Midnight Society, the development studio founded by Dr. Disrespect, has revealed the name and some background details about the multiplayer FPS formerly known as Project Moon. It’s called Deadrop, and according to the Midnight Society website (opens in new tab), it’s set in the year “2020.b”, when self-governed megastructures called Refiner States turn toxic atmospheric pollutants into a valuable addictive substance called “space dust”.
The summary goes on: “Once Government-owned facilities, the lucrative ‘DUST’ trade has now led to the forced occupation of the REFINER STATES by competing factions fighting for control of the towers and the resources inside.” Players will presumably take the role of members of those factions, the Skins and Syns, who fight each other and the Cleaners who currently control the Refiner State skyscrapers.
A “vertical extraction shooter”, Deadrop will be about collecting gear and resources as you fight your way up the tower, trying to survive so you can extract with whatever you’ve looted. Then you use that to fund your next trip. It sounds like Escape From Tarkov with a cyberpunk makeover.
Deadrop raised funding by selling $50 Founders Access Passes that give players access to six-weekly “snapshot” builds from the early stages of its development. The first of these, called Snapshot CL 1859, is out now. Founders can download it to explore their hideout and test an assault rifle across three shooting ranges.
It is of course incredibly early in the development process, so most of what you can see in the videos uploaded by players is likely to change. Games don’t normally get shown publicly this early on, and Deadrop is a perfect example of why that is. There’s barely anything to see and nothing to get excited about, unless you’re one of the more easily impressed streamers (opens in new tab) who have jumped on the bandwagon.
“The focus of this build was to establish the foundation for core player movement, weapon systems, and to introduce an environment in which to test the first weapon”, Midnight Society says (opens in new tab). “In addition, Snapshot_CL 1859 marks the beginning of authentication, profile, account, dedicated server support, and code to support future Deadrop multiplayer functionality.”
New snapshots will be released every six weeks. At the moment, the only people who can try them out are those 10,000 players who sprung for a Founders Access Pass, which came with a procedurally generated NFT of a character who serves as their in-game avatar (opens in new tab). More rounds of passes, and NFTs, will be made available later on.