You can say goodbye to any co-op zombie smacking this year, as Dead Island 2 slips from spring 2015 to '2016'.
The delays been announced via the game's twitter feed, with developer Yager (of Spec Ops fame) saying the game "didn’t reach [the] goals we set out to achieve quite yet".
There's no mention of when in 2016 it'll be arriving. I played it at this year's Gamescom and found it an enjoyable co-op sort thing - still a bit of a ramshackle mess but a more proficiently crafted and intentionally ramshackle mess (and I say that as someone who liked and finished the first Techland instalment). Although, now I think about it, what I played could have easily been a vertical slice rather than a full game in development. It was a concisely contained area and mission and that does seems to be pretty much all anyone's seen of it. The studio's been quiet for a while now, too. Here's the full statement:
Dead Island 2 has been delayed to 2016.We have always set ourselves a big goal for Dead Island 2: to create the sequel that takes Dead Island to the next level. A game that takes what our fans tell us they love about Dead Island – multiple different characters to play with, co-op, and turning a paradise setting into a zombie slaughter melee – and a game that adds a ton more content and combat options on top of that. And we wanted to have all of that that done for release in Spring 2015. We have been looking at the game long and hard, and we have decided we didn’t reach that goal we set out to achieve quite yet. This is why we have decided to delay Dead Island 2 to 2016. Right now we are focusing purely on development, and we will have more info to share at a later stage. We know that our fans will be disappointed by this news, but by giving Dead Island 2 more time we are confident that everyone will get a better game to play as a result.
-Team Dead Island 2
