Days Gone Remastered’s Horde Assault Mode Previewed by Bend Studio

Days Gone Remastered comes to PlayStation 5 on April 25. Experience the definitive version of Days Gone with new modes, features, and technical enhancements to leverage the PS5 and PS5 Pro consoles. The new game modes including Horde Assault, Permadeath, and Speedrun—also arriving on PC; via the Broken Road DLC. Whether you’re visiting Days Gone for the first time or jumping back on the Drifter bike, there’s plenty of content to explore and new things to discover. If you haven’t already, be sure to read our Days Gone Remastered announcement post for more details on all the new content and features. Introducing one of our most expansive new additions to Days Gone Remastered, Horde Assault—a survival arcade mode. Before we dive in, watch the gameplay trailer for the new mode below.

What is Horde Assault mode?
Horde Assault offers fresh and unexpected gameplay designed to challenge your skills as you try to achieve a high score, while surviving as long as possible against increased horde sizes and various other enemies, like Breakers, Reachers, and Rager bears, oh my! Fight your way through a brutal, ever-changing landscape where enemies escalate in difficulty the longer you survive. Horde Assault was built from the promise of “This World Comes For You,” showcasing the core gameplay of the Days Gone open world in a unique way. Horde Assault is your playground for a truly endless game mode, go show them Freakers who’s boss.

Begin Horde Assault by dropping into Cascade with only a sidearm weapon at your disposal. Fight your way through the initial assault of Freakers to reach your Drifter bike, a valuable tool to traverse the open region. Seek out Supply Boxes scattered around the map to obtain powerful weapons to greatly increase your chance at survival. With more than 20 available weapons to use, including a new flamethrower not offered in Story mode, finding a Supply Box could be life or death when encountering the next horde. What weapons drop from each Supply Box is random and will reset upon each new start.

While you’re out there fighting for your life, refill your resources and earn additional XP by completing Side Jobs. These mini objectives are critical for keeping you in the fight. Running out of ammo with up to 800 Freakers chasing you, is not ideal. We did say there are increased hordes…Of course, we couldn’t make it that easy for you. Should you make it to 30 minutes of survival time in any map, you will be treated to the Ultimate Horde. A never-ending horde fight in a relentless approach to hunt you down. We’ll stop explaining it any further and let you experience it firsthand.

Survive
Move up in level to earn in-mode rewards with never-before-playable characters, new patch cosmetics, and unique Injectors on offer to greatly impact your gameplay experience.

Speaking of Injectors, players of Days Gone will already be familiar with the benefits of Injectors from the main story. This idea carries over to Horde Assault, but now with a big uplift to drastically change gameplay in the form of modifiers. During your journey to Legendary Survivor, you can earn a total of 24 unique Injectors – 12 Positive and 12 Negative. Positive Injectors provide a positive boost to your score but increase the challenge. Negative Injectors provide a penalty to your score but increases your chance of survival with gameplay benefits.

We don’t want to spoil the full list, but let’s spotlight a couple Injectors to give you a sneak peek what they have to offer:

• Exploding Freakers – Upon death Freakers will explode. You need any advantage you can get when facing increased horde sizes and this Injector is a unique way to trim its numbers.
• Wanted – Start at maximum heat level. In Horde Assault, the longer you survive the more difficult your survival chances become. With this Injector, that escalation difficulty system begins immediately proving to be a real challenge that only the strongest will survive.

During your time with Horde Assault, you will progress through a Reward path. The Reward path consists of 35 levels to achieve with each level earning you a reward including Injectors, character skins, and patch cosmetics. With the inclusion of Rewards, an additional six never-before-playable characters from Days Gone joins the roster including O’Brian, Lisa, fan-favorite Skizzo, and more.

Patches make a return from players who are familiar with the Challenges we released in 2019. This time, the patches serve as purely cosmetic on Deacon’s cut to show off to your friends. That Enhanced Photo Mode will come in handy here. Once you earn the patches, they will carry over to the story as well. In addition to the Reward path, there are bonus rewards in the Reputation Phase, beating the target score in all four regions. We don’t want to reveal this right away, but one of the rewards is a highly requested item our players have been asking for. Hint: It has to do with your bike.

Horde Assault is treated as end game content, though it is playable as soon as you boot up Days Gone Remastered. We encourage newcomers to get a handle on the combat and mechanics first by visiting the story, but nothing is stopping you from jumping right into the action to encounter the uniqueness of Days Gone, the hordes. Horde Assault will offer an additional 10 hours of gameplay packed on top of a content filled package that we hope will bring you plenty of enjoyment in the world of Days Gone.

When and where can you play Horde Assault
Horde Assault is available April 25, 2025 on PS5 with Days Gone Remastered as well as on PC with the Broken Road DLC. Days Gone Remastered is available to pre-order today on PlayStation Store. For players that have purchased Days Gone on PlayStation 4, you can upgrade to Days Gone Remastered including all new content and features for $10 USD.

Add Days Gone Broken Road DLC to your wishlist today on Steam or Epic Games Store.

We can’t wait for you to experience all the new content and features or relive the epic story of Deacon St. John once again.

• Kevin McAllister, Creative & Product Lead, Bend Studio