Time Dielation
About
Dead Project
Netcode test client
Audio: not implemented
Resolution: Locked at 1366x768 windowed
max players: 10
AI shooting: disabled
Cross region play: disabled
Escape = Exit
Game Concept:
This project was originally created to experiment with the concept of quantum immortality as a gameplay mechanic. Whenever a player dies the world rewinds to its start condition, the player's previous actions are then executed by an NPC. These NPCs would then act as hazards to all entities on the map. Eventually the playfield would evolve into a chaotic mess of gun fire causing the player to have to doge their previous timelines while hunting for their opponent.
Why it's dead:
Ultimately the core concept wasn't fun. Players frequently felt punished by having their agency taken away from them during the rewind. I attempted a few solutions to ameliorate this. First I made the rewind instantaneous but this however became jarring and unintuitive. Second I attempted to add a delay to the rewind to allow for the surviving player to have some time to both relax after a firefight and execute a victory condition task. This caused the dead player to feel excessively punished in almost all tests. For a third attempt to find the fun in this idea, I attempted to have the rewind condition linked to a round timer wherever 30 second the world would rewind.
Ultimately the core mechanic was to take agency away from the player and I believe this is intrinsically unfun. I do think there's something fun in the concept however I believe after this experiment that a first person arena shooter is not the place for it.
TLDR:
Should you play it? : No.
Will you ever update it?: Probably not.