Survivors live in a world where resources are scarce, violence and murder are common and Freakers roam the wilderness.

Players face this violent, new world as Deacon St. John, a bounty hunter, a Drifter who lives in the lawless wilderness outside the civilian encampments. Deacon survives by using skills learned before the world ended, riding for the Mongrels MC, an outlawed motorcycle club, where violence and mayhem were part of the riding the open road.

At the center of it all, Days Gone is an exploration of how any of us would react to these harsh conditions, and exploration of loss, love, friendship, revenge and desperation – learning that surviving isn't living. For Deacon especially, it's a struggle to ensure that hope never dies.

As promised in April, Bend Studio has released a free Days Gone DLC, adding a whole new difficulty mode and new challenges each week

Survival Difficulty Mode

Survival difficulty mode kicks things off today. This builds on top of the current hard mode, with many tuning changes that create a much more challenging experience surviving the Central Oregon wilderness. Not only are the enemies harder, but you can’t bypass them using Fast Travel. This mode also features an immersive HUD that increases tension by removing enemy awareness indicators and outlines. The HUD is turned off, but players can temporarily display it by activating Survival Vision. In addition to bragging rights, players will earn new bike skins and trophies that can only be acquired by playing and beating Survival difficulty.

Weekly Challenges

Later in June, we will begin releasing Challenges. Each week a new combat, bike, or horde challenge drops with unique rules and scoring modifiers. Doing well at challenges awards wearable patches that come with perks. Patches provide small gameplay improvements like increased health, faster stamina recharging, decreased focus cost, greater melee weapon durability, better gun accuracy from the bike, and more. Patch benefits stack and even carry back into the main game. Players also earn rank and credits to buy character skins, bike skins, and wearable rings that provide more potent gameplay perks to help players perform better at all challenges.

Players can only equip two rings at a time, so they have to make tactical decisions for each challenge. Rolling reloads a portion of your ammo, vaulting regenerates some stamina, headshots increase gun accuracy, and more. Rings do not carry over to the main game. Replaying a challenge with new perks opens up increased scoring possibilities and opportunities to earn new rewards to build a better score to compete against your friends and the world via leaderboards.

As you may have caught above, character skins are available in the Challenges. Players will finally be able to change Deacon’s outfit by choosing between three looks: apocalypse Deacon, flashback Deacon, and — for the ultimate in fan service — shirtless Deacon. This is in addition to ten other characters including Boozer, Rikki, Addy, Iron Mike, and more!

Our first gameplay challenge, “Surrounded,” drops in late June. Players must survive an infinite horde onslaught in the town of Sherman’s Camp. They’ll be scored on how long they survive against not only the Freakers, but a clock that is constantly ticking down — killing Freakers adds more time so players can’t run and hide — they have to stay engaged in the fight to get the best score. They can also earn point multipliers by executing specific sub-challenges like environmental kills, headshots, and collecting ears while on the run.

Twelve challenges over 12 weeks makes this the summer of Days Gone and the summer of fun.

 Key Features:

• Expansive Open World Action – Exemplifying truly free-form gameplay, [Bend] offers freedom to explore, strategize and play "your way" in the vast high-desert of the Pacific Northwest. The hazardous environments, filled with carved out ridges, mountains, caves, cliffs mines and river basins, deliver a breathtaking backdrop to an equally diverse style of gameplay.
• Emergent Gameplay – Featuring fully explorable environments and dynamic AI enemies, players will rely on their own abilities to strategize, craft weapons and tools, explore the world, and engage in combat. With almost every car, building and environment searchable, [Bend] delivers emergent gameplay possibilities, making a player's approach to combat and discovery a vital part of the experience.
• Stunning, Dynamic Graphics – Using the power of PlayStation 4 and Unreal Engine 4, Bend Studio has developed a high volume of rendering and gameplay technology to deliver an incredibly realistic open world experience. Realistic weather effects, such as rain, wind, snow and day-night cycles impact the gameplay. The game's lighting is all real-time and reacts dynamically, the way the human iris does, as players move from one location to the next.

Days Gone will be available for PS4 on April 26, 2019.