Left 4 Dead blog

Essential linkage: Get the inside track on keeping Left 4 Dead up to date, and the design decisions behind the greatest zombie game ever.

Killing zombies - it's a truly victimless crime, and Valve's Left 4 Dead brilliantly captures the last-man-standing desperation of trying to survive the zombie apocalypse. It seems a simple premise, but a lot of thought and time has gone into making the game such a taut experience; and there's a blog where you can get the scoop on just how the devs and artists involved did such a good job.

The blog's an adjunct to the official L4D site, and features everything from write-ups of how the designers worked on the difficulty levels for the new Survival mode, to designing the game's cover art. That one in particular is fascinating, as it's a part of the industry that doesn't often get a lot of play:

As a multiplayer game with an emphasis on teamwork, though, Left 4 Dead didn't really have a central character. Pretending otherwise, we decided, was just misleading-if the box art is selling a different game than the one in the box, it's not doing its job.

So a lead character filling up the front of a game box was out. Next we tried spacing the four characters out at equal size. On the plus side, this avoided any confusion about one character being more prominently featured (and thus more "important") than the others...

That post even features all the iterations of the cover art - great grist for anyone wanting to an angle on graphic design in relation to the game industry.

All up, it's yet another proof of why Valve is so good at what it does. Not only are the company's people talented in their right, the openess of Valve shows just how invested they are in the wider aspects of making some of the best games on the planet. Check the blog out right here.