Blindfire Early Access Hands-On Preview – Turn Off the Lights
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Developer Double Eleven has spent most of their existence over the last 15 or so years helping to work on existing games or taking the reins of ports such as Red Dead Redemption, but they have also put out their own games, such as Prison Architect 2, after taking over development on the first game post-release. Blindfire is their latest original game, though, that has a very unique visual design, and we were able to give the game a try through Early Access.
Not Firing Blindly in the Dark
The main attraction for Blindfire is its blacklight aesthetic which is reminiscent of something like Ghostrunner almost. Regardless of which match type you are playing, every map will be pitch black, and you can’t see much except for a few lit objects. This level design is cool and has a lot of potential to provide some cool gameplay situations. The goal in each match is to find the opposition within this darkness to kill them before they can kill you, which is very difficult in the pitch-black setting. This is where you have a few tools available to help.
Firstly, you have an Echo that you consistently charge throughout each match and can unleash to light up specific objects like mannequins and such, but will also light up the trail of an enemy if they are nearby. In specific modes, you can also set traps while waiting to respawn that will shed more light on the opponent as best as I could tell, though it never really was a big help for me with how spread out the stages were and the few opponents I was able to match up against. When the opponent starts shooting, you can also see their trail and an arrow will show the direction you are being shot from, which can also help. However, most of the time you will already be dead or very low in health by discovering the enemy if you are already being shot.
I was a bit disappointed that there was no way to recover health that I could find, as that could definitely make things a bit more intense as you can narrowly escape from an opponent but be able to get healed, while the opponent thinks they’re hunting a wounded animal in a sense. Instead, you are pretty much down for the count if you are already hit unless you get a perfect jump on the enemy and surprise them.
With the game in Early Access, there were a limited number of game options available to use in the game. In this version, there were three game modes to choose from: Quickplay, Solo, and Squad. Solo mode is as it sounds, where you are a one-man army trying to face off against other single players. As of the Early Access period, the only two game options within Solo to be matched into are Bodycount and Kill Race. Squad, on the other hand, is the team-based option in the two match types of Team Bodycount and Team Kill Race. Quickplay is the wild card option where anything could get picked between Solo and Squad, but this is also where you will have a better chance of finding a match.
Kill Race and Team Kill Race has a ticking clock that lasts the entire one-round match, where the goal is to kill the opposition as many times as possible to rack up points. Killing the opponent does not end the round, however, as it just has a respawn period where you can set a trap on the map and then respawn. On the other hand, body Count and Team Bodycount work in a rotating round manner. For example, in Body Count, there are five rounds, and each round ends when everyone is dead except for one person. It then moves to round two and so forth until all five rounds are up and there is a winner based on the most points earned by kills and other means like taking first blood, taking no damage or assisting other players in taking someone out.
Pick Your Weapon
The method of weapon usage was also weird in the game, as you are limited to either a pistol or what appeared to be a shotgun of sorts. The problem is that you cannot choose which one you want before a match or anything; rather, it’ll just spawn. For instance, in Kill Race, it kept just respawning with the same weapon as the start since it’s continuous, but Bodycount occasionally would give a different weapon in some rounds. For the way this game worked, though, I wish the map had other weapons lying around so that it could give some players an advantage for being strategic around the map by scavenging rather than just playing a game of cat and mouse in the dark only. There are explosive barrels you can utilize, but they felt like they weren’t even worth using most of the time, either, due to the layout of the maps.
My biggest problem with Blindfire when trying to play was a lack of finding matches. When you try to go into a match, it’ll start by trying to find eight or more players before it starts to eventually whittle down into six or more, four or more, and eventually down to just one other opponent for solo play if necessary. Unfortunately, this was a major problem for me, and I’d get one person to match eventually if I was lucky. Otherwise, I’d have to try again.
Before the matchmaking phase between Quickplay, Solo, and Squad, you can also invite friends who also have the game to help alleviate finding matches. However, you also will need to have friends playing the game as well for that to be a possibility, which was not the case for me. What Blindfire really needs, though, is an offline option to play against bots to allow for practice and at least something to do when you can’t find a player match. The game isn’t the greatest at explaining things either, so it would be nice to have this as a practice mode to prepare people for online matches.
The Elite 10 section of the main menu shows your total wins, kills, and points. Even though it says this, I had matches that did not register on this, so I’m not sure if that is a glitch if this is a work in progress overall, or if it just has a delay to when stats are added. Considering the very unique blacklight aesthetic in Blindfire, choosing your character’s equipment is very important. Within the Locker section, you can adjust your character’s physique, skin tone, visor, upper body, gloves, pants, sneakers, and weapon. There are some cool options to choose from here, so it’s well worth looking at. I could see this getting some additions as the game continues onward, with so many options that could be added here.
Blindfire is a great example of a game with an intriguing premise that has not hit the mark so far. It has some good ideas with how it is set up, but it just felt like so much more could be done there to make things much more interesting and user-friendly. Hopefully, the developer will take note of user feedback and add to the game over time since it is only in Early Access as of this time, which maybe will bring in a much larger player base since it was very hard to find a match even across platforms. Having a dedicated player base could do wonders for a game like this with potential, and I would like to see it grow moving forward.
MP1st was given access to an Early Access build of Blindfire for our hands-on. Blindfire is currently available in Early Access for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC.
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