Survival horror word-em-up Blood Typers rolls out the Scarlet Carpet for its grand finale update

Blood Typers was one of my favourite indie picks of last month. A clever fusion of classic Resident Evil and The Typing Of The Dead with a little bit of proximity chat co-op chaos for spice. But much as I liked it, something was missing—an ending. Despite not carrying any early access labelling, the game was still incomplete on release date, and had more than a few little rough edges to be sanded down.

Today’s update, ‘The Scarlet Finale’ caps off a long series of hotfixes and balance tweaks with a major chunk of new content; the final story mission. You can read the full patch notes here on Steam, but they’ve kept things relatively light on spoilers for those wanting to jump into the new (procedurally generated and replayable) scenario blind.

The other patches up to this point have added some nice new quality-of-life features, like traditional save game functionality (making those checkpoint rooms all the more important) and significantly improved voice chat.

The finale mission itself—The Scarlet Carpet—is set inside the nightmare of cursed film director Vincent Fessler, an unfinished film with the man himself waiting at the end. From what I’ve seen of the new mission, it’s weirder and more abstract than previous levels, featuring even more weird glitchy surfaces, guts oozing from the walls, bridges over crimson voids and blood-soaked, Silent Hill-esque rusting industrial tunnels. Like a proper survival horror finale, really. There’s also a good bit of verticality to some of its areas, perfect for your party to Scooby Doo it and split up to cover ground faster.

It should now be easier to put together a group to play with, too. While it was always possible to play the game solo, it’s clearly built for multiplayer. This update adds the option to create public lobbies that strangers are free to jump into. This does mean dealing with randos on voice chat, but that’s always the gamble with unrestricted multiplayer. The update also adds a set of Steam achievements, but they’re a pretty conservative lot—a checklist of missions and difficulties you’ve completed them on. Good for tracking what you might have done, but they aren't going to encourage any unhinged challenge runs.

This update has bumped the game up my list of things to do this weekend, so I’ll be jumping back into the deep end of the bloodbath once I can rustle up my crew, and recommend you do the same. Blood Typers is out now on Steam for £8.50/$10, with a 10% discount available until April 25th.