Decimated Q&A – Indie Team Unveils Cyberpunk Online Survival Game with FSR3 Support and Optional Blockchain

22.12.2023 - 16:10 / wccftech.com / Game With

Estonian independent developer Fracture Labs aims to rectify one major shortcoming in the gaming market with its Decimated project: the current lack of any decent cyberpunk-themed online game.

For several years, CD Projekt RED hyped up the multiplayer mode of its Cyberpunk 2077 game. Fans salivated at the mere prospect of being able to roam Night City with or against other 'Mercs'. Unfortunately, the Polish studio eventually changed its plans and canceled the multiplayer mode due to having to focus on improving the game's single player mode.

Decimated cannot compete with Cyberpunk 2077 when it comes to budget and general polish. Nonetheless, it does have several intriguing features. We sent a list of questions to Fracture Labs to inquire for more details on pretty much every aspect of the game, including the potentially controversial optional support of blockchain technology.

Can you talk about Fracture Labs? When was it founded, and how many developers do you employ?

Fracture Labs was founded in 2018. We started as a small, self-funded indie studio with just 5 people on the team. We were bootstrapping for many years until we raised capital in 2021 ($4.1M), which gave us the opportunity to scale up to around 40 internally, with external teams helping with art assets and our website. We currently employ 30 staff and have support from some external partners. Most of the team have worked on AAA games in their careers and bring together decades of experience.

When did you begin working on Decimated?

We developed a prototype back in 2018, which then progressed into a pre-alpha demo by 2019. This was a deathmatch arena shooter, which we then opened up into an open world desert with hover vehicles, buggies, capture the flag and package delivery missions.

We tried raising capital with this pre-alpha at conferences like Gamescom, SLUSH, and other conferences but had no luck, so we continued to self-fund the game until 2021 when we finally raised $4.1M. This was also when Unreal Engine 5 was launched, so we restarted the project in the new engine with a bigger team of experienced developers to build the game in an optimized and scalable way.

The official website describes the game as a 'persistent online world'. Would you say it has some MMO elements?

Decimated is not an MMO, but it is a multiplayer game with multiple persistent online maps, each with PVP and PVE missions. Players can explore and scavenge the environment or follow waypoints around the map to reach mission objectives, such as protecting or destroying vehicle convoys, salvaging crashed shipwrecks, rescuing hostages or prisoners, delivering packages, assassinating targets, engaging in combat with NPC’s and other players, looting and extracting back