The One Life Greenlight Fest - Once You Die, You'll Leave Forever -

[José Mourinho]

Steam Greenlight right now is like a huge mixed bag. You can get interesting indie games, ripoffs, controversial games, shitty games, shitty games so bad that they are pulled out from the stores, le funny simulation games etc.

But then comes One Life, which is in the bizarre category. On first glance you might think it's just a regular FPS/survival game. But then comes their selling point for a $10 game:

Experience the Only True Survival

If you die in this game, you can never play again. Every move you make can be your last one. Enemy bullet, Infected’s bite, starvation, friend’s betrayal - danger lurks around every corner. Are you ready to face the most intense and authentic experience in your life?

• Ultra hardcore gameplay: if your character dies, you will never play the game again.
• Classic system of needs: you will not only have to find food and water but also deal with other natural needs.
• Harsh cruel world: the nature itself will be your enemy.
​

That's right. Once you die, you'll never play this game again forever. This caused a huge amount of controversy that the discussions page spawned over 100 topics, and people are already joking about how this game will suffer from a huge amount of refunds.

For now I'll keep track of the progress of this game to see how well it goes.

Greenlight Page: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=534994203
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OneLifeSurvival

 

[Tranhuviya]

This looks kinda mediocre, and I am not entirely sure the developers are native English speakers.

Q: I came to a location and there is a camper behind every bush. What should I do?
A: Long camping is not about our game. The nature itself will literally kick you out from your warm place.

Oh, and you leave the game if you die, but you can apparently respawn?

Q: I entered the game and I got immediately killed at respawn. Is this possible?
A: You can’t be killed at respawn even if you wish it: your character will respawn in their truck, and that’s a safe place.

 

[Conrix]

I'm not entirely sure what to think of this game.

All of the mechanics seem fairly interesting (well except for having to wait to take a shit maybe), but if I wanted to die ingame and never play a game again forever, I'd load up Doom, get mauled by a cyberdemon, and uninstall the game forever.

 

[SpessCaptain]

Would lose a following pretty quickly, in my opinion. If they really want to punish the gamer there is other ways - like excercise.

 

[Johnny Bravo]

A game with literally no replay value.

When the enemy is defeated, you decide his fate. Forgive, humiliate, finish off, take everything he has – it’s your choice. Saved life of some loser? Take them captive and make them work off. They will do everything to be free again. No other game will give you this feeling of power over other people.

• Freedom of choice: kill, take captives, make others work for you or help those who need it.
• Live communication: voice and text chat to see and hear screams of rage or cries for help.
• “Full Loot” system: take everything your defeated enemy has.

Is this referring to other players? How would you stop them from just logging off and never playing again? Why would you want to play a game where you have to be someone's slave?

 

[c-no]

So they implement a permadeath where you can never play again once you die? And how can they deal with making sure people don't mod or hack the game to get rid of the "can't play again" part?

 

[Johnny Bravo]

In the trailer you can piss on other players.

One thing I can't get over is just how fucking generic this game looks. It looks like they stole assets from every other modern FPS and dumped them all into one game.

 

[Red]

I'm a huge fan of hardcore survival games and this looks like a terrible fucking idea. You can have permadeath without locking out the game-- just delete the character and inventory. You really don't have to go further than that. Really guys, it's okay.
A huge aspect of survival games is dying. That's how you learn what's dangerous and what's not. That's that moment where something murders you and you watch all your progress fall apart, and you think, I'm going to try again and I'm going to kick death's ass. Survival games rely on replay value.
Also it looks boring as shit. Like seriously, how much more generic could you get? Permadeath is clearly this game's only selling point. At least it's only 10 bucks instead of 20$ or 30$.

Just play The Long Dark or Shelter 2 instead.

 

[Red_Rager]

No real loss if you die, which I would rather quick, you can always get your money back with a Steam refund. Assuming you die within two hours or two weeks of playing it whichever comes first.

 

[Strelok]

So it's like someone took the concept of the Flock, and then ramped it up to 11, despite the fact that said concept killed all interest in The Flock.

And the Flock at least had unique, if mediocre, gameplay.

