The Walking Dead: 400 Days

The Walking Dead: 400 Days is DLC (downloadable content) for The Walking Dead and requires the first season or an episode of the original game to play. For the PS3 version the first episode was made available for free for a limited time, so only the DLC had to be bought for new players to try it. The PC version is free if the full first season was bought from the Telltale store. It is a separate episode meant to fill the gap between the first and the second season, and to introduce some events of the upcoming second season.

The gameplay is similar to the first season. It is an adventure games driven by the narrative with light action and role-playing elements. There are no real puzzles in the style of classic adventure games. Familiar elements that return are timed conversation options, choices that influence the further story, quick-time events, and short shooting sequences. The focus is once again often on difficult moral choices. There is a new mechanic based on dragging someone and timing to drop the body to shoot walkers, as well as hiding, running and cover sequences with shooting involved, and a rock-scissors-paper mini-game. Some scenes are confined, while others offer a certain amount of exploration and freedom of movement. Even though there many options, there are certain sequences where actions need to be completed in time or indispensable characters get killed and it needs to be replayed. Choices are also carried over based on those in the first season and will be taken along for the second season. At the end of the game two types of statistics are determined, one familiar to players of the first season and another type entirely new and most likely used for starting the second season. Similar to the first season the game tells the story of a zombie outbreak in the United States. This episode offers five stories from different survivors from the first day of the zombie apocalypse to day 400 as separate vignettes, centered on a truck stop on a Georgia highway. At the start of the game players select one of the five characters from a billboard of missing persons. Once a sequence is completed, the picture is torn off and a different one can be played. The five stories can be played in any order. After all stories are completed, there is a short epilogue where many of the choices made in the stories come together.

The first story takes place on day 2 with Vince as the protagonist. After shooting someone he ends up on a prison bus for transport while the outbreak occurs. The second story takes place on day 41 when Wyatt and his friends Eddie attempt to outrun a car chasing them. They end up on a back road where they hit a man in the dark. The third story on day 184 is about a boy Russell who gets the opportunity to hitch a ride while travelling along the road. The fourth story takes place on day 220 and deals with the ex-junkie Bonnie who travels with an elder couple that no longer gets along. The fifth story has a large cast of characters and takes place on day 236 and 259. It focuses on a group who has taken refugee at a track stop. The player controls Shel who looks after her little sister Becca when an intruder appears. It references members of the cancer support group previously featured in The Walking Dead: Episode 4 - Around Every Corner. In later sequence she has to deal with theft.