Turtle Rock Studios – the original developer of Left 4 Dead – have released DAM IT, a “campaign that was never finished, along with a couple survival maps that never shipped. Dam It stitches Dead Air and Blood Harvest together” – according to their release site.
You can download DAM IT absolutely free and play it as an add-on to the original Left 4 Dead.
It’s not perfect however, as Turtle Rock Studios notes
” Releasing as an add-on means that our code changes are not included. Missing code means that the following features are not working:
- Fire, smoke and explosions do not trigger panic events in the hangars.
- Zombies do not crawl all the time in the orchard.
- Farm house mob does not spawn in the far side of the woods.
- Covered bridge does not collapse with explosions.
- Burned forest area is missing wandering fires. “
TRS has some handy dandy detailed maps on the download site to assist you through this final campaign.
Left 4 Dead released back in 2008 after Turtle Rock was purchased by Valve and renamed Valve South. Eventually, Turtle Rock split from Valve with the big V retaining the rights to Left 4 Dead and quickly releasing a sequel. The companies remained friendly and the new/old Turtle Rock even continued to work on content for both Left 4 Dead titles and the Counter Strike series.
Turtle Rock went on to create Evolve, which was originally intended for THQ, until their bankruptcy disrupted development. Turtle Rock eventually lost a bidding war for their own game as Take-Two Interactive ponied up $11 million for the un-finished game. It was eventually released to split reviews and regarded by many as a game with a great concept, but poor execution upon initial release. It was later relaunched as a F2P game titled Evolve Stage 2.
Turtle Rock recently ended developmental support for Evolve, saying “That’ll all be up to 2K on out, the same as anything Left 4 Dead related is in Valve’s hands.”
After the interesting road Turtle Rock has taken, it’s nice to see DAM IT released as their unfiltered vision.
Will you play DAM IT?
