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After a reveal earlier this year, The Walking Dead: Last Mile is launching into open beta today, July 11, as a Facebook Gaming and Facebook Watch exclusive experience. The full season of the show and game hybrid will unfold over the course of the next several months. Every day during the three acts as well as this trial-run beta period, new story content will drop.
It requires no download or install–you can simply open the Instant Game on your browser, phone, or anywhere else you can access Facebook. This prologue will “provide an opportunity for collecting and implementing fan feedback,” which the developers will take into consideration when creating the next part of TWD: LM. After four weeks of open beta, the Instant Game will go on a two-week hiatus for story expansion. The rest of the game will then be split into four-week segments called Acts that will conclude later this year.
So what can you do in the Instant Game? Players can create their own survivor, participate in mini-games to earn points, and then use these points to influence key story decisions. It’s reminiscent of Black Mirror’s experimental and interactive Bandersnatch episode, with perhaps a tinge of Blaseball’s participatory nature, all wrapped up into a narrative adventure akin to Telltale’s The Walking Dead, where interpersonal dynamics and zombie survival collide to tell a human drama intended to keep players invested throughout the lengthy first season.
The series will feature a weekly wrap-up show hosted by actor and noted Walking Dead superfan Yvette Nicole Brown, and its first episode debuts today on Facebook Watch at 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET. Brown will explain how viewers can participate and affect the story of The Walking Dead: Last Mile. Every week, Brown and another host, Felicia Day, will recap the narrative and cover the decisions made by viewers in the Instant Game, the daily interactive portion of the series that will help determine the direction of the story including who lives and who dies.
For more information on what you can expect from TWD: LM, check out our The Walking Dead: Last Mile feature article.