 

[AnOminous]

The idea would be fun for a one-time tournament of some kind, maybe for a buck or two. Pay $10 not to play again? Do they give you god mode until it's past when you can get a refund?

Or is this just a trick so you don't get to play it long enough to realize it's Digital Homicide-tier?

 

[Strelok]

The idea would be fun for a one-time tournament of some kind, maybe for a buck or two. Pay $10 not to play again? Do they give you god mode until it's past when you can get a refund?

Or is this just a trick so you don't get to play it long enough to realize it's Digital Homicide-tier?

As I mentioned, but perhaps should have gone into more detail, it really, really seems like they took a page out of The Flock's book. The Flock was a game where every player kill in every match would add up to a counter, and once the counter reached a predetermined level, an endgame event would be heralded, and the game would be over forever. It got a lot of people angry at it though because of the idea of a non-permanant game, even though the length would, had the game been popular, likley been as long as a indie game MP community lasts anyway. However a combination of the backlash and them either reacting to the backlash or overestimating the sales lead them to set the "endgame" threshold way too high, and now the game is both dead and likley never going to reach it's conclusion. Plus the gameplay, while interesting, wasn't really something people would play long enough anyway.

So it really, really feels like these people saw it, the actual concept of the idea (A game where every death matters, and leads to an actual conclusion instead of the usual "we cant afford servers anymore" death indie MP games usually face) flew right over their heads, and they came up with one of the dumbest ideas I've ever seen in gaming in years.

 

[Johnny Bravo]

Based on what little I've read about The Flock, it sounds like an interesting idea. The setting and premise are neat. One Life looks like every other zombie survival game.

 

[Conrix]

Or is this just a trick so you don't get to play it long enough to realize it's Digital Homicide-tier?

I'm leaning towards that explanation - a gimmick to make a mash of prebought assets "unique".

 

[MrTroll]

Doesn't really look like something you'd want to play more than once anyway tbh.

 

[Watcher]

This is a very pointless gimmick designed to generate more attention and later sales. It represents a problem with Greenlight in that developers need to create these gimmicks to get attention.

There are games that have done the permadeath concept extremely well. The Witcher 2's hardest difficulty did the same thing. Except it let you start a new game immediately and was optional. Permadeath is also a self imposed challenge a lot of players impose on themselves in games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R, X-Com and Deus Ex. The difference here is that players who do this style of runthrough have already mastered the game fully. And do it to try and add variety to the game. Such a game like this could not be replayed.

 

[AnimuGinger]

Hardcore Dark Souls meets COD.

 

[Johnny Bravo]

The difference here is that players who do this style of runthrough have already mastered the game fully.

That's the thing about permadeath challenges - they're not really viable if it's your first time playing your game, unless your game has a very smooth learning curve or is incredibly easy. The only other scenario where I can imagine doing a permadeath run on your first playthrough is an RPG like Fallout where creating your own character is part of the fun and imposing permadeath on yourself makes you become more attached, sort of like a Nuzlocke run.

 

[SpessCaptain]

There was a mod I played on Skyrim known as Dead is Dead. I got the mod prepackaged with The Journey which is a 100+ hardcore mod made by a Russian with machoism.
As the name implies you have one life, I spent a lot of time making a character and training skills. If that character died all of its saves would be unable to progress even from the start which was arduous and enough punishment for me. Every new character I had to redo and remake and any step I took would be my last. Interestingly I started naming them alphabetically with my first being Alline and my last character being Elfie.

I kind of gave up on the Dead is Dead mod and stuck to my 2nd Character who got up to level 25 before I stepped on the wrong plate in a dungeon. Even I find the gimmick a little too much.

Honestly if they let someone get into their character and then they die GoT then that is the greatest torture of them all.

 

[AnOminous]

That's the thing about permadeath challenges - they're not really viable if it's your first time playing your game, unless your game has a very smooth learning curve or is incredibly easy.

Permadeath generally implies a roguelike, which is generally also a highly difficult game with procedurally generated content.

But you're expected to play again.

My guess is they skimped on servers, too, so the game lag is going to be what kills most of the people until the server capacity isn't so overwhelmed. That or then they disappear with everyone's money somehow.