One Life: Unity Game Where You Only Die Once

A small company from Russia is building a beautiful online survival game One Life, which only let’s you die once. Once you die it’s game over and you can delete the project!

One Life has a long development history. The guys from the Russian game studio Kefir Games have been working on this project for quite some time. It was conceived as a simple online shooter, inspired by Contract Wars. Later the whole concept has evolved greatly into a super hardcore experience, where you can only die once.

We’ve contacted the developers and had a short talk with One Life project manager Pavel Ustyuzhanin.

About the Choice of the Engine

We’re using Unity to build the game. We’ve got an amazing experience working with this technology. It provides us with a number of tools, which allow us to create all the incredible things we want to build. We want to create a great atmosphere and achieve an amazing level of quality. Unity is great for doing that.

One Life Mechanic

If you you in our game, you die. There’s no checkpoint, no respawn. You can’t play if you die. Just delete the game. It’s a brave idea and most of the people just don’t believe us. It actually a pretty straightforward process.
So you buy the game and you basically live in it. When you die, your account is deactivated and it will never work again. Is cruel? Yes, it’s pretty cruel. Most likely your virtual life in our game is going to be pretty short, but it’s going to be remarkably memorable. This is a hardcore kind of entertainment for very competitive and keen gamers. This is really an extreme project, which is a great product for gamers, looking to get some great adrenaline. However, if you pick up the right tactics you can play for months. It’s up to you.

The Switch From Online Shooter To Hardcore Survival

This is not our first game. We’re always looking for new bring emotions, trying to make the game mechanics truly unique. In the beginning this project was known as Cyclop. it was just a simple online shooter with beautiful visuals. We tried to find a way to spice it all up a little bit. Our team played through a bunch of different shooters, thought about different mechanics and finally settled on the concept of one life. It was a very interesting decision with guaranteed absolutely unique emotions. This way we try to change the whole idea of this genre. In our game, your life really matters.

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The whole concept sounds pretty interesting. The game is already on Steam Greenlight and it seems like the concept will be approved in a couple of days. One life per game is a nice concept, but some may find it a bit of a gimmick. You can always buy another copy of the game for $5 and start anew, but will you be willing to pay extra, just to pay more in a month? After all, we are not immortal in life and we are not immortal in games. A very similar project called “The Flock” failed miserably after release. You can read about it here. Let’s hope One Life will have a brighter future.