A couple of weeks ago, one of our writers shared his first impressions of Down to One; a Perth-developed online survival shooter. At the time of writing, the concept was certainly promising, but the game still needed a lot of work.
Perth is important to us though, so despite our critical reception, we’re still dedicated to providing on-going coverage for Down to One. The great thing here is that we’re given an opportunity to help the game’s development through feedback, and we can honestly say that the team behind the game took everything we had to say onboard with a genuinely fantastic attitude. Furthermore, since then, they’ve been working non-stop on updates and new features.
The update below is just the first of many from Gadget Games (hopefully!), and with the help of local support, we look forward to seeing Down to One achieve the potential it’s so very capable of. If you’re playing in early access, get vocal!
What is Down To One?
In Down To One, players start out with nothing in a large open-world environment, use anything you can find to eliminate other competitors, and finish each round as the last man standing.
Players can customize their character through a selection of over 20 Fallout-inspired perks, like the ‘Ol Western perk, which lets players shoot secondary weapons out of enemies’ hands.
Each round is played out on our 2x2km Middle-Eastern environment, with a decreasing playable area, that forces players closer as the round progresses.
Loot is scattered around the environment with our custom SmartSpawn system, which weights spawn chances based on the type of area each spawner is in. Heading to the U.S. Base? Expect some high-end weapons. Looting a farmhouse? You might find a rock or an axe.
We’re doing Early Access properly (Update Log):
Since launching on Early Access on the 31st of January, we’ve pushed out an average of more than one update per day, including the addition of various community ideas, and other new content. Here’s some of the coolest new features we’ve added since release 2 weeks ago:
- Snakes – we’re sticking to our #NoZombies promise, and added snakes as an environmental danger (inspired by our local Australian wildlife)
- Four new weapons – the AKM assault rifle, M4 carbine, Makarov pistol, and Vityaz SMG have made their way into DTO, and with our realistic bullet mechanics, each gun plays very differently, with different bullet weights, muzzle velocities, penetration capability, and durability values.
- Lobby area Soccer – complete with our physically-shaded soccer ball, lobby soccer was a highly requested community feature to help pass time whilst waiting for a game.
- Spectator mode – after death, players can now spectate until the end of the round. Our spectator camera randomly shifts players, to prevent “Ghosting”.
- Three new Perks – Antivenom (take no health damage from snake attacks), Medic (bandages heal more), and Martial Arts (perform a stronger knife-hand strike instead of a punch)
- Steam Stats integration – what’s a competitive shooter without stats to track!
- Extra in-game UI – after a community member suggested & mocked up an improvement to our in-game UI, we added it!
We’ve pushed a ton of other fixes, and some major FPS optimizations since then, and plan to keep on going. Since we’re using Unity 4.5, we can keep our rapid development schedule, with a major feature patch coming out every 2 days.
Official Early Access Trailer
