Sony Interactive Entertainment announced today that PlayStation 4 exclusive shooter Drawn to Death is releasing on April 4 in North America and Europe, priced at $19.99 USD. Originally planned to be free-to-play, developer David Jaffe revealed last year that it would be a traditional paid title, following everything they learned from the Limited Access period.
Provided nothing’s changed since November, Drawn to Death will have six characters to unlock at launch: Johnny Savage, Diabla Tijuana, Cyborgula, Alan, Ninjaw, and Bronco. You’ll also find seven levels, 26 weapons, six game modes, and two systems called Volcano God and Sphynx that are key to unlocking in-game prizes. “Skill-based combat is at the heart of Drawn to Death and we’ll never make you level up in order to gain better abilities,” Jaffe said at the time.
In an interview on the PlayStation Blog, Jaffe talked about what makes Drawn to Death different from other character-based shooters:
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.
The above video includes some Drawn to Death gameplay, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at development.
[Source: PS Blog (1), (2)]
