Have you ever wanted to leave your friends at the mercy of a horde of zombies? Well, now you can in The Walking Dead: Betrayal. The latest franchise expansion for AMC’s flagship show, The Walking Dead, this social deception game has a team of up to eight players fighting to survive the zombie apocalypse. Not everyone is on the same side, though, and a Traitor’s primary goal is to see the other survivors fall to the hordes. In a new trailer released by Project Winter developers Other Ocean Skybound Games, never-before-seen gameplay footage walks through some of the game’s finer points and poses one question: do you trust your fellow survivors?
In a similar vein to Werewolf, Saboteur, and the pandemic smash-hit Among Us, the main goal of The Walking Dead: Betrayal is for a group of players to work together and complete tasks, like cooking, crafting and fighting off hordes of hungry zombies. However, not everyone has the same goal in mind, as some players – designated Traitors – are tasked with infiltrating the other survivors and feeding them to the zombies. One aspect of TWD: Betrayal that sets it apart from similar games like Among Us is that here, players have to cooperate to survive – so do you risk your death by going it alone, or do you put your life in the hands of a potential saboteur?
The Walking Dead: Betrayal – Among Us, But With Zombies
The question of who to trust isn’t unfamiliar to fans of The Walking Dead. Throughout eleven seasons, the main show’s diverse cast of characters has people betraying each other left and right, with each faction having a different definition of what “surviving the apocalypse” means. From Leah to the Governor to the Scavengers, The Walking Dead has no shortage of backstabbers, and that’s not even touching on anything from its various spinoffs. It’ll be interesting to see how this concept plays out in a video game, with players in charge of how diabolical they want to get when betraying their friends.
Gameplay-wise, the new trailer for The Walking Dead: Betrayal showcases a 3D, third-person action game where players each have a customizable character. A team of between five and eight players has to work together on tasks like cooking and crafting, while players can communicate with proximity-based voice chat. Meanwhile, the players marked as Traitors must infiltrate the group of survivors and destroy them from the inside out, like Among Us’ Impostors. After a player dies, they can come back as a walker, swapping control between individual zombies within a horde to get revenge on the traitor that killed them.
So, if you think you’re devious enough to throw your friends to the zombies, then be sure to stay on top of the news about The Walking Dead: Betrayal. A release date has not been announced yet, though a closed beta is reportedly set for August 10th, 2023.