Rebellion had a key feature to reveal for Alien Deathstorm at Gamescom last week: this action-horror title will be playable with two player co-op, so you won’t have to brave the xenos threat or the heavy weather alone.
“We are sharing, at Gamescom, that the campaign will be playable in two player co-op,” Producer Martin Willingham told us. However, this is still an early announcement for this side of the game. He continued, “We’re still working on that element, but we’re just announcing co-op at the moment, so there’s more details to follow.”
Cooperative multiplayer can be a real bonus for many games, and has been a cornerstone feature for many Rebellion games, from Sniper Elite through Strange Brigade, but it can also dramatically change the tone of a horror genre experience. In Alien Deathstorm’s case, Rebellion has described it as an action-horror game, so while there will still be plenty of tension to cut through, having a friend to fight alongside won’t necessarily change how you play.
Even so, we followed up on how this could change the gameplay experience, with Martin saying, “When we talk about player choice, [the atmosphere] will come down to how the co-op players tend to play. If they’re grouping up, it might be easier to take the aliens down, or it might be more difficult [as your actions might attract them]. On the flip side, if you take longer to do the level [together] or you want to try to split up. Then you’re a bit more vulnerable when you go off and it’s a bit more dangerous.”
Alien Deathstorm is a semi-open game with sandbox levels and multiple objectives that you can complete – we’ll explore this in a preview coming soon – opening up that possibility to split up or stay together, as Martin mentions. However, there are aspects of this, such as how co-op affects the game director and the baseline for the dynamic difficulty, that they are still working out.
The game takes place on an off-world colony that’s ravaged by a huge mega-storm, casting players as a Combat Engineer sent to investigate the loss of communications and prepare for the arrival of a full rescue fleet. What soon becomes clear is that there’s not just this massive Deathstorm, but there’s also the Aliens from the title as well, and not just a few of them. Lots of them.
Alien Deathstorm will launch in spring 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, and it will be available day one with higher tiers of Xbox Game Pass.
