“Takeo One, Zombie Zero!”
Takeo Masaki, Call of Duty: Zombies
The idea of the undead is not new. And most of us are mentally ready to survive in a zombie apocalypse. After all, we already have an underground base with all survival kits and weapons stored — just in case!
It doesn’t matter how much zombie content you have consumed until now; you’re all ready for your next adventure, especially if you have an Xbox One.
In our article, we’ll list the best Zombie games on Xbox One. Our list of zombie games contains highly anticipated titles, thanks to Microsoft’s approach to licensing different zombie titles over the years. For instance, their acquisition of Undead Labs led to the State of Decay and the State of Decay 2 — with the latter cranking up 10 million players by Aug 2021!
Xbox’s ecosystem also allows players to enjoy cooperative and competitive multiplayer zombie experiences on Xbox One.
Licensed Products and the Zombie Rise to Glory on Xbox One
We consume zombie-themed content in many ways – through comics, TV series, or games. I remember the first time I got into zombies when I watched The Walking Dead TV series. After completing the first season, I wanted to try some zombie games. To my surprise, I found The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series, and got to re-live the moment, packaged in a different format, i.e., an interactive, choice-based game!
And this is the case for many Xbox One players. Licensed products such as The Walking Dead and World War Z (a movie and novel) were made into games, making zombie games popular among the Xbox One audience. These games let players play through unique settings and challenges, adapting the essence of the original TV/movie series (or novel).
The same is true for games to live series adaptions. The Last of Us is a great example. But that’s a topic for another day.
In short, licensed products enable game development companies to give the zombies an extra life — which is then consumed by millions of new users, increasing the player base significantly.
Impact of Cooperative and Competitive Multiplayer
Have you ever played a single-player zombie game? Well, most zombie games can be played solo, but where is the fun? (until and unless you’re playing a story-driven zombie game like The Walking Dead).
That’s why most zombie games have co-op and multiplayer options.
The core idea behind co-op in zombie games can be attributed to how the post-apocalyptic world of zombies is shown as a survival challenge for a group rather than an individual. And, there is no denying that killing zombies with your friends is more fun — as it becomes challenging, and we get our necessary daily dose of social interaction.
All of these are true for Xbox One. The Xbox ecosystem makes it seamless to invite friends. The cult classic of Left 4 Dead 2 comes to mind regarding seamless multiplayer experience. And the trend continues in the newest games, such as Back 4 Blood and World War Z.
Also, many Xbox games support cross-play. You can invite your friends to play through different consoles, including Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and even PC (Stream and Microsoft Store). The games in our list that support cross-play include the State of Decay 2, Back 4 Blood, 7 Days to Die, and World War Z.
Let’s explore the world of zombies through the best zombie games on Xbox One.
State of Decay 2
After State of Decay’s decent success, Microsoft-owned studio Undead Labs released State of Decay 2, improving the formula of the dead zombies in a barren world. In this world, you’ll need to survive against the horde of zombies by gathering, crafting, and outsmarting the zombies.
State of Decay 2 is an open-world zombie game where you can build your own base to survive with up to three other players. You start your journey here with a well-crafted story campaign spread across the “Homecoming.” And it takes you anywhere between 16 to 50 hours to complete the story campaign, depending on the difficulty setting. After completing the core story missions, you can also try Heartland DLC, which gives you an additional 12 hours of gameplay!
Apart from story-focused content, State of Decay 2 also offers the Daybreak Pack, which lets you tackle waves of zombie hordes with your friends.
Their latest Juggernaut edition brings new add-ons to the game, including more areas to explore, and Independence Pack, which lets you blow zombies with fireworks! The free Juggernaut upgrade also brings remastered graphics, an expanded soundtrack, and new melee combat moves.
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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State of Decay 2 |
$45.99 |
Buy on Amazon |
- Developer: Undead Labs, Xbox Game Studios
- Estimated time to complete: 25 to 116 hours!
- Release Date: March 22, 2018
- Available on Xbox Game Pass? Yes!
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
If you’re a Resident Evil fan, you’ll love your time with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. This game is a continuous effort from the Resident Evil team to bring the worlds with fascinating horror environments, action sequences, and zombies!
Resident Evil: 7 Biohazard is a first-person survival game that starts just after the Resident Evil 6 story. Here, you witness the horrifying events in the abandoned southern farmhouse.
The game benefits from photorealistic graphics, which immerse you fog of horror, all thanks to Camcom’s new RE engine.
The gameplay elements include exploration. However, if you’re looking for a zombie horde, you’ll not find them here. The game uses a different approach to infect people, and they look like “mold.” These mold-infected people are zombie-like but not zombies (the internet has different opinions on it).
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Resident Evil 7 Biohazard Gold Edition - Xbox One |
$24.99 |
Buy on Amazon |
So, if you’re looking for a single-player horror-filled zombie-like game on Xbox One, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is for you!
