After the Fall, the long-awaited co-op VR zombie shooter from Vertigo Games, has an official launch date. It’s now slated to arrive on all supported platforms on December 9th.

Update (October 28th, 2021): Vertigo Games today revealed that After the Fall is coming to supported VR headsets on December 9th. There’s also a short announce video which shows a bit of actions, embedded below.

The previous updates have been moved to the foot of the article for clarity’s sake.

Original Article (November 6th, 2020: After the Fall was first announced back at E3 2019, offering up zombie-shooting four-player co-op action in a frozen wasteland. It was originally projected to arrive sometime in 2020, which at this late date would have put it releasing around the holidays.

Now, Vertigo Games says it won’t make the 2020 launch due to “the Covid-19 outbreak and everything going on in the world.”

Here’s the full statement below, which the studio tweeted out earlier today:

We have made the difficult decision to move the launch of After the Fall to early 2021, to ensure the development team has sufficient time to deliver the experience that meets our vision.

We want to make After the Fall the best and most gripping co-op VR FPS experience possible. However, with the Covid-19 outbreak and everything going on in the world, are facing several challenges that require more time to safely develop After the Fall and meet our high standards.

We understand that this is not the news you were hoping to hear and we can assure you we would have loved to have delivered you a great experience this holiday season. At the same time, we want to deliver the best 4-player co-op action VR FPS that you can expect from us. Therefore we are taking the additional time to get everything just right. We have big plans for After the Fall and we cannot wait to show you more.

Thank you for your patience and support, please stay safe.

We went hands-on with After the Fall back at E3 2019, and although clearly very early in its development, Road to VR’s Ben Lang said it was lacking a clear a sense of immersion for multiple reasons, including less than optimal object interaction and overly arcade-y controls, making it feel more like a point-and-click experience than a proper shooting experience.

Here’s what Lang concluded Vertigo Games needed to accomplish if they wanted a more immersive, more fun game for VR players:

After the Fall has a long way to go if the developers want to deliver gameplay that feels native to VR, and I hope they do. The only thing the game really seems to have going for it is some pretty darn good visuals (a big upgrade from the studio’s previous title, Arizona Sunshine). Right now it almost feels like Vertigo Games is designing After the Fall to work on flat screens too—maybe they have ambitions to release a non-VR version of the game? Being overtly distracted with high-level non-VR game design goals that evoke the non-VR loot shooters is a sure-fire way to end up with a VR game that feels like a port, and Borderlands 2 VR already has that covered.

We haven’t seen the game in the wild since then due to the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent cancellations of all in-person events, so we’re curious to see how much headway the studio was able to make in the meantime. Whatever the case, we’re hoping for a pleasant surprise after more time in development.

Update (October 27th, 2021): In a tweet today, Vertigo Games announced it had “big news for you tomorrow,” which ostensibly means we’ll have some idea of when the game is coming. The studio previously said that After the Fall will release on PlayStation VR, Oculus Quest 2 and SteamVR headsets “later this year.”

You can follow along with Facebook Connect by heading to the event’s official Facebook page when it starts on October 28th at 10 AM PT (local time here).


Update (July 23rd, 2021): After the Fall was originally supposed to release in 2020, and was then delayed to early 2021 due to complications caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now Vertigo Games says it’s pushing the multiplatform release of After the Fall to later this year. The game is targeting PlayStation VR, Oculus Quest 2 and PC VR.

“With After the Fall, we have set ourselves with the ultimate goal of bringing you the best possible 4-player co-op experience in VR. To ensure a smooth multi-platform launch with cross-platform support, we are giving our development team the time they need to finalize their work,” the studio says in an update.

Additionally, if you’re looking to play on the 2019-era Oculus Quest, the studio says that release will likely come in 2022. The original article detailing the previous delay follows below:

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • LoneWuff326

    why do developers give release dates for games their not finished with? why not announce the game when you actually done with the game and use 6 months to build hype and leaks and after those 6 months of building hype and leaks you release the game. For an example cyberpunk has been delayed for like the 4th time

    • Ron

      Welcome to software development…been this way since the beginning. Why I never ‘wait’ too much for these.

