By: Derek Yu

On: November 13th, 2010

A public alpha of Michał Marcinkowski’s team-based multiplayer shooter, Link-Dead, was released a few days ago, as donationware. You can pay any price for access to the alpha, although the payment only counts towards alpha builds (beta and final releases will use a different payment system). Currently, the game comes with one map and the game’s map editor.

I’ve never played Soldat, Michał’s previous title, but the combat in Link-Dead appears to bemuch more methodical, with higher priority given to stealth and positioning. There are two teams that you can choose from: Ubermen rely on their heavy firepower and tech gadgets like heartbeat monitors to hunt down the Mutants, who are much weaker but can use cloaking devices and speed to get the edge on their opponents. In “Chemical Factory”, which comes with the alpha, the Mutants will favor the sewers in the lower part of the map, where they can hide easily in the dark crawlspaces and steamy tunnels.

The alpha is buggy and underpopulated, but a lot of fun. Given the slower pacing of the game, combat tends to alternate between periods of tense cat-and-mouse games and explosive firefights. I’m particularly impressed with how important audio is in the game – many times you’ll have to listen to the footsteps of your opponent to determine their location (this is especially true if you’re hunting a cloaked Mutant). Switching the speed of your character using the Shift key will change how loud your steps are. Really cool stuff.

Each match supports up to 32 players, but the biggest group I saw today was 4. Perhaps not surprising, considering the stability of this early build – server disconnections were regular and some players are experiencing graphical issues (older ATI video cards, in particular, seem to have problems displaying the game correctly). That said, Michał seems intent on getting these issues fixed as quickly as possible, and they probably won’t keep me from playing in the meantime. Hope to see you in-game!