Dead Island is a zombie fighting game with the open world. Fictional island Banoi is filled with tourist. But suddenly, everyone disappears from every hotel room, and every corner of the island is filled with zombies. Four survivors - Sam, Xian, Logan and Purna must escape the hordes of zombies and try to find any survivors on the island and get out of this God forgotten place.

The gameplay is based around experience. Killing zombies and completing quests will provide with EXP points which you can waste for new traits and perks for better and easier killing. Every character has his advantages with different types of weapon. For example, Purna is a former police officer, and she is quite familiar with firearms when Sam is very good with blunt weaponry. Having different styles of gameplay adds a very good variety to the gameplay, as you can play alone or with your friends. Quests will provide experience to every player on the map as you share it with your partner and you are free to do your quests as you want since the game has an open world system integrated into it.