For years, Hideo Kojima has had the idea to create a game where death is permanent and to be able to play again the game must be purchased once again, for a fair and reasonable price. Russian video game developer Kefir! have taken on such an idea with their multiplayer survival game One Life.
The question is, are gamers ready for such a bold and ambitious idea?
Earlier this year we saw a similar concept with a game called The Flock. The idea for the game was to create a limit to how many respawns the game has. Once the number reached zero, the game ends forever and cannot be played anymore. The idea was a sound one, but overall the game was a massive disappointment.
One Life is taking this form of the idea but to the next level. The idea behind it is once you die, the game will forever become locked to you and never again will you be able to play it. Since the arrival of the game on Steam Greenlight, it has had a tremendous amount of coverage and, of course, controversy.
Many are liking the idea but questioning whether or not the game should permanently lock you out forever. Many have suggested that the developers should allow the players to once again enter the game after a lock-down of one day or at most a week upon dying.
Pre-orders can be made on the official site for the game, currently priced at $9.99, a steep price for a game you can only play once. What happens if you die within the first hour of playing the game? It would certainly feel like flushing $9.99 down the toilet.
One Life is certainly still in it’s early days. Being in a Beta Phase so much can change over the course of its development. From the trailer, it looks like a solid shooter, but with such a bold and ambitious feature will it be the hit it deserves to be? At present judging from the comments on Greenlight and the official trailer for the game, there are more against the idea than for it. Will community feedback be taken into account of the permanent locking be turned into a 24 hour or a 7-day lock-down? Only time will tell, but it is certainly going to be interesting to see how this game turns out.
