While PikPok is still hard at work on Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days, the New Zealand studio brought a demo of the game to PAX East 2024, which I got to play during a brief preview session. During my time with Into the Dead, I got to see the new 2D side-scrolling format in action, and spent plenty of time running away from zombies.

During my Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days demo, I explored two locations in the game’s Texas setting. One was a suburban neighborhood, where I was tasked with recovering a couple of important items. The second location was a police precinct, where I was trying to learn the source of a radio signal. The second location was marked with a higher difficulty, and was appropriately overrun with zombies when I arrived.

As I made my way through the level, I crouched to sneak up on zombies, quickly looted containers and bodies for materials and weapons, and searched desperately for keys to locked doors and alternate entrances to barricaded pathways. While it was mostly quiet, there were a couple of rooms where I found myself face-to-face with what felt like a dozen undead. I’d sprint away from them, slamming doors behind me to slow them down while I looked for a hiding spot.

When I died, my character was permanently dead, and I had to select another character from my shelter to head out in their stead. There were three characters available, and they each had unique traits that made them proficient in combat or survival. One developer explained to me that permadeath will be a key mechanic in the full game, and that Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days will include more playable characters at launch.

The swap to 2D is an interesting one for Into the Dead. The emphasis on stealth creates some grippingly tense moments, and the permadeath mechanic keeps the stakes high at all times. The game is currently set for a 2025 launch, but the developers told me that a public demo may be in the cards this fall.