    • Adrian Meredith

      If you watch half life alyx final hours it could easily have been delayed by a year even at 6 months. Large parts of it were totally changed very late on.

    • User_Name_24601

      Simply put, you never know what you don’t know in development. Sometimes you run into a bug that takes longer to iron out than expected. Sometimes during player testing, players discover that a puzzle or feature you thought was intuitive isn’t. It’s better to delay then release a half-baked user experience.

  • TechPassion

    Another interesting looong 2 hour interview with Deca VR headset team. This time in VRChat:
    https://www.twitch.tv/videos/792642460

  • James Cobalt

    I don’t understand how this came as a surprise to anyone. The title clearly states it wasn’t going to release in autumn.

    • LoneWuff326

      wow nice joke

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    • Gonzax

      LOL!!

  • Charleston

    Arizona Sunshine was extremely over rated/hyped anyhow. Janky garbage with poor shooting mechanics.

    I can’t see this game being much better.

    • johann jensson

      I’m glad that i’m not the only one with their eyes open.

    • Rosko

      Like a lot of games in VR though to be fair. But considering it’s success it was always a bit of a head-scratch why it was so popular.

    • mirak

      yes, but it was the first, so …

    • Gonzax

      It’s very outdated now but back in the day it was really good and of the few adventure/action games you could play in VR.
      After the Fall is a huge disappointment though. Instead of making a bigger campagin they said you could finish the story in roughly 20′ and it would take 4-5 hours to unlock everythig.

      • Elite-Force_Cinema

        http://disq.us/p/2key7xq

        And you’re trying to say you want to force Oculus and Facebook to go out of business for good just so that you can force them to not for them to do better at treating their customers with respect but to force them to get all of their employees to go bankrupt and homeless instead simply because of this dumb shit reason you came up? Cause it sounds like you are, you Valve Index and SteamVR fantard!

        • Gonzax

          What????

          • Elite-Force_Cinema

            I said are you trying to say you want to force Oculus and Facebook to go out of business for good just so that you can force them to not for them to do better at treating their customers with respect but to force them to get all of their employees to go bankrupt and homeless instead simply because of this dumb shit reason you came up? Cause it sounds like you are, you Valve Index and SteamVR fantard!

            http://disq.us/p/2key7xq

          • Gonzax

            1- What in the world does that have to do with After the Fall??

            2- What does my wanting a wider fov and better lenses that I posted in a different thread have to do with this or anything you just posted which by the way makes no sense at all, I can’t even understand what you’re trying to say.

            3- Are you high?

            No offence, just trying to find an explanation to your rambling.

          • Elite-Force_Cinema

            And why are you saying that I am high, you clown? Just so that you can make sure I face mass harassment campaigns and mass racist attacks for some unexplained reason? Cause it sounds like you are!

          • Gonzax

            I’ll ask again: Are you high?? or are those 131 comments you posted in the last hour replying to absolutely every person who said the keynote was boring something you do on a regular basis? LOL

          • Elite-Force_Cinema

            And I said why are you saying that I am high, you clown? Just so that you can make sure I face mass harassment campaigns and mass racist attacks for some unexplained reason? Cause it sounds like you are!

  • johann jensson

    Need to implement another set of scope downgrades, to make the Quest 2 port possible… smh

  • Jonathan Winters III

    Big news? Maybe Oculus acquires the studio from Koch Media.

    • NL_VR

      Koch media is owned by Embracer and their vision is not to sell publichers and developers.
      So i think not.

  • Gonzax

    After saying you can finish the story in 20′ nothing they announce can change my mind about it.

  • Mrfox Babbit

    Honest question…Why do so many VR games look like ‘me too’ basement projects that would be right at home on an old original Xbox or phone? Lack of funding? Hardware/ software limitations of the platform? Still considered a niche market? Shooting for the lowest common denominator of HMD for max saturation in sales?