Killing Floor 2 officially announced

Tripwire Interactive has just announced Killing Floor 2, sequel to the gore-filled and long-supported co-op shooter. The game, which was revealed by PC Gamer, is set to land on Steam Early Access and SteamOS, but we're not sure when.

The sequel is set to include a number of new and interesting features, among them the inclusion of permanent blood that remains where spilt for the duration of a match.

"We're using some really clever tricks to modify textures in the level in real time," Tripwire's president John Gibson told the magazine. "Typically blood is rendered as a texture that is projected onto objects in the world. It's very expensive to render. What this is doing, in real-time, is modifying the textures being rendered to display the blood so there's almost no additional rendering cost. You can literally paint the texture with blood and it'll stay the entire match."

The gore system is being called MEAT (Massive Evisceration and Trauma), and there'll be 95 death animations for each zed, with Tripwire aiming to make their most grizzly game to date.

"You can blow chunks off their head to reveal skull," art director David Hensley said. "Keep shooting the skull and it explodes, revealing brain cross sections. You can cut them in half vertically, horizontally."

There's be a cap around level 25, with two skills unlocking every five levels, but only one can be equipped from each. A longer levelling curve is being added for increased longevity: "A big goal for us this time around is to make sure the endgame, playing the game for a long time, is much more entertaining and has a lot more replay value," Gibson said.

Also mentioned in the reveal was four difficulty levels (meaning one from first game has been removed), plus the scaling of difficulty has been changed. There'll be 40 weapons across 10 planned perks, but with backup melee and "sidegrades", and they're building the game with modding in mind for the future.