Double Eleven has unveiled its first original IP, and players can play Blindfire on PC and Xbox Series with early access!
The Xbox Partner Preview came up with a strange surprise during the broadcast. Double Eleven, the team currently porting Red Dead Redemption to PC, has announced its first original IP: Blindfire. The multiplayer shooting game wants to appeal to fans of the genre with a strange proposition: everything happens in near darkness. If this premise piqued your interest, you’d be happy to know that the game is now available for PC and Xbox Series in early access.
The trailer (see below) pretty much sums up what we can expect from the game: players will face each other in a lightless environment. At most, you can perceive the position of other players thanks to the dim lighting generated by reflections on the map, explosions or the glow of the characters’ abilities. “We very quickly realized that the dark setting meant that a lot of the typical design rules for a shooter no longer applied. It sounds like hyperbole, but turning out the lights changes everything,” said Matt Dunthorne, head of design, in an Xbox Wire article.
When you fire your weapon, the other players can learn about your situation.
So here it is important to be careful and take risks at the right time. “Kills are less about pure shooting prowess, and more about clever use of environmental cues,” Dunthorne continues. “Moving cautiously, listening carefully, and thinking about which target to engage, as well as considering who could be waiting in the shadows to take you out, too. It’s a unique challenge that forces you to play differently.”
For Double Eleven, it was therefore important to design an environment that players could easily see (or rather hear). “This was a huge challenge, but we have deployed every trick in the book to make the soundscape around you readable, with the positioning and loudness of each sound giving you a great understanding of what is happening in the dark at all times.”
Blindfire Early Access Features
Players can try the game now, as Blindfire is already available in early access. Currently, Double Eleven has a mode called Bodycount that can be played with friends or random users. It consists of scoring points with kills over five rounds. In addition, the community can throw themselves into the game with two types of weapons: the Mantis, a powerful and accurate pistol, and the Abolition, a fast-firing shotgun. “Winning is about finding the right balance between simply surviving and being bold,” adds Dunthorne. “The scoreboard can be flipped on its head at any time, it makes for very exciting matches that go down to the wire.”
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