There are many games in the survival genre, but no game is like this. Appropriately named One Life, this first-person survival shooter thrusts players an atmosphere that no other game can offer. If they die, they get locked out of the game forever and will never play again.
At First Glance
While this idea is used in other survival games, (H1Z1, RUST, and Minecraft) to some extent, no other title bases their entire game off of this mechanic. Sure, Minecraft has a “hardcore” feature that gives players only one life on that world, only to have it be deleted after the player dies, but the player can just start a new world and actually be able to play the game again.
Well when a player dies in One Life, they aren’t really dead at first. The player who killed them has a choice to “forgive, humiliate, or finish off” their enemy. Which basically allows the killer to choose whether they want to kill the player and take their stuff, spare them and keep them captive and have them work off their debt, or free them all together. This seems like a really cool idea, but I feel that this could lead to some pretty screwed up stuff if you ask me.
The game’s Steam Greenlight page also says that players will be able to “travel around the world”, which implies that there is a big and expansive map, similar to DayZ, that can be played in. How would you be traveling the world you may ask? By a giant truck! In One Life, the player can get access to a huge semi-truck that will act as their mobile base, allowing them to freely move around the world without having to commit to a base location. I don’t know if each player will automatically get one at the start, but I assume that they won’t. It would be kind of cool coming in with nothing then slowly building up resources to get a truck.
On Paper…
This game looks amazing on paper. One Life’s concept is pretty solid. Yury Lyashenko, Lead Game Designer for Kefir! Studio, explains that “recently there’s been some stagnation in the [survival] genre,” and that they intend to fix that with this game. I do feel that One Life has a chance at bringing back the survival genre little by little, and I am excited to see more as time goes on. The main question I have here is whether or not players would need to pay to play this game.
Predictions
There is so much potential for this to be just a huge cash grab (players paying for weapons, ammo, trucks, lives) and no one, except for the developers, will really know for sure. I think that the only way this game could instantly flop is if there are microtransactions that will both diminish the atmosphere the game is trying so hard to set and the overall experience as well.
I feel that this is very unlikely to happen, but you can’t be too careful when something innovative is about to hit the gaming scene.
Overall, I am excited to see where this game goes! Hope you are too! Do you think that this could be one grand scheme to get some extra bucks? Be sure to comment, I love hearing what you guys have to say.
