After the soaring rise in popularity of games like Fortnite and PUBG, countless developers have been looking to get in on the battle royale craze that currently dominates popular gaming culture.
In May of 2018, a new studio by the name of VecFour Digital gave gamers everywhere their first look at Hide Or Die, a game which combines the battle royale format and the horror genre to offer players a unique survival experience.
Hide Or Die Story
Hide Or Die is an upcoming survival horror game in the same style as Dead by Daylight. Hide or Die innovates by pitting a group of 16 survivors against the ominous antagonist, the darkness.
The darkness will slowly consume more and more of each level’s expansive map as a match goes on, a constant, looming presence that survivors can choose to avoid, or enter. If a survivor is consumed by the darkness, they become a hunter, one of several corrupted human entities who must seek out and kill the remaining survivors.
The survivors are tasked with communicating with each other, avoiding their enemies, exploring the game’s vast, treacherous maps, and finding implements to defend themselves.
Hide Or Die Gameplay
Link to some authentic gameplay footage, showcasing a typical round of the game.
Hide Or Die features a first-person perspective, and pits a large group of defenseless survivors against a smaller number of deadly hunters, hence the title “asymmetrical” horror survival.
Each multiplayer match consists of 16 survivors, who are unleashed into the game’s procedurally generated and expansive maps. Survivors are initially armed with only their character’s cell phone, which lights their way and serves as an in-game chat feature for survivors to communicate with one another, relaying information like the location of hunters and items.
Throughout the world, players will find loot that they can use to upgrade their survivors and their equipment, as well as their hunters. Players can also find equipment like stun guns, noise makers, and traps, all of which they can use to help them survive against the hunters.
The ultimate goal of the survivors is to find fuse boxes that light up various towers, which players can use to store their items and enjoy some temporary safety from the darkness before moving on to the next area of the map. Every match will inevitably end with a showdown between one Hunter and one armed Survivor. By this point, the lucky survivor will likely have found themselves a weapon, and possibly some traps, and therefore be able to hold their own in combat against the hunters.
Nevertheless, due to the fact that ammo for weapons is EXTREMELY limited, every shot is do or die for both the survivors and the hunters. Players will gain XP based on their performance as a hunter of survivor in each match. Survivors will be judged based on how long they last in each match, and will win more experience for risky choices like refusing to store their items at light towers.
Hunters will be awarded experience based on how many survivors they take down. This gathered experience can be used to acquire new starting weapons, general performance upgrades, and cosmetics such as phone cases and new skins for survivor and hunter characters.
Hide Or Die Developers
Hide Or Die is the first game created by indie studio VecFour Digital. However, this studio did not simply emerge out of the blue at the whim of some unexperienced developers.
Two of the studio’s cofounders, Emre Switzer and Brandon Bredda, have gained extensive game development experience working at Iris Worldwide, a network of creatives that operates around the world, working in everything from game design to graphic design. Between them, they have released 10 commercial Unreal Engine 4 applications, and even helped design the gargantuan, highly-anticipated world of Star Citizen.
Hide Or Die News
Hide Or Die was funded with Kickstarter, reaching its goal of $50,000 within 10 days. Over the remainder of its 30-day Kickstarter campaign in May of 2018, Hide Or Die tripled its funding goal, receiving $155,000 in donations from over 2,400 people.
VecFour Digital has done an excellent job of remaining transparent with their backers on how their money will be spent, offering not only an in-depth breakdown of their expenses on Kickstarter, but has started providing bi-weekly updates on the development of Hide Or Die on their website. Links to their Kickstarter page and the page on their website that features their bi-weekly updates can be found below.
Hide Or Die Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hideordie/hide-or-die-asymmetrical-horror-royale
VecFour Digital bi-weekly Hide Or Die development updates: https://www.vecfour.digital/news/hide-or-die-bi-weekly-update-6-29
An early image of one of Hide Or Die’s antagonist hunters stalking survivors.
A screenshot of another Hide Or Die map, known as “Swamp”.
This is the map featured in the Kickstarter gameplay demo. An early draft of the design for the Fisherman, one of the three types of hunters that are currently in development. The other two hunters will be the Child and the Scientist. Each hunter will have a unique set of weapons, tools and skills that necessitate the development of different play styles, both for the hunters themselves, and for the survivors that seek to avoid them.
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