If you're enjoying Back 4 Blood but can't escape the feeling of familiarity when you play it, there is a good reason why. It looks, feels and plays a lot like Left 4 Dead, the incredibly successful co-op shooter that took the world by storm when it was released in 2008.
The same developer worked on both games and Back 4 Blood acts as a spiritual successor, not a sequel, to the original game.
Who made Back 4 Blood and Left 4 Dead?
The creator behind both Back 4 Blood and Left 4 Dead is Turtle Rock Studios. Valve originally published the first game but took over development also for the second.
Turtle Rock was initially acquired by Valve after the success of Left 4 Dead meaning much of the team worked on the sequel even though Valve is officially credited as the developers. They broke away from Valve and were re-established in 2011.
Their first major project after going solo once again was the polarizing asymmetrical multiplayer game, Evolve. It wasn't the blockbuster project they hoped but recent trends have shown that maybe they were a little too early on its release.
Games like Dead by Daylight have gone on to prove hugely popular using the same formula that Evolve utilised. In the years following, they released multiple VR projects on the Oculus before returning to a more AAA centric project in the form of Back 4 Blood.
While it's hard to ignore the similarities between Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood, the latter is considered a spiritual successor rather than a direct sequel. This is likely due to Valve still owning the rights to the L4D property meaning Turtle Rock could not obtain the required content to create an outright sequel.