions of Catalina Island, which is simply off the Californian Coast.
Various areas have been additionally mentioned, as Worral reveals: “We had discussions of Catalina Island, which is simply off the Californian Coast. We thought of that as a location however, once more, again to that Hollywood lens and the image postcard, it is about delivering that familiarity that individuals the world over are acquainted with. That Los Angeles by means of the Hollywood lens.”
“Initially it was the entire of California I believe”, Evans-Lawes provides. “Or at the very least there have been going to be bits in several areas of California that had been already type of scaled all the way down to LA. Yeah, I believe that was just about non-negotiable. When it comes to the tone, that type of went just a few methods. We needed to, I suppose, work out precisely the place we wished it to land. I believe it is landed pretty near that Useless Island 2 trailer. However we experimented to start with with, ‘Does it need to go a bit extra critical?’ And I believe it is positively landed in a very good place.”
Duckett explains that location wasn’t essentially all-important, nonetheless. “Useless Island is thought for these paradise-gone-to-hell areas and we wished to ensure that we doubled down on that,” he says. “We wished to verify we doubled down, tripled down perhaps even, on zombies on the core, to only actually go to city on as many zombies as we may put collectively. Doubling down on the gore, the FLESH system once more, simply because as a zombie fan, that is what I need to see.”
However what did followers of the collection need to see from the sequel? The studio wrestled with these expectations. “I believe we anticipated that clearly, individuals are going to have preconceived concepts about what Useless Island 2 goes to be,” Evans-Lawes explains “They are going to have preconceived concepts about, ‘Properly, it has been in growth for 10 years and so due to this fact, it is going to both be a complete catastrophe or it is going to be this positively huge behemoth of a recreation that simply has all the pieces in it.’
“And in precise reality, we weren’t growing it for 10 years, so we did not have all that point to make an enormous, big, big recreation,” he clarifies. “And I believe one of many issues that we realized from Homefront was that it’s good to be targeted on what you are doing and it’s good to select just a few issues and do them actually, rather well.”
“It was that laser give attention to being greatest at school, first-person fight”, states Stenton. “I believe in equity to the workforce, it’s actually one thing that genuinely we have had immediately from day one. Proper the way in which from these very early prototypes and people very early prototypes of the FLESH system, and the weapons, and the enemies.
“It wasn’t based mostly on a trailer, it wasn’t based mostly on a storyboard. It was based mostly on gameplay and the fantasy of hacking aside zombies, and melting zombies in essentially the most spectacular, gory, groundbreaking methods potential.”
From late 2018 to the summer season of 2022, the creation of that grotesque, pulpy, and violent fantasy quietly came about behind the firmly closed doorways of Dambuster. Not a single screenshot, video clip, and even quote was launched to the general public; a aware resolution made by the studio to permit themselves to get their heads down and work with as little exterior interference as potential.
“It is partly as a result of we knew with the historical past of the franchise, it has been such a protracted watch for gamers, and we knew that there’d been a few false begins earlier than”, Stenton reveals. “So this time we actually higher ensure that we have one thing superior to play, one thing superior to indicate. Completely simply show as soon as and for all when it is introduced this time it is actual, it is tremendous near launch, it is coming quickly, you possibly can play it already.”
We did not need to announce vaporware, we did not need to simply come out with a CGI after which have folks go, ‘Properly, is there actually a recreation?
“The sport had had two false begins, proper?” says Worrall. “We did not need to announce vaporware, we did not need to simply come out with a CGI after which have folks go, ‘Properly, is there actually a recreation?’”
Stenton agrees, stating “It may be difficult to learn these sorts of feedback and sit in your fingers and never give any hints or any indication, as a result of as a studio you make investments your coronary heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears into the challenge and you’ve got been doing for some time.”
And so we discover ourselves again in 2022, when that silence was damaged within the remaining moments of gamescom’s Opening Evening Reside. Useless Island 2 made its very loud and really surprising return from the lifeless and, to the workforce’s reduction, the trailer was met with a newfound starvation. The long-thought corpse of a recreation was lastly reanimated. For Dambuster, it was a second of pure reduction matched solely by the thrill from the fanbase.
Stenton remembers the second fondly. “It was humorous at Opening Evening Reside as a result of we might bought, truly, Useless Island T-shirts that we weren’t allowed to put on till the second of the reveal,” he laughs. “Clearly, , you are tremendous pensive on the level that it is all about to occur. But it surely’s such a reduction as soon as it is on the market, as soon as all people is aware of. Then lastly we’re in a position to present the branding and what we have been engaged on for all of those years. It is simply releasing the strain valve, to be sincere, and having the ability to speak extra freely about it and put on the sport with pleasure and present the sport with pleasure.”
“It’s very nice to see folks’s reactions once they play the sport and other people’s type of shock on the gore system and everybody type of going like, ‘Oh man, bloody hell!’ however then additionally laughing”, says Evans-Lawes. “It is actually ugly, nevertheless it’s to the purpose that you simply simply type of should chortle. So seeing folks truly try this, play the sport, whack a zombie within the head, after which simply begin laughing as a result of the gore is so ridiculous, you are type of like, ‘Proper, okay, yeah, we bought that.’”
The re-reveal at gamescom signalled the sunshine on the finish of the tunnel for the long-tortured sequel. Useless Island 2 would lastly arrive within the spring of 2023 and 1000’s of zombies would as soon as once more die in all method of experimentally violent methods.
For the most effective a part of a decade, the primary query that got here to many when fascinated with Useless Island 2 was “Is it an actual recreation?” However for the workforce at Dambuster, the query is what do they hope its lasting legacy might be?
“I hope they keep in mind that it was enjoyable,” says Duckett. “As a designer, that is what I need to hear. It was enjoyable to interact with the setups. It was enjoyable to kill the zombies. It was vibrant, it was pulpy, it was totally different. It did not take itself too critically, and it knew what it wished to be.”
“I am fairly assured that gamers will look again on the launch of Useless Island 2 and see the way it’s reinjected a way of vibrancy, and function, and actual differentiation to the zombie style, that we carry one thing totally different, and actually iconic, and actually worthwhile”, says Stenton.
Evans-Lawes hopes “That gamers assume, ‘That is the sport that has reinvigorated the zombie style and brought it again to a spot that’s trashy, type of pulpy and plenty of enjoyable.’ That is what I wished to do with it. And I really feel like that is what we have achieved. We have now succeeded the place others haven’t. So yeah, that is good too.”
We have now succeeded the place others haven’t. So yeah, that is good.
Worrall holds hope “that they may assume that Useless Island 2 wasn’t such a easy enterprise and I believe that was confirmed with the event cycle however getting it proper was definitely worth the wait.”
So sure, Useless Island 2 is certainly an actual recreation, simply not essentially the identical one which began life all these years in the past. It’s been a protracted decade for followers of the collection. Studios might have fallen by the wayside like dismembered limbs, however neither the top was eliminated nor the mind destroyed. Useless Island 2 efficiently imitated its personal shambling hordes as the sport that refused to die.
I suppose the one logical query to ask subsequent then is… Is Useless Island 3 an actual recreation?
“No remark”, says Stenton.
Simon Cardy would final two minutes in a zombie apocalypse. Comply with him on Twitter at @CardySimon.