- Developer: Capcom
- Estimated time to complete: 9 – 25 hours
- Release Date: January 24, 2017
- Available on Game Pass? No!
Dying Light 2: Stay Human
Dying Light 2: Stay Human (2022) is the sequel to one of the best open-world first-person action survival games, Dying Light (2015). It is a renowned zombie game where the player gets to play as Aiden Caldwell, who’s got some amazing parkour skills to move across the gigantic city of Villedor, filled with zombies.
With improvements in story-telling and player choices, Techland, the Dying Light franchise’s developers, has changed how players enjoy the zombie-themed game. In fact, according to them, it falls under the “zombie-survival-RPG” genre.
Dying Light 2 takes place 22 years after the events in Dying Light. The fight against the virus continues here too! Alongside zombies, you also need to navigate through different power players in Villedor, solving conflicts between human settlements, and your choices will change how the story progresses.
Apart from the players in the game, you also get a beautiful world to explore, where you can parkour your way through the city’s skyscrapers and continue to the hidden passages under the city. Like Dying Light, you also get a proper day and light cycle where the dark empowers the dying to become more ferocious, faster, and hungrier to kill you!
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Dying Light 2 Stay Human - Xbox Series X |
$32.44 |
Buy on Amazon |
The combat is also overhauled with more brutal encounters, creative weapons, and traps. And, you can use the improved combat to enjoy 2-4 player co-op gameplay through an online connection. You get access to 200+ weapons which can be modified with 20+ weapon mods.
- Developer: Techland
- Estimated time to complete: 24 – 97 hours
- Release Date: February 4, 2022
- Available on Game Pass? No!
Dead Rising 4
Do you want to whack zombies in the face with a rocket launcher, or what about a Super Santa doll throwing fire on the zombie horde? If you fancy a more fun zombie game, then Dead Rising 4 is for you. And, if you played the earlier Dead Rising games, you’ll get what you’re expecting — a fun way to kill zombies!
Dead Rising 4 also sees the return of Frank West, the photojournalist of previous Dead Rising games. Frank is as ruthless as before and gets to use hundreds of creative weapons to obliterate the horde from a close range, from a rooftop, or use powerful EXO suits. The game lets you customize your characters and weapons as much as you like!
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Dead Rising 4 - Xbox One |
$37.93 |
Buy on Amazon |
You can invite your friends here as the game supports up to 4-player co-op multiplayer. However, it doesn’t have a co-op campaign. So, if you want to play the story mode with your friends, it won’t let you do it. In that case, you can try the other best zombie games on Xbox One listed here.
- Developer: Capcom Vancouver
- Estimated time to complete: 10 to 31 hours.
- Release Date: December 6, 2016
- Available on Game Pass? No!
World War Z
You like zombies, and you like hordes of zombies running at you! And you like to shoot them with your friends. If you want all this, World War Z is a zombie game that excels at throwing hundreds of zombies at you — which you clear from a third-person perspective.
World War Z uses its proprietary Swarm Engine that intelligently sends zombies toward you so that you can mow them down! This leads to incredibly satisfying firefights, which also take advantage of an advanced gore system so that you enjoy ripping the zombies with powerful weapons.
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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World War Z - Xbox One | 1,435 Reviews |
$18.96 |
Buy on Amazon |
The world of World Waz Z is exciting. It plays out across different popular locations, including New York, Jerusalem, and Moscow. It also features a thrilling story mode that supports co-op gameplay for up to 4 players.
- Developer: Saber Interactive
- Estimated time to complete: 7 to 37 hours.
- Release Date: April 16, 2019
- Available on Game Pass? No!
Back 4 Blood
Back 4 Blood is a first-person cooperative shooter developed by Turtle Rock Studios, from some of the Left 4 Dead creators. The game is heavily inspired by Left 4 Dead, offering an interactive and challenging co-op campaign for up to 4 players.
You can also play the game solo and enjoy the same challenge with modifiers. It also comes with a competitive multiplayer, where you can play with or against your friends.
You can choose from 8 customizable characters (Cleaners) that survived the zombie apocalypse and want to continue surviving at any cost. They interact pleasantly throughout the game to give you a sense of friendship and relationship between them. The L4D team has also ensured good enemy variety, ensuring you use your “brain” against “brain-less” zombies.
However, the biggest change you’ll see is their “rogue-like” card system, which lets you create specialized character classes and uniquely help your team. This also means you may have to start at low difficulty to unlock cards and level up your character to defeat harder zombies.
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Back 4 Blood - Xbox Series X |
$7.50 |
Buy on Amazon |
The shooting mechanics are also improved drastically, making guns feel heavier and punchy in your hands. You can customize your weapons, allowing you to crush those zombies how you want!
The world is also created with care. The game runs on Unreal Engine 4, making it look amazing with dark allies, deep tunnels, and vast open areas to fight 20 feet tall mutated bosses!
- Developer: Turtle Rock Studios
- Estimated time to complete: 12 to 126 hours.
- Release Date: October 12, 2021
- Available on Game Pass? Yes!
The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series
You’ll love The Walking Dead by Telltale Games if you’re a fan of The Walking Dead TV series. It offers a unique taste of exploring a zombie manifestation where characters interact with each other through a tightly-knitted story, surviving against the zombies.
Here, you explore Clementine’s journey through 4 seasons, 400 days, and The Walking Dead: Michonne. Overall, you’ll get a game time of 50 hours across 23 unique episodes.
The Definitive Series also includes graphical enhancements, including dynamic lighting and an enhanced graphic black art style. It also improves other gameplay aspects, including character performance, lip-syncing, and UI enhancements.
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series - Xbox One |
$19.97 |
Buy on Amazon |
- Developer: Skybound Games
- Estimated time to complete: Approx. 50 hours
- Release Date: October 29, 2020
- Available on Game Pass? No!
The Evil Within
The Evil Within is a single-player survival horror game developed by Tango Gameworks and the creator of the Resident Evil series, Shinji Mikami.
The Evil Within lets you explore a thrilling yet horrifying highly-crafted environment intertwined with an intricate story. Once you jump in, you’ll feel the tension in the immersive world with limited stocks as you plan to survive against the odds.
The story starts when Detective Sebastian Castellanos investigates a gruesome mass murder scene. His team members then get slaughtered, and he finds himself unconscious. After waking up, he finds himself in a new world where he unwinds the surrounding world and embarks on a journey against the evil force.
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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The Evil Within - Xbox One |
$27.16 |
Buy on Amazon |
Along your journey, you’ll find chilling horror instances. In addition, you’ll have to deal with brutal traps and twisted creators.
- Developer: Tango Gameworks
- Estimated time to complete: Approx. 40 hours
- Release Date: October 14, 2014
- Available on GamePass? Yes!
And, if you like it, you must also try The Evil Within 2 – a worthy successor.
7 Days to Die
Do you like Zombie games with a twist? If you do, you’ll find the 7 Days to Die formula interesting — with over 15 million copies sold across all platforms.
It is an open-world zombie game with a unique combination of survival horror, elegant first-person shooting, role-playing element, and tower defense. In short, it is an actual zombie RPG-baed sandbox game.
You and your friends (support up to 4 players in online multiplayer and split-screen support for 2 players) starts your journey with your bare hands and wits to survive. You start scavenging for supplies, food, water, or armor to fight the zombies.
With each passing day, your survival chances become low. That’s because, on the night of the 7th day, you’ll be attacked by a special horde of zombies known as Blood Moon Horde. And the challenge is to survive the first 7 days by building a tower where you and your friends can stay safe! — This happens every 7 days, with a more powerful horde each time. (Hint: You can change the frequency in the game according to your taste).
Some of the fascinating aspects of the game include exploring 5 unique biomes spread across 100 square kilometers in size and crafting more than 500 recipes related to armor, clothes, tools, vehicles, and more. You can also build amazing traps to stop the zombies while cooperating with your buddy to manage settlements.
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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7 Days to Die - Xbox One | $59.99 | Buy on Amazon |
The RPG element comes with its ability to get level perks, creating a unique player experience. It also has a compelling storyline in an open-world environment. The loot adds the element of discovery to the game. Overall, 7 Days to Die is an excellent mix of survival, RPG elements, zombies, and traps.
- Developer: The Fun Pimps
- Estimated time to complete: Approx. 55 – 393 (❗) hours.
- Release Date: June 28, 2016
- Available on Game Pass? Yes!
Death Road to Canada
Death Road to Canada isn’t your typical intense and graphics-fuelled zombie game for Xbox One. Instead, it gives the vibe of retro games and brings roguelike action to the console. Basically, you control a car full of misfits who are driving across the country, in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
On the way, you’ll find plenty of survivors and animals who need to be saved. However, zombies aren’t the only thing that can kill you. You’ll have to hunt for supplies and manage your inventory, and your band of survivors isn’t the easiest to get along with. So, when you’re playing this roguelite game, just remember that not everybody’s your friend!
To make things even better, each time you play the game, the story and world is randomly generated. So, you’ll have plenty of new playthroughs and elements to discover in this zombie game!
- Developer: Rocketcat Games, Madgarden
- Estimated time to complete: Approx. 16.5 – 132 hours.
- Release Date: July 22, 2016
- Available on Game Pass? No!
➡️ Check it out on the Xbox Store.
Run or Kill: The Zombie Horde is Coming
Zombies are part of our culture. We see them in cartoons, movies, and games. And it doesn’t matter how much zombie content we consume; it always makes us want more!
These best zombie Xbox One games will keep you busy for hours. Play it alone or with your friends; the choice is yours!
If you’re still up for some horror and zombie games, check out our list of the best PS4 horror games!
