Darkswarm Development Team Talks Creating Fully Expendable Protagonists

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As soon as you fire up the strategic alien shooter game “DarkSwarm”, players encounter their anonymous protagonists right off the bat. These characters are helmeted and nearly indistinguishable due to similar armor, with colors being the only variation. They’re referred to by their class rather than a name, and they’re bio-printed mercenaries, fabricated for one singular purpose: they’re cheap and easy to replace. This setup paints a captivating picture of a world where interchangeable characters serve as cannon fodder against the nefarious, continuously adapting alien Swarm.

In an interview with Game Rant, Bitfire Games’ CEO Hans Oxmond and Game Director Jonas Raagard discussed the backstory of their upcoming shooter game, which borrows elements from several sources such as “The Thing”, “Helldivers”, and “Alien Swarm”. The duo mentioned that they intentionally made the characters faceless mercenaries to underscore the overwhelming might of the Swarm and convey the futility of any attempts to battle it.

Bio-Printed Humans Are Cheap, Expendable, Fuel For The Swarm

As Raagard and Oxmond delved deeper into DarkSwarm’s intricate world during a mission, they explored the game’s lore. It was revealed that due to advanced bio-printing technology, producing fully functional humans in large numbers has become standard. Raagard elaborated on how this technology led the world to favor bio-printed humans over natural ones.

Bioprinted individuals prove to be highly efficient, outperforming robots in certain areas. Although robots excel in their designated tasks, they fall short here. Consequently, companies have resorted to bioprinting people to maintain smooth operations.

As a gamer immersed in this futuristic world, I can’t help but notice Raagard’s warnings about our seemingly unstoppable advancement of bio-printed humanity. But there’s a catch – the main antagonist, the ominous DarkSwarm, isn’t just any alien threat. It’s a parasitic menace that feeds on and transforms human flesh.

In our relentless pursuit to create more bio-printed mercenaries and send them against the Swarm, we’ve unwittingly become their meal ticket, inadvertently fueling and fortifying our own enemies. It’s a chilling thought, isn’t it? This game has taken on a whole new level of strategic depth.

DarkSwarm Effectively And Constantly Reminds Players That Death Is Cheap

In the game DarkSwarm, participants assume the identity of bio-printed mercenaries employed by a company known as Death on Demand. Their sole objective is to execute multiple missions and continually eliminate an alien species called the Swarm. The very name of the company hints at its ruthless nature – it doesn’t guarantee success, wealth, or even survival. Instead, it only promises death. The game’s official website encapsulates Death on Demand’s philosophy succinctly yet harshly: “Your employer doesn’t care about how many of you return alive. They just want the job done.

During the game, several design elements subtly convey that the player characters are dispensable. In the game DarkSwarm, for instance, new players can join multiplayer missions at any point, symbolizing Death on Demand’s ability to churn out more mercenaries and deploy them in ongoing missions. The mission control is detached and pressuring, constantly urging players to complete their tasks expeditiously, and if they all die or fail an objective, they are referred to as an abomination to their species.

A standout feature of DarkSwarm’s gameplay is that a mission is considered a success if any player survives, highlighting the interchangeable nature of the characters. In an intriguing twist, survivors are compelled to witness their fallen comrades being defeated, consumed, and absorbed by the Swarm. Moreover, even when players fail a mission, they still earn Experience Points (EXP), enabling them to advance their class rank and acquire new firearms, sidearms, melee weapons – all thanks to the game’s unique feature that allows them to switch to a fresh bio-printed body for the next mission, despite their previous character’s demise.

The unique setting and mythology of DarkSwarm distinguishes it from other strategic top-down shooter games that involve fighting aliens. Not just the enemies, but the players as well, are constantly respawning like a never-ending swarm. This is because both sides in the conflict operate on this same principle, which creates a chilling thought – one side feeding the other.

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2025-09-06 13:05