Go on then, break 4:Loop’s roguelike-ish mechanics with teleporting berry mischief, says Left 4 Dead creator

I have to say, it does tickle me that pretty much anyone involved with Left 4 Dead just seem to still want to make Left 4 Dead. The Anacrusis and Back 4 Blood both were made by folks who worked on the original co-op shooter, and now the original lead designer of it Mike Booth is back with yet another incarnation, 4:Loop, revealed at Geoff’s Ads and Statues Evening. As part of that reveal, Booth took part in a little interview over on the PlayStation Blog where he touched on the game’s roguelike mechanics, and how excited he is for people to break them.

Booth explained that he’s been a fan of roguelikes since the original Rogue, and how the genre appeals to him because of the ways you can be creative in achieving certain goals. “Some runs even feel like you have such a great combination of tools that you ‘break the game,'” Booth said, also noting that with 4:Loop he does still just want to let people “jump in and play.”

We’ll come back to that game breaking stuff in a moment, but first here’s how Booth explains the core loop. Essentially, you and three of your buds need to try and destroy an alien mothership, with each mission you embark on letting you make different choices to improve equipment. Along the way, you might pick up certain items that help you out in tricky scenarios.

One such scenario Booth described was an instance where a playtester was trying to outrun a lethal beam of some sort that basically means game over if you can’t get to the escape zone in time. Said playtester had picked up an item called a blink berry, which you can sort of throw like a grenade, and wherever it lands it’ll teleport whatever it hits to somewhere random. So, the playtester threw it at themself, was teleported away, and made it to the escape zone in time.

“I built both of those game mechanics and had never even considered that strategy,” Booth said. “I’m excited to see how our gaming community ‘breaks the game’ in other unexpected ways.” Apparently there’s bit of “meta-progression” where you learn things about the world and how it works that “give you an edge for your next run.”

From the sounds of things it won’t be a full-on roguelike, maybe more towards a roguelite, something to keep runs fresh rather than just taking hordes of aliens on over and over again. No release date attached to this one yet, so, just keep replaying Left 4 Dead like you I’m assuming you already do.