Drawn to Death is an upcoming free-to-play third person shooter that is set to launch exclusively on the PS4 sometime in 2015. The game is being developed by David Jaffe’s studio The Bartlet Jones Supernatural Detective Agency and Sony San Diego. The game is said to be four-player multiplayer in an arena shooter type setting. Set inside a kid’s notebook, this has led to the art style of the game having the appearance of sketches. This layout has also led to those sketches being rather odd looking at times and even featuring characters such as a chainsaw wielding teddy bear.
David Jaffe has a history of making some rather interesting titles in the console world. The developer is probably best known for his work in the Twisted Metal series. He was also the game director for the original God of War and the creative director for God of War 2. He’s also worked on Kinetica and Calling All Cars!
Drawn to Death has been in development since early 2013. The game was announced that the PlayStation Experience keynote opening ceremony on December 6, 2014. This title is David Jaffe’s first project with the relatively young studio known as The Bartlet Jones Supernatural Detective Agency. “We want Drawn To Death to play like the offspring of an old school arena shooter (with updated, modern sensibilities) and a hardcore brawler/fighting game,” Jaffe said in a post on the PlayStation Blog shortly after the game was officially announced. “We want our signature launch mode — a 4 Player Free For All Deathmatch — to be action packed while also giving Players the need and ability to master advanced environment movement, learn and exploit enemy tells, and form clever strategies that pay off in big victories!”
Jaffe is the official director for this game and has been giving updates about development on the game’s official website. After the initial trailer was revealed, along with the announcement that there would be an alpha people could sign up for, there was another video released on December 11, 2014. This particular video was actually a way for Jaffe to fight back against the people who left rather scathing comments in a Polygon story about the new game. In the video, the hand drawn character not only reads the comments but actually issues insults to the people who made those comments. On February 9, 2015 Jaffe said that the game was in “full blown production.”
Drawn to Death has seen ongoing alphas and received feedback through the game’s official website and forum. In September 2015 the developers announced that the game was going to have a number of PS4 sharing capabilities when it launched and that those that were playing in the various Alpha modes would get access to those sharing features before the game went live.
It isn’t clear what the story behind Drawn to Death is, although we know the entire game is supposed to take place inside the notebook of a high school kid. All of the characters that are included in the game are the kid’s creation and it appears the point of the game is simply to commit as much mayhem as possible. Some videos of the game show certain characters jumping around what looks like a bedroom, so it’s possible that at some point the characters will get out of the notebook and actually commit mayhem in the outside world.
The videos have also shown a rather large hand, apparently that of the notebook’s owner that will actually engage in battle from time to time. At the very least, the hand will intervene in order to squash or impale characters in the game. Why or when this would happen hasn’t been made clear.
Drawn to Death is a third person, multiplayer shooter. Jaffe has said that this is a free-to-play game but it’s not F2P in the more traditional sense. He explained his idea for this game in a Reddit thread where he explained this F2P model. “We don’t like pay-to-win and we don’t like taking play mechanics away from players simply to have them earn them or pay for them. That said, we love the discoverability of free-to-play and the very wide net it creates, allowing us to get many more folks giving our game a shot.” Judging from these comments, there will things that can be unlocked if people are willing to pay for them, though exactly how that aspect of the game will work is still unknown.
Jaffe did talk about the different weapons that are in the game and laid out how the weapon selection screen is going to work. “Yes, the center circle (where you currently see the character) becomes the location to put the weapon info/stat as soon as you move your selector over the weapon. Didn’t have a chance to get that in for PSX and yeah, while I like experimenting as well, giving some info at the start/before you make some choices seems pretty crucial!”
Jaffe also shed some light on the different point totals that will come from different shots and damage done to opponents. In particular, the game’s developer mentioned the way that headshots will affect a score. “Headshots do 1.25 damage to any weapon except for sniper rifles which will instant kill an enemy if you get a headshot.”
Names of certain characters, or which ones will be in the finished game are not known at this time. Various videos and promotional materials have shown a number of different characters including a killer teddy bear as well as other characters such as a punk rock guy that was featured in the videos is in the game. Jaffe has said that there will be a number of different characters added after release. Jaffe has also said he would like to not only have original chSaracters but also feature well known characters from other games in the Sony universe.
Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game