Escape Dead Island is another Dead Island game

“I just had a terrible dream where publishers were milking their popular licenses to death.”

Before you switch off to a state of natural indifference about another Dead Island zombie game, let’s see what Escape Dead Island has to offer. So, okay, it’s being developed by Fatshark. That’s not a bad thing! They know their way around a melee combat system (War of the Roses/Vikings.)

Possibly interesting thing two: you play as a guy who has the zombie infection. His name is Cliff Calo (does he know Miles Kilo from Syndicate?) Based on what the trailer has in it, that means Fatshark gets to mess around with visual effects and weird stuff going on as a reflection of your failing sanity. In theory, that could be interesting.

Apparently, Calo will have to make sense of the deja-vu he’s feeling, which sounds to me like you’ll be replaying the same segments of game but with bizarre differences each time through. That worked alright in Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, but can also get dangerously repetitive unless there’s a compelling narrative behind it.

The rest of Escape Dead Island isn’t so promising. It’s a stop-gap filler (sorry, a “survival mystery spin-off”) before Dead Island 2 and isn’t much of a looker in the graphics department. It’ll also cost $40.00 USD, which seems to put more stock in third-party Dead Island spin-offs than is perhaps warranted.

Here’s what it looks like.