Disclaimer: This is not a complaint or anything. This is just something I’ve been thinking about recently.
This game, developed by TALLBOYS and tinyBuild and published by tinyBuild, is a game that I bought around the time it just entered Early Access, with it catching my eye with its really interesting style. (I mean seriously, check this artwork below.) Unfortunately I did not get my money’s worth.
This is not because the game isn’t fun. Personally, it has some of the most fun movement I’ve experienced from a shooter. The problem comes in with the playerbase, or rather, the lack of one.
Since it’s release to EA in May, players have slowly started leaving the game.
When I first noticed this, I was a bit surprised. I thought, “This game is so fun and interesting, with things being added left and right. How could this be?” But, alas, the general public did decide they weren’t interested.
And so the game is basically dead. You can still find some matches every now and again on busy hours, but the game usually only has around 5 players on at a time.
I understand this is basically venting, but it is not out of frustration. It’s out of sadness about the lost potential of this great game. I just wish more people had given it the chance.
I was actually really into the concept of Pandemic Express when I first heard of it in May. The game itself seems genuinely fun, and has some of the best skill-based movement I’ve ever seen (not unlike that of CS surf servers, TF2 rocket jumping, or parkour games) combined with an extremely unique atmosphere.
Then I heard about the playerbase dying/bring close to dead, and the game became a sob story.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a modestly good game go down because of a lack of a playerbase sadly, but I think the devs can still remedy the problem before it becomes fatal to the game by lowering the price permanently or even shifting it to a freemium model.
Also for any of you not familiar with the game, have a dive into one of the trailers to get a feel for it’s design. Other trailers actually explain the gameplay, but this one really hits the atmosphere home.
No it is a multiplayer game. The premise is sort of an infection-like game mode where everyone starts in a station and one person becomes infected. Then everyone tries to escape, but if you die you become infected as well.
