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Oh no! Undawn had flopped!
Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 25-03-2024
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Shocking news has just dropped - Undawn had flopped! Even though once famous actor Will Smith was involved in this project, still it flopped. Which brings an interesting question - what the heck is Undawn???
Undawn, a free-to-play mostly mobile game published by beloved company Tencent, according to Reuters, "flopped spectacularly". If you missed that shocking news, then... welcome to the club. Not many people knew the game even existed, it was published in June 2023 on Steam and at the best moment on Steam 8531 people played it simultaneously, which was not a bad result.
I mean it would be not bad for an indie title, but when a giant like Tencent published a game, involved Hollywood actor Will Smith to promote it, even put his character in the game, it does not sound so great. But there is another layer to that story - over 300 developers were involved in the production of Undawn and the whole project cost reached over 130 million USD. Oh, you poor thing, Tencent. According to Reuters report, in February 2024 the game had an income of 287,000 USD, which would be nice... for an indie project.
What can be said about the game? It is as basic as you can imagine - walk around an empty world and shoot zombies, then return to your base and repeat. Enough said, the Steam players were not amused - the game enjoys 55% of positive reviews, and it is fully deserved. Inside you will find parts that look like they were put together at a last moment, f.e. some character models are not full animated, some seem like they were taken from another title because they are in a completely different style. Basically, if the 130 million USD part of the story is true, it looks like a money laundering scheme that was planned to fail, rather than a title that was supposed to be shown to the public.
Turns out that if you take a ton of money, produce generic mobile gameplay, slap a disgraced actor on the cover and then forget to tell anyone about that project, it will fail. Who knew?
25-03-2024
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