Originally announced back at PlayStation Experience 2014, David Jaffe’s Drawn To Death has finally been given a release date. The PlayStation 4 exclusive shooter will launch on April 4 in North America and Europe, and will carry a cost of only $19.99.
Diving headfirst into the often troubling world of teenage imagination, Drawn To Death is a super-stylized third-person shooter. The game pits up to four people against each other, which plays off the experience Jaffe gained while working on the classic Twisted Metal franchise. While it was originally pitched as a free-to-play title, extensive beta testing has determined that the game would work best as a full-priced product.
If you’re thinking to yourself “Oh boy! Another hero-based shooter!”, Jaffe hears you. In an interview over on the PlayStation Blog, The Bartlet Jones Supernatural Detective Agency head explained why Drawn To Death is different from the likes of Paragon and Overwatch.
There are lots of hero shooters popping up these days, but Drawn to Death is unique. Obviously it looks unique, but also — and more importantly — it feels unique.
The “time to kill” is long in Drawn to Death. Like, really long. We do this because we want players to have more chances for chases across the maps — where tables get turned and map knowledge allows hunted players to become the hunters.
Our game modes only support four players. Sometimes when people hear this they don’t like it. But for us, it’s a strength of the game. A high “time to kill” and too many players in a match ends up making a lot of shooters feel chaotic and random. We wanted Drawn to Death to play differently.
We want it to be super fast (And it is!) but not so chaotic that you can’t track what you need to track. For us, it’s imperative that Drawn to Death players are able to focus on specific enemy behavior. One of my favorite things in Drawn to Death is when I start to learn how a specific player on the battlefield is playing and I adjust my playstyle to that person. This is very hard to do when you’ve got lots of players to worry about and you’re dying every 45 seconds.
While Jaffe’s oeuvre (Twisted Metal, God of War) has earned him my interest, I’m a little worried about this one. The prolonged development cycle is never a good sign, and the dropping of the F2P trappings, while nice in theory, seems like a rough course correction. I do hope it turns out well, though, as I love the look of the game.
We’ll continue to have coverage of Drawn To Death in the lead-up to its April release, so be sure to stay tuned for more.