Summary
- Blindfire is a new arena shooter with a twist – players are trapped in darkness relying on their instincts to survive
- Engage in tense team-based battles that encourage bold, strategic play
- Blindfire’s Lead Designer shares the story behind this unique spin on the shooter genre
Trusting your instincts is paramount in Blindfire, a brand-new first-person arena shooter revealed during Xbox Partner Preview today. The pitch is simple – how would you play an FPS in the dark? With the lights out and visuals limited, you must rely on equipment, abilities, and most of all, your other senses, to secure victory. It’s a fantastic concept, and with the game shadow dropping into the Xbox Game Preview program today, we sat down with the team to answer a few questions about the game’s unique core loop.
Not Alone in the Dark
The concept for Blindfire was born from a design exercise that Lead Designer Matt Dunthorne runs every month known as ‘Shatterday’, which sees the team at developer Double Eleven break off into groups and tackle hypothetical design challenges. One Shatterday, a group brought an idea that he felt was impossible to ignore.
“As soon as I heard the pitch, I knew it was something special – there was electricity in the room when they spoke about it and I couldn’t get it out of my head for days afterwards,” Dunthorne says. “The beautiful thing about the concept in my opinion is how pure the core idea is, there is no fluff or excess and it can be explained in a single sentence.
“It’s a pitch-black room, you have a gun, so do your enemies… good luck!”
This setting, as simple as it is, immediately changes the rules compared to the usual shooter experience, according to Dunthorne: “We very quickly realised that the dark setting meant that a lot of the typical design rules for a shooter no longer applied. It sounds like hyperbole, but turning out the lights changes everything.”
In these pitch-black arenas, an emphasis is placed on slower, more tactical play, during which players are forced to consider the consequences of each and every shot they take. When a gun is fired, the noise – paired with the Hollywood-esque muzzle flash – essentially places a target on your back for everyone else. However, anyone making moves to take you down will also end up highlighting their own position, and that can quickly turn into chaos.
“Kills are less about pure shooting prowess, and more about clever use of environmental cues,” Dunthorne says. “Moving cautiously, listening carefully, and thinking about which target to engage, as well as considering who could be waiting in the shadows to take you out, too. It’s a unique challenge that forces you to play differently.”
Getting into the Game
Blindfire’s signature Bodycount mode can be played in Free-For-All or Team variants, so players can jump in alone or party up with friends. Bodycount is a fight to score the most points across five rounds, but each player only has one life per round. The most straight-forward way to win the match is to place highly in each round, but hiding in the dark and popping out for the final kill won’t score you many points alone. Skillful play like getting headshots, multi-kills, first blood or surviving without taking any damage will result in more points – you’re encouraged to get stuck into the action for the best results.
“Winning is about finding the right balance between simply surviving and being bold,” Dunthorne adds. “The scoreboard can be flipped on its head at any time, it makes for very exciting matches that go down to the wire.”
It’s not just enemy positions you’ll need to be tracking either – you’ll need to stay aware of where your own teammates are, as friendly fire is very much a danger in the dark. Players are highlighted with different colors to help you differentiate between friend and foe, but you’ll still need to exercise quick thinking in the heat of battle as to not injure one of your own.
“A huge part of the game is about understanding when to fire and when not too and we wanted to ensure this remained intact in our Team modes,” Dunthorne explains. “In Team Bodycount this importance is multiplied, you need to be sure that the footsteps you just heard behind you are an enemy and not your teammate.”
If you’re unlucky enough to be eliminated, the game isn’t over, however. Blindfire features several light-based traps laid to catch players out if they’re not being careful. Stage lights will flick on and off intermittently, security gates will light up when walked through, and an overhead searchlight will illuminate unsuspecting players if they’re not paying attention. The beauty of this system is that, when players are out of the round, they’ll be given control of these traps, allowing them to disrupt the surviving opponents with potentially devastating visual cues and noises.
The Sound of Violence
Speaking of noises, Blindfire places a sizeable emphasis on sound in lieu of its limited visibility, and the audio design is a cornerstone of the entire experience: “We wanted to ensure players could be confident enough of an enemies’ location to risk taking a shot using audio alone,” Dunthorne explains.
“This was a huge challenge, but we have deployed every trick in the book to make the soundscape around you readable, with the positioning and loudness of each sound giving you a great understanding of what is happening in the dark at all times.”
With that in mind, players have two choices when performing any action that’ll make a noise – fast and loud, or slow and quiet – and the chosen method will depend on the situation.
“For example, during a hectic firefight, you might not care so much about [using the quick reload function,] slamming in a new magazine and chucking the old one on the floor. But when you are stalking someone, you’ll have the option to carefully insert the magazine with as little noise as possible,” Dunthorne adds.
Thankfully, you’re not just scurrying around in the dark waiting for someone to reveal themselves – Blindfire offers each player an ability called Echo, which briefly reveals the outlines of your immediate surroundings. It also has a feature called Last Known Position – which will reveal an opponent’s last few movements if they are within range of the scan.
“Navigating in the dark is much easier during an Echo, so it can be really useful to close the gap on someone you are tracking or to help you avoid the crossfire when the bullets start flying,” Dunthorne says. “Echo is really powerful, so there is a large cooldown between uses. You really need to save it for when it will make the biggest impact.”
As for your loadout, Blindfire is keeping it simple for early access launch. Every player has access to the same abilities and weapons, which makes for a truly even playing field. Today, you’ll have a choice of two weapons. The Mantis is an accurate, powerful pistol, while the Abolition is a vicious shotgun that can be fired rapidly.
“The Mantis is the classic Blindfire weapon – there is something incredibly pure about using such a simple weapon in our unique gameplay scenario,” Dunthorne says. “The player needs to hit multiple shots to take their target down with this gun, which means they have to be sure they can win the firefight quickly or they risk being lit up like a Christmas tree.”
“The Abolition is a beast of a shotgun. At close range it is absolutely deadly, so if you hear someone nearby you might want to think about firing first. If you misjudge the range on your shot though, you’ll be left wide open. This dynamic adds a chaotic twist to the Blindfire formula.”
The team does plan to add additional weapons regularly as Blindfire develops, but for now it’s all about getting acquainted with its unique tactical elements rather than gun variety.
The aim, as Dunthorne explains, is to eliminate “traditional loadouts” and ensure that victory comes down to strategy and execution rather than what gear you’re carrying.
“Since everyone is on equal footing, success depends on how quickly players adapt to the ever-changing conditions and make tactical decisions under pressure,” Dunthorne adds. “We have found that this approach has fostered a more competitive environment where no player has an advantage.”
Entering The Light
Your tactics might even account for how much time has passed. While the map starts off completely in the dark, light will slowly be introduced in various ways during the course of a round. Dunthorne tells us that the aim is to keep rounds of Blindfire snappy, and one way to stop people hiding in dark corners for long periods of time is to flush them out with light. Think of it like a battle royale – lights are slowly turned on in the corners of arenas, then the sides, and the dark parts of the map will steadily get smaller. Eventually, all of the lights in the arena will turn on, and a firefight will ensue as all players become visible to one another.
“This wave of tension and release rises and falls multiple times a round and it is an amazing feeling. It’s honestly like nothing else,” Dunthorne says.
Blindfire is available in early access through the Xbox Game Preview program on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC today.
Blindfire (Game Preview)
Double Eleven Ltd.