Dying Light

Dying Light is Techland’s open-world zombie survival horror franchise, built around free-running traversal in infected cities with a dynamic day-night cycle that transforms the experience between navigable challenge during daylight and desperate survival after dark. The franchise launched January 27, 2015, and has sold over thirty million copies across three mainline entries. Dying Light: The Beast released September 18, 2025, brought back original protagonist Kyle Crane, debuted at number one on Steam’s top sellers chart, and received the strongest critical reception in the franchise’s history. Franchise director Tymon Smekta?a departed Techland in May 2026 after thirteen years, leaving the series’ future direction uncertain.

Dying Light (2015)

Dying Light released January 27, 2015, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, developed and published by Techland. The game placed players in Harran, a fictional Middle Eastern city quarantined following a viral outbreak, as Kyle Crane, an undercover agent airdropped in to retrieve sensitive files while embedded with survivors. The game’s central innovation was combining the free-running traversal movement of Mirror’s Edge with open-world zombie survival, allowing players to move through the city at speed by parkour across its rooftops, scaffolding, and structures. The day-night cycle fundamentally changed the game’s character after sundown, when the infected became faster, more aggressive, and capable of pursuing the player to otherwise safe elevated positions, and the UV-sensitive Volatiles emerged as an existential threat. The Following expansion in February 2016 added a large rural countryside area and a dune buggy, extending the game significantly.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human (2022)

Dying Light 2 Stay Human released February 4, 2022, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC, with a Nintendo Switch version following in 2023. The sequel shifted to a new protagonist, Aiden Caldwell, and a new European city called Villedor set twenty years after the events of the first game, in which a second outbreak has reduced civilization to medieval-level technology and factionalism. The faction choice system allowed players to align with different groups and direct the city’s development, adding governance decisions to the survival and traversal loops. The game’s story and narrative execution received mixed reviews relative to the technical quality of its parkour and combat systems, which were widely praised as the best in the series at the time. Multiple expansion packs including Bloody Ties and In the Shadows extended the game’s content through its post-launch support window.

Dying Light: The Beast (2025)

Dying Light: The Beast released September 18, 2025, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC, developed and published by Techland. The game originated as a major expansion for Dying Light 2 before a data miner leak of its story content prompted Techland to rework it into a standalone release. Kyle Crane returns as the protagonist, voiced again by Roger Craig Smith, in a new setting called Castor Woods, described as older, more haunted, and driven by revenge. The Beast launched at number one on Steam’s top sellers chart and received Kotaku’s description as one of the best open-world games of 2025, with a Metacritic score of 79 making it the best-reviewed entry in the franchise’s history. Techland has continued supporting the game with updates including a Nightmare difficulty mode in January 2026 and a Restored Land survival mode.

The Franchise’s Future

Tymon Smekta?a, who joined Techland in 2013 as a game designer on the original Dying Light and became franchise director in 2022, announced his departure from the studio on May 6, 2026, after thirteen years. Smekta?a stated the franchise was in great hands and that he looked forward to experiencing its next chapter as a player, offering no detail on what that next chapter would be. No new Dying Light game has been announced following The Beast’s release.