Final night time, IGN posted a information piece about how Undawn, a free-to-play survival recreation starring Will Smith as some type of apocalypse pal known as Trey, has been an enormous flop. Launched in June 2023 for cell and PC, Undawn had an allegedly big funds, based on Reuters sources, however which solely introduced in beneath $300K final month, as estimated by analysis agency Appamgic. And on listening to this information everybody went: “Sorry, what are you speaking about?”
To me, it is fairly humorous all of us obtained shocked by the existence of this recreation purely as a result of it spectacularly booted it. It is one among Tencent’s first huge in-house initiatives, based on the Reuters report, and is clearly mobile-first. It additionally seems prefer it was supposed to be principally marketed in China. Although I’ll say that, given it is usually on Steam with full voice appearing in English, it is nonetheless a bit bizarre that is the primary myself and lots of different members of the RPS Treehouse have ever heard about it.
I believe Will Smith being notionally in it someplace as properly simply makes it appear even weirder, as a result of he’s extraordinarily well-known everywhere in the world. It appears odd that he may have been a part of a recreation that principally handed everybody by.
Because the recreation is free-to-play, I believed I would give it a spin to see what all of the fuss is about – although from what I can collect, Will Smith is barely an elective assist character, not a full-blown forged member. I did not encounter him within the 20 minutes or so I performed, which I used to be shocked by, given how prominently he options in each the preliminary Chinese language advert for the sport when it was first introduced final February (thanks to director of analysis and insights at Niko Companions Daniel Ahmad for sharing this gem on Xwitter again then), and in a trailer from Undawn’s French YouTube channel (minus any voiceover) in Might. Then once more, he does not at the moment seem on the Undawn web site wherever, so perhaps it was solely a promotional tie-in.
Edit: I’ve found that Will Smith appears to have had a number of – voiceless, likeness solely, lol – aspect story missions (I have not watched that entire video so sorry if the YouTuber says one thing weirdly offensive on the finish of it). There have been additionally restricted timed occasions final yr, one to get a backback and one other the place he’d present up twice every week for an hour and in case you discovered him you bought some boots, I believe?
For what it is value, Undawn additionally appears to be a reasonably horrible recreation, which might clarify why it is at the moment solely sitting at Combined evaluations on Steam. The PC model nonetheless has numerous ‘Faucet Anyplace’ prompts on display, and controls actually badly. It actually does not seem like any of the official screenshots on the Steam web page once you play it for your self, both. In all probability for the perfect it by no means made it to a worldwide launch.