Rebellion Developments is no stranger to period pieces. The United Kingdom-based game studio is best known for its World War II-set Sniper Elite series, and its next project will take players back even farther into the past. Strange Brigade is a four-player cooperative action game that will have heroes squaring off against terrifying monsters.
Set in the 1930s, Strange Brigade appears to draw influence from classic Universal monster movies like The Mummy. In its first trailer, we see beautiful ruins overgrown with ivy, tombs with glowing candles that look like something out of Doom, and an expansive forest with series of wooden buildings at the center. The four members of the titular Strange Brigade jump out of a zeppelin from thousands of feet in the air and parachute into danger. Almost immediately, an emaciated zombie leaps out and attacks — we totally didn’t jump while watching it for the first time — and an enormous statue of the Egyptian god Anubis marches forward.
“There are remote corners of the British Empire where the shadows linger at their deepest,” the narrator says. “The servants of the crown know about these places and the things that sometimes lurk there. It is part of the burden of empire to protect the world from such horrors.”
Though Rebellion is best known for the (somewhat) realistic Sniper Elite games, it’s no stranger to the supernatural. The Nazi Zombie Army spinoff series took the existing Sniper Elite formula and added in a healthy dose of the occult, with Hitler building an army of the dead in a last-ditch attempt to defend the Third Reich. You can pick up all three games as a set on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, as well as the excellent Sniper Elite 4. No release date has been set for Strange Brigade, but it will arrive to the same platforms.
