Propnight Review friv game - Beautiful but raw
The Yakut company Friv2Online has released its own prop hunt - outwardly similar to Fortnite, internally - to Dead by Daylight. It is unlikely that the adherents of both from Propnight will be delighted, but here you can have fun with friends, even if one of them is a merciless and creepy monster.
Prop hunt has its roots in a mode created in Garry's Mod for Counter Strike: Source. As was the case with MOBA or Battle Royale, the idea of an independent programmer (his callsign andrewtheis) formed the basis of an entire subgenre, and for almost a decade has been bearing modest results: from hide-and-seek modes to online shooters (Call of Duty, Fortnite ), to full-fledged games (Prop Hunt, Witch It).
Participants in prop hunt competitions are divided into two camps: some usually act as armed hunters, others run away or hide from them, turning into inanimate objects of the environment, just like mimics in Prey.
Fntastic changed the formula a bit, borrowing core mechanics for prop hunt from another popular game - the asymmetric horror Dead by Daylight. In Propnight, there is only one hunter (he is also a maniac), there are four survivors (hereinafter we will call them that). To win, the pursuer needs to catch them all, and the pursued must escape from the level within the allotted time.
The timer is a very important element of the Propnight gameplay. If the pace of DBD is affected by the quickness of a maniac, who sooner or later will find and eliminate all opponents if they do not fulfill the conditions of the match, then try to find props.
Seven minutes are allotted for one match, but extra seconds are awarded for saving a comrade and repairing prop machines (such an analogue of generators). In this way, Propnight tries to encourage active players.
As in DBD, the survivors need to repair five cars in the allotted time, performing reaction checks so as not to attract the attention of a maniac, who (again, as in DBD) must find them, injure them, and carry each one to the Hypnostool (similar to a hook) three times. Survivors see the auras of comrades sitting on chairs and can rescue them, maniacs see the auras of prop machines.
Unlike DBD, heroes (and maniacs too) can jump, but cannot crouch, and are all played in first-person. For survivors, the camera zooms out only when the prop machine is repaired and when they take the form of some object. Being a prop, the survivor gets a double jump, and physics determines his mobility - if he is, for example, a round cabbage, he will roll, and if he is a box, he will slide or roll over.
Players can instantly transform into almost any object in range, from a huge haystack to a tiny pebble, and remain in this form until they decide to interact with the environment. Depending on their size, shapeshifters take on the weight and density of the object of transformation: it is more difficult for a maniac to break a voluminous steel canister than, say, to break a glass bottle, but it will also be somewhat difficult to escape in this form.
Window openings will no longer save you from a pursuer, but slamming doors can delay him or stun a prop that dares to fall on the maniac's head. Prop coins are scattered throughout the levels, the friv game gives out some more of them as progress in car repair and other activities.
Propnight also has chests. They open instantly and for these very coins. Inside, you can get energy for sprinting (in human form, survivors spend stamina on running), a one-time camera or a can of explosive liquid to blind a maniac, antibiotics to restore health, a book for temporary invisibility, and more.
There are only five survivors in the game right now. All are teenagers-high school students who differ from each other only in appearance and voice acting. There are also five Maniacs, each with three unique powers and a common “hunt” modifier familiar to DBD players, which increases the Maniac's speed during prolonged pursuit.
Banshee looks like a nun from The Conjuring, curses prop machines and flies; the crouched Granny wields throwing knives and becomes invisible (which is actually perfectly visible); dressed up as a full-length rabbit puppet, Igor runs after victims with a chainsaw; Akasha, who looks like Dimitrescu's daughter, can turn into a shadow and attack in an area, and the Imposter (the most unusual maniac in the game) can become a prop or pretend to be one of the survivors.
Maniacs have a small terror radius (heartbeat increases when a villain is nearby), but in Propnight it is completely useless, since the levels in the game are significantly less than DBD locations, and if you hear terror, most likely the pursuer is already a few meters away from you.
With a good combination of circumstances (if the maniac does not languish over the victim put on a chair, and the team of players is really engaged in the repair of prop machines), because of the compact levels, you will have to play catch-up all the time: survivors - to transform on the go to deceive the pursuer, maniacs - to train cunning and vigilance.
But even in the best case scenario, Propnight will quickly start to get boring after the first ten races. Fntastic admitted in one of the posts that they put a lot of effort into the brainchild, and for some members of the Propnight team it was the very first game. And here one cannot but agree, looking at the magnificent cartoon look of the project, its physics, animations and even excellent optimization.
And the sadder is that behind the attractive wrapper, so far, very mediocre content is hidden. Taking the DBD-core as a basis, by the release the friv game developers did not work out such things as account progression, the system of rewarding and punishing players, and the newcomer training system. All the heroes and maniacs in Propnight are just beautiful figures with no backstory, and everything that happens is not backed up by any plot.
In Dead by Daylight, regulars collect extra lore pages, complete challenging compendium quests, sign up for collectible customization items, and try their best in matches that reward them with blood points needed to level up characters and maniacs, buy consumables, and bounties.
Looking back at the work of Behavior Interactive, the Yakut company for some reason lost sight of the most important factor influencing today on maintaining the interest of the player. Playing for the sake of playing is not a very profitable scheme for paid, session (albeit family-friendly) projects. When the parties are not motivated to win, and the heroes do not develop in any way, team play with randoms risks turning into a waste of time, and some Fntastic decisions only exacerbate this impression.
For example, a Propnight match played to the disadvantage of the survivors usually drags on until the timer runs out completely. Since nothing can push the last survivor to repair prop machines, and his teammates cannot leave the match, as the game threatens to fine them. The dead comrades are forced to watch the rest of the time as their negligent partner hides in the bushes in the form of a cob of corn, and the maniac wanders senselessly around the map.
Similar situations happen just during the match. The player can leave at any time, leaving his comrades to their fate, he can leave the lobby and the system, instead of picking up a new participant, will throw out everyone else. And the player can also turn into a box, lie on a shelf and just blow gas for the whole match (the game has a system for communicating voice emotions, and guess which of the nine options is the most popular?). If this “freedom to choose actions” seems funny to Fntastic, then it seems to me to be a huge omission.
In a post-release letter, igrodely promised that the progression would be delivered. Already now we are getting experience at the end of the match, which is not yet attached to anything. However, judging by what can be seen in the customization section, this will only lead to the prospect of getting new, not too original skins for survivors (and so far only for them), banners, slogans and avatar frames.
In principle, it is clear what audience Fntastic is counting on. Most likely, players from projects like Among Us and toxic characters from other games with stricter rules will pull up here. Since there is basically no blood and violence here, Propnight can be recommended to companies of schoolmates who are hungry for fun joint adventures, or a family game, but without competent progression, experienced hide-and-seek lovers are unlikely to stay here for a long time.
It's clear that this is another test for Fntastic before the release of their promising The Day Before, but I really want to believe that the last one will be thought out much better than Propnight before release.
However, as you may remember, Dead by Daylight was also not built immediately and it took years to polish it. Propnight has a good base and a very nice look, and the mixing of genres can be called successful. It remains only to take an example from older projects and add everything necessary to maintain the interest of the community to the game.