10 Games Like Left 4 Dead To Play With Friends

When Turtle Rock Studios was piecing together the meat of Left 4 Dead, it’s unlikely the team thought it was onto something so hot that it would still be popular 14 years later and spawn a host of similar titles. The four-player zombie shooter has such a simple formula that’s almost too simple not to reproduce – and that’s what plenty of developers have done with these games like Left 4 Dead.

Whether it’s a complete copy/paste job or something a little more subtle or thematically similar, these ten games will satiate your need for more Left 4 Dead, should you ever decide to finally set aside the popular horde shooter.

 

Games Like Left 4 Dead

1. Deep Rock Galactic

Developer: Ghost Ship Games
Publisher: Coffee Stain Publishing

Space dwarves. Destructible environments. Hordes of extraterrestrial beasts looking to tear you limb from limb? This certainly sounds like a good time to us, and we haven’t even told you about the procedurally-generated caves and up to four-player co-op.

Deep Rock Galactic is way more than Left 4 Dead in space. Players select from four unique classes and navigate winding caves, choosing how they’ll get to their objective. A carefully carved out path may be the logical route, but who’s to say drilling right to the bottom doesn’t have its own merits? Using an assortment of delightfully destructive weapons, players will mow through alien threats on the way to their goal, each one deadlier and uglier than the last.

 

2. Strange Brigade

Developer: Rebellion
Publisher: Rebellion

What awaits in the depths of Egypt’s most secret tombs? Only death and despair, of course. In Strange Brigade, you’ll set out to ignore everything we’ve learned about mummies and tombs to explore ruins and find hidden treasures. With those treasures, though, comes a price, and you and up to four friends will quickly find that the protectors of Egypt are nothing to scoff at.

As the titular brigade, players will need to work together to solve puzzles, battle malevolent forces of Ancient Egypt, and quell the wrath of Seteki the Witch Queen. If you’ve played anything from Rebellion’s most recent third-person shooter releases, then Strange Brigade should feel very familiar and welcoming.

 

3. Earthfall

Developer: Holospark
Publisher: Holospark

When an extraterrestrial threat makes contact on Earth, there’s only one thing to do. Gear up, gather some friends and prepare for one hell of a fight. Earthfall pits you against an onslaught of aliens big and small, and you’ll have to work together to survive.

Luckily, you have some help from advanced firearms and constructible defenses that keep the threat at bay. From its enemy design to an assortment of weapons, Earthfall is a slightly different take on the four-player co-op model popularized by Left 4 Dead, delivering heart-pounding action through procedurally generated alien hordes, though it must be said that it wasn’t a great success.

 

4. Warhammer: Vermintide 2

Developer: Fatshark
Publisher: Fatshark

Prepare for mayhem, Mayflies, as you and three other friends venture into Warhammer’s Fantasy Battles world to take on hordes of Skaven in Vermintide 2. Five playable characters allow you to customize the experience and either take the horde head-on with a powerful blade or hide in the back and volley off arrows and magic.

Vermintide 2 is packed with content, different weapons to tinker with, and skills to try out. Build your perfect hero and cut through swarms of the rat-like foe to salvage the war torn lands and save the Empire from being completely eradicated. The overall experience is like Left 4 Dead, just set in a fantasy world and with a ton more customization.

 

5. Killing Floor 2

Developer: Tripwire Interactive
Publisher: Tripwire Interactive

With a name like Killing Floor 2, it’s pretty easy to guess what you’ll be doing a lot of during your time in Tripwire’s six-player co-op experience. If you quite love the chaos brought by an incoming zombie horde, you’ll love cutting through wave after wave of Killing Floor 2’s Zeds, squishy meat sacks ripe for the exploding.

Select a perk, grab a weapon, and head into the fray of an outbreak that spread across Europe. Luckily, the cure is bullets, blades, and blunt objects. Killing Floor 2 is bloody and a fantastic exercise in teamwork, as only the most organized fighters survive. The game also lets players see things through the eyes of a Zed in a 12-player competitive survival mode.

 

6. World War Z

Developer: Saber Interactive
Publisher: Mad Dog Games

Set in the same universe as the 2013 film starring Brad Pitt, World War Z actually does a good job of capturing the helplessness of living in a zombie apocalypse. The runners are everywhere, flooding in like a plague and blocking your global expedition in this undead world.

Like Left 4 Dead, it seems like the zombies never stop – and that’s because there are so many of them. Luckily, you’re not alone and your arsenal includes heavy firepower and unique skills that help combat the rush of flesh-hungry fiends. Just like in the movie, zombies move in massive groups, which is horrifying and intimidating, but makes for some of the game’s coolest and tense moments.

 

7. Zombie Army 4

Developer: Rebellion
Publisher: Rebellion

What started as a spin-off to Rebellion’s Sniper Elite blossomed into a full-fledged story about Nazis, zombies, and their relationship with Allied bullets. The fourth entry in the Zombie Army series pulls out all the stops, so it’s good you and up to four friends can gang up on the zombie horde.

Save for the occasional zombie shark leaping out of the water, there are no real surprises in this fourth installment. There are zombies. You have weapons. And somewhere, a supernatural Hitler is waiting to meet the business end of your Thompson. Zombie Army 4 is fun, brutal, and very heavy on the undead, much like Left 4 Dead. Expect your screen to fill up quickly with shamblers, runners, and all manner of zombies.

 

8. GTFO

Developer: 10 Chambers
Publisher: 10 Chambers

You and three friends are prisoners dropped into a decaying subterranean facility, tasked with performing a series of Expeditions by the mysterious Warden. What could possibly go wrong? Actually, things would go pretty smoothly if not for the hibernating nightmares infesting the Complex, just waiting for the slightest sound to wake them up.

Having to battle these monstrosities is inevitable, but it’s how you prepare for the assault that determines whether you’ll live or die. That, and if you’re playing with competent players. GTFO is a literal fight for survival as you’ll have to unload clip after clip into the sleepy threat until your Work Order is fulfilled and you’re cleared to return topside.

 

9. No More Room in Hell

Developer: No More Room in Hell Team
Publisher: Lever Games

Kudos to the No More Room in Hell Team for choosing a name that so perfectly fits a game about battling back zombie hordes. To a degree, it seemed like they wanted to go for a multiplayer game set in the “… of the Dead” universe but had to settle on the reference to the iconic quote Ken Foree spoke in Dawn of the Dead.

The gameplay may look like a cheaper version of Left 4 Dead, but No More Room in Hell ups the co-op player count to eight, adds dynamic objectives, removes the HUD, and features a survival mode. This “zombification” of Half-Life 2 also adds a unique Infection mechanic, where players must decide whether to let their team know they’ve been infected or stick it out and hope a cure pops up somewhere. The best part? No More Room in Hell is free, so it’s difficult not to recommend it to Left 4 Dead fans.

 

10. Back 4 Blood

Developer: Turtle Rock Studios
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Back 4 Blood is the game most like Left 4 Dead on this list for a very good reason – some of the development team that gave us the zombie shooter brought this one to life. It’s quite evident in how similar the two games play, but Back 4 Blood does bring some new features to the table.

First, you’re no longer facing off against typical zombies. They’re called the Ridden, and the special versions of them are brutish, to say the least. Second, there’s a card system that both provides you with perks and completely ruins your match with Corruptions that work in the enemy’s favor. Otherwise, Back 4 Blood is definitely very close to Left 4 Dead in style and substance, but that’s far from a bad thing when the source material is as good and revered as it is, even though Back 4 Blood never really gets close to being as good.

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