If you want the Walking Dead video games in order, the answer depends on whether you mean Telltale’s story-driven series or every game ever released under the licence. For Clementine’s story — the one that actually matters — the correct order is Season One, then 400 Days, then Season Two, then Michonne, then A New Frontier, then The Final Season. Everything else, from the 2013 shooter Survival Instinct to the VR game Saints & Sinners, sits outside that narrative and can be played in any order or skipped entirely.
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Because the licence has been handed to half a dozen studios across more than a decade, the catalogue is genuinely messy. Below is a snapshot of the entries most worth your time, followed by the full chronology and where each piece fits.
| Game | Platform | Genre | Why It’s Great | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Walking Dead: Season One | PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox, Switch | Narrative adventure | The Game of the Year that redefined choice-driven storytelling; Lee and Clementine | 9.7/10 |
| The Walking Dead: Season Two | PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox, Switch | Narrative adventure | Clementine becomes the protagonist, with the series’ hardest moral choices | 8.9/10 |
| The Walking Dead: 400 Days | PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox, Switch | Narrative DLC | Five interlocking vignettes that bridge Season One and Season Two | 8.0/10 |
| The Walking Dead: Michonne | PC, PS4, Xbox, Switch | Narrative adventure | A tight three-episode comic-canon side story built around the katana | 7.4/10 |
| The Walking Dead: A New Frontier | PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox, Switch | Narrative adventure | Introduces Javier and the Garcia family; strongest cinematography in the series | 7.8/10 |
| The Walking Dead: The Final Season | PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox, Switch | Narrative adventure | Rescued from Telltale’s closure by Skybound; a genuinely earned ending | 9.0/10 |
| The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners | PC VR, PSVR/PSVR2, Quest | VR survival | The best zombie combat in VR — physical, exhausting and terrifying | 8.7/10 |
| The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct | PC, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U | First-person shooter | Notorious as a low point, but the only game starring Daryl and Merle Dixon | 3.5/10 |
The Walking Dead Video Games in Order of Release
Release order is the cleanest way to understand the franchise, because each game reflects what the studio and the wider Walking Dead brand were doing at the time. Telltale’s run dominates the first half; after the studio’s 2018 collapse, the licence scattered.
Telltale’s Walking Dead Games in Order
The Walking Dead: Season One (2012) — five episodes following convicted killer Lee Everett protecting an eight-year-old girl named Clementine through the outbreak’s first weeks. It won a mountain of Game of the Year awards and is still the best entry point.
400 Days (2013) — a standalone DLC episode telling five short stories from a Georgia truck stop across the sixteen months after the outbreak. Your choices carry into Season Two, so play it before you move on.
Season Two (2013–2014) — Clementine is now the player character, surviving on her own and then with a group of strangers. Five episodes, and the ending branches significantly.
The Walking Dead: Michonne (2016) — three episodes based on the comic’s version of Michonne, set during a gap in her published history. It doesn’t touch Clementine’s arc, which is why it’s optional, but it slots naturally between Season Two and A New Frontier.
A New Frontier (2016–2017) — also called Season Three, this one splits perspective between newcomer Javier Garcia and an older Clementine. It handles save imports from the previous seasons, and if you don’t have one it asks you to define past events through a comic-panel story generator. Marathoning all five episodes in a weekend is common, and a comfortable setup helps — a gaming headset buying guide is worth a look, since the sound design carries most of the tension.
The Final Season (2018–2019) — Clementine and AJ arrive at a boarding school of survivor kids. Telltale shut down mid-release; Skybound Games hired back much of the original team to finish the last two episodes, and the result is the most polished combat and the most satisfying conclusion in the series.
The Telltale Definitive Series (2019) — all four seasons plus 400 Days and Michonne, rebuilt with the Final Season’s graphics engine, a graphic black-and-white art filter and a “Story Builder” for tracking choices. On modern hardware this is the version to buy.
The Non-Telltale Walking Dead Games in Order
Survival Instinct (2013) is a first-person shooter prequel to the AMC show starring the Dixon brothers, and it is widely considered one of the worst licensed games of its generation. Overkill’s The Walking Dead (2018) was a four-player co-op shooter from the Payday studio that was pulled from sale within months. Saints & Sinners (2020), from Skydance, is the opposite story entirely — a VR survival game set in flooded New Orleans with genuinely physical melee combat, followed by Chapter 2: Retribution. Onslaught (2020) was a second, more arcade-style VR title. Betrayal (2023) was a social-deduction multiplayer game that has since shut down, and Destinies (2023) is an action game that lets you rewrite the TV show’s major decisions.
Walking Dead Games in Chronological Story Order
If you’d rather follow in-universe time, the sequence is: Survival Instinct (days before and during the outbreak, TV continuity), Season One (weeks one through several months), 400 Days (spanning the first sixteen months, overlapping Season One), Season Two (roughly sixteen months to two years in), Michonne (comic continuity, mid-series), A New Frontier (about four years in), and The Final Season (roughly seven to eight years after the outbreak). Note that the Telltale games and the TV-based games occupy different continuities that never meet — only the comic universe is shared.
Where to Start With the Walking Dead Video Games
Start with the Definitive Series and play it in the order the menu presents. If you only have time for one game, Season One is self-contained enough to work alone, and its final episode is the emotional high point of the whole franchise. If you own a headset, Saints & Sinners is the best non-narrative entry by a wide margin. Skip Survival Instinct unless you’re a completionist, and treat Destinies as a curiosity. These are mostly slow, dialogue-heavy games where framerate barely matters, so an older machine is fine — though anyone building fresh should still consult a budget gaming PC build guide and a graphics card buying guide to avoid overspending on games this undemanding.
Platforms and Preservation in 2026
The Definitive Series is available on PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch, and it is the only maintained version of the Telltale material — the original episodic releases were delisted years ago when Telltale’s licences lapsed. Saints & Sinners and its sequel chapter run on PC VR, PlayStation VR2 and standalone Quest headsets. Overkill’s game and Betrayal are effectively unplayable now, a reminder that always-online licensed games disappear. If you’re archiving your library locally, a fast drive keeps loading between episodes brisk; a quick read of an SSD upgrade guide covers it, and console players should skim a wireless controller buying guide since these games are almost entirely quick-time prompts and stick movement. Streamers covering the series will also want a streaming microphone buying guide, because reaction content is where this franchise still thrives.
Frequently Asked Questions About Walking Dead Video Games in Order
Do I need to play the Walking Dead games in order?
For the Telltale series, yes — your choices carry forward through save imports, and characters from earlier seasons reappear with different attitudes depending on what you did. The non-Telltale games such as Survival Instinct, Saints & Sinners and Destinies are completely standalone and can be played at any point without confusion.
Are the Walking Dead games connected to the TV show?
Only some of them. Survival Instinct and Destinies follow the AMC television continuity and feature show characters like Daryl and Rick. The Telltale games and Michonne follow Robert Kirkman’s original comic universe instead, sharing that world but telling entirely original stories with original protagonists.
Which Walking Dead game should I play first?
Season One, ideally through The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series, which bundles every Telltale episode with updated visuals. It requires no prior knowledge of the comics or the show, it takes roughly ten hours, and it establishes Clementine, whose arc runs through the next three seasons.
Is The Walking Dead: The Final Season actually finished?
Yes. Telltale Games closed during the season’s release, but Skybound Games acquired the rights and rehired many of the original developers to complete episodes three and four. The season shipped in full in March 2019 and gives Clementine’s story a proper, deliberate ending rather than a cliffhanger.
