Hi there, stalkers! Pixeye here.
Let's start with the most important stuff:
- The release has been postponed until January 2021. The exact date will be announced later.
- We are dropping the co-op mode and removing it from our plans altogether.
- We won't be supporting macOS or Linux versions at launch. We'll include them after the release.
It just so happens that our team was unable to cover the development process of Until We Die (UWD). Some of the game concepts have changed drastically and we really didn't want to give false expectations of the game. I would like to apologize to those who signed up for the game for the co-op.
In this post I'll try to elaborate on the game concept and the reasons for the postponement.
The Setting.
The events of Until We Die take place in an alternate universe, where the Earth has been bombarded by meteorites with an extraterrestrial life-form. The world is shown from the perspective of people placed in an extremely hostile environment, where humans are no longer at the top of the food chain.
The protagonist of the game is an old war-dog named Ivan. He'll rally hipsters and other people sheltered in the subway around the need to survive in the New World.
The Concept.
With the story sorted out, it's time to talk about the game itself.
UWD is a base defense strategy game. Your base is the subway station, its underground part. You'll have to defend it against all sorts of things, brought in by meteorites.
To win, you have to survive for about 30 game days, fending off all the attacks on the base. At first it'll be small packs of creatures, and by the end you'll have to fight a sweeping horde of mutants. Also, the game will end early if our hero dies or if the power generator, the heart of the base, is destroyed.
UWD is not a conventional strategy game. Here you have to run around as Ivan and dispense ass kicking valuable orders to your subjects. There's no advanced AI. Humans are reluctant to take the initiative, and those lazy bastards don't want to do anything on their own. And there's a lot to do: building fortifications, researching technology to build even stronger fortifications and defend more effectively, sending expeditions to the surface, attacking mutant lairs to secure new land for farms and tents, gathering supplies from crates, and extracting food from mushrooms and anything else that looks edible... wasn't there a fat rat running down the tracks? You know the drill.
People are in short supply and you have to decide how best to use them. The newcomers arriving at the station are pretty much useless: they can't fight, can barely build, are slow at gathering supplies, and don't know how to deal with obstacles like a pile of rocks or a closed door... but everything changes when you arm a comrade with a shovel.
The supplies are collected, the electric generator is running, the first walls are built, and then the night comes. Oh yes, the game has a day/night cycle. The cycle is quite arbitrary, since it's always dark, damp and uncomfortable underground. As night falls, a purple fog thickens in the subway tunnels, from which the mutants, having inhaled the fumes, swarm the human settlements. Remember what I said about the walls? Well, without them at night, Ivan and his comrades risk becoming dinner.
State of the Game.
The game is technically done. By that I mean the game mechanics are already working, the assets are in place, the game world is complete, mutants are ready for battle, mushrooms are growing, rats are squeaking, you can lose, but you can't win... wait a minute! What? You can't win? Yes! That's right. Winning is still only possible in the developers' hopes and dreams. In practice the balance of the game is set up so that you want to cry bloody tears in the middle of the game and beg for your mother.
Here we come to the reason for the postponement of the game. The whole team wants to polish the game, clean it of bugs, set it up so that it was not only interesting, but even possible to win. Simple pleasures. And also make a trailer for the game.
At the beginning of the letter I also mentioned we're dropping the co-op. The reason is we couldn't do it well enough and fit it into the current style of the game.
I think it would be appropriate to express what we, the developers, think the game is:
- It's a side-scrolling strategy game where you have to run around as Ivan, assigning tasks to people, and expanding your base.
- It's a game where you have to fight off waves of mutants with shovels at night.
- It's a game you can finish in a weekend if you're a pro.
- It's a game that doesn't aim to surprise you with a story.
- It's a game that can be frustrating for particularly emotional stalkers.
- It's not a roguelike game.
Stalkers who have read to this point - well done! If you've scrolled right to the end of this story, good on you =)
I hope everything I said helped you better understand what Until We Die will be like, and–for those who are already waiting for the game–to know that the developers are alive and well and haven't gone anywhere.
If UWD sounds like something you'd like to play, subscribe to our updates on the game's Steam page. Thank you for your attention and take care!