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: