ShooterofIO: Dark Warfare Zombies

ShooterofIO: Dark Warfare Zombies
Developer(s)	Air Studios
Publisher(s)	Monsteristic
Writer(s)	Freddie Goodwin
Series	ShooterofIO Zombies
Platform(s)	PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Windows Xbox One Xbox Series X/S
Release	October 12, 2024
Genre(s)	First/third-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

ShooterofIO: Dark Warfare Zombies is a 2024 cooperative video game developed by Air Studios and published by Monsteristic. Set in the 1980s, the game's story follows Noah Mad as he with three other operatives to prevent a outbreak connected to the Dark Aether. It was released as part of ShooterofIO: Dark Warfare on October 12, 2024, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. It is the first game in the Zombies sub-franchise.

During the development of Dark Warfare Zombies, Air Studios initially planned to continue the open-world structure previously used in ShooterofIO 1: Modern Ops’ "Operations" mode. The team later shifted to a round-based format after determining it offered stronger replay value. Marketing for the mode began in June 2024, followed by a full reveal in August. Upon release, Dark Warfare Zombies received widespread critical acclaim, with reviewers praising its core gameplay design and the quality of its launch maps. A successor, ShooterofIO: Dark Warfare II Zombies, is scheduled to be released as part of ShooterofIO: Dark Warfare II, set for release in October 2026.

Gameplay

ShooterofIO: Dark Warfare Zombies is a cooperative video game played from a first-person or third-person perspective. The mode has players use a selection of military equipment, such as weapons, "field upgrades", and special "wonder weapons", to combat endless hordes of zombies, which increase in both number and difficulty with every completed round. Up to four players can play together in a match; solo matches are also available, with the ability for players to pause and save their progress in them.

Dark Warfare Zombies features seven playable maps: "Undead Forest", "Der Palace", "Turm der Toten", "Origins", "Der River", "Boomtown Zombies", and "Foldpoint", which tells the mode's storyline that is set decades before the events of the Operations mode featured in ShooterofIO 1: Modern Ops (2023). Each map includes a main quest that players must solve without any guidance, along with a number of side quests and easter eggs. Three additional game modes—"Zombies Casual", "Zombies Cranked", and "Zombies Blitz"—were added to all maps post-launch.

While in a match, players have one main currency to manage: "Essence"; which is used to unlock access to new parts of the maps, acquire weapon upgrades from the "Pack-a-Punch" machine, and to purchase additional player upgrades, including "Perk-a-Cola" cans and armor vests. Players can unlock "Augments", a set of minor and major upgrades to perks, field upgrades and ammo mods. Each perk, field upgrade, and ammo mod features up to three minor and major Augments, with one of each type being equipable at the same time, allowing players to customize and experiment with different play styles.

Plot

In 1983, former archaeologist Noah Mad begins having vivid, lucid dreams of a woman named Samantha Voss, who claims to come from another thread of reality where the dead walk. She warns him of an imminent breach in the Everfall Rainforest — a rift she calls an Ecliptic Gate, leading into a realm known as the Dark Aether. Noah dismisses her warnings. Weeks later, he comes home to find his wife brutally murdered, her body surrounded by glowing spores that pulse like a heartbeat. Fueled by grief, he tracks Samantha down, who introduces him to rogue engineer Jessica Carver and disgraced military scientist William Peck. The group ventures deep into the cursed rainforest, now crawling with undead that phase in and out of reality. At its heart, they discover a crystalline monolith keeping the rift open. They destroy it, collapsing the jungle into a void — but their “victory” has consequences. The collapse echoes through the dimensional veil, tearing open twelve more gates across the world. One of these new breaches manifests in the abandoned Weismark Palace in Washington State, a Cold War listening post turned spectral beacon. Battling glass-infused horrors, the team intercepts a transmission from Edward Richtofen, who claims to lead a covert agency called Requiem and possesses the means to end the Outbreak. Samantha rejects him outright, but Edward approaches Noah directly, convincing him the Palace is only the start of a dimensional merger. Noah joins him, fracturing the group. Samantha storms off east, while the Palace is destroyed — and Edward quietly pockets a pulsing artifact: an Ecliptic Core.

Samantha’s trail leads her to Turm der Toten (“Tower of the Dead”), a colossal Dark Aether tower jutting from the jungles of A Sầu Valley, Vietnam. Here, Colonel Lev Kravchenko and the Soviet-aligned Omega Group are siphoning Dark Aether energy to forge living weapons. Samantha infiltrates the tower but is captured and thrown into the Dark Aether itself. Edward, pressured by Noah, agrees to a rescue — recruiting Captain Sergei Ravenov, an Omega defector. Scaling the tower’s warped architecture, the team navigates gravity shifts and spectral storms to locate Omega’s Rift Engine. They reverse the machine’s polarity, tearing Samantha out of the Dark Aether in a blaze of violet light. Kravchenko is devoured by his own creations, but his second-in-command, Dr. Aleksandra Valentina, escapes with a shard of the Rift Engine.

Edward’s fixation deepens. He reveals his home reality, Dimension 63, where another Samantha died saving him. Believing he can resurrect her using this realm’s energy, he sends the reunited “Primal Crew” to Origins, a rift beneath the ruins of St. Petersburg. There they find the Prime Machine, a teleporter built by a prehuman civilization, guarded by Flesh Golems stitched from multiple timelines. Peck learns the machine needs Spectral Essence from every active gate. Noah, distrustful, tries to sabotage the harvest, but Samantha intervenes — revealing her powers are tied to the Dark Aether itself. She forcibly pulls the crew back to Requiem HQ, warning that destroying the gates too quickly could tear reality apart.

Two months later, the crew has disbanded. Noah leaves entirely — until New York erupts into chaos as an Outbreak spreads from the black, oil-like Der River, now twisting through Manhattan’s streets. Samantha, Peck, and Jessica are cornered when Valentina manifests, using the river as a conduit to merge worlds. She strips Samantha of her powers, declaring her intent to restore the Dark Aether to its “true form.” Noah returns, wielding a prototype bomb designed to neutralize the river’s flow. As skyscrapers collapse into the abyss, Edward arrives in Dark Aether–charged armor, scattering the undead. The river is purged, but Valentina escapes, now partially fused with the current. Tracking her leads Edward to Boomtown, a quarantined mining colony in New Zealand built atop an ancient meteor crater. The entire town shifts between decades with every siren blast, and undead miners wield spectral tools forged in another age. The Primal Crew fights to stabilize the area by shutting down smaller rifts — until Edward activates the Primal Gateway’s core, triggering the town’s collapse into the Dark Aether. Noah realizes Edward’s true goal: consolidating rift energy to reshape Dimension 63, not save this world. The crew barely escapes as Boomtown is consumed.

The final confrontation takes place in Foldpoint, the Dark Aether’s shifting nexus where past, present, and future bleed together. Requiem and the Primal Crew prepare to transport a nuclear warhead into the Gateway, hoping to collapse it. But Valentina opens dozens of secondary rifts, unleashing undead knights, mechanized revenants, and shadow-beasts older than Earth itself. Edward’s facade slips — he never intended to detonate the bomb. Noah offers to sacrifice himself, but Edward instead hurls a powerless Samantha into the Gateway. Her presence destabilizes the core, triggering a chain collapse that seals every rift worldwide and wipes out the undead. In the aftermath, Edward arrests the surviving Primal Crew, dismantles Requiem, and vanishes — vowing to “bring back some old friends” from the shards of the Foldpoint.

Development

Dark Warfare Zombies was developed by Air Studios as a core component of ShooterofIO: Dark Warfare (2024).

Marketing and release

The mode was revealed and initial details relating to it were revealed were added during the game's worldwide reveal blog post; a specific zombies reveal was done in August 2024.

The mode was released alongside Dark Warfare on October 12, 2024, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